On choosing yourself, solo tables, and the permission January asks us to claim
We’re almost to the end of January, and by now the shine has probably worn off whatever resolutions you tried to make on New Year’s Day. The gym membership probably already feels like guilt…the meal plan feels like performance…the promise to “do better” feels like one more thing you’re already failing at…again.
What if this year, instead of adding more to your life, you gave yourself permission to subtract?
What if you gave yourself permission to let go of what doesn’t fit, to say no without apologizing. What if this year, you choose yourself…not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down kind of way (although if you know my story, you know I’m apparently a big fan of the prescribed burn method), but in small, steady acts of honoring what you actually need.
For me, that permission arrived at a pizzeria in San Francisco back in 2013, sitting at the bar alone, watching cooks stretch dough by hand while one hour became four and time seemed to stand still.
With an extremely traumatic failed adoption a few months behind me, I still had all the weight of the pain and grief from the baby we’d almost brought home…the crib I kept behind closed doors. And that grief, I was carrying alone while my then-husband processed it somewhere I couldn’t follow.
The space between us had grown, and I’d stopped reaching for him…I started reaching for something else instead.
I applied for an “out of the box” professional development grant from my employer at the time. “Light the Fire,” it was called…without irony. This grant gave me funding to travel to California for a week-long workshop with a National Geographic photographer.
I told myself it was about photography and hands-on learning. But looking back, I know the truth: I was applying for and searching for the permission to choose myself.
The Flight
I almost missed my flight. Blocked by an overly crowded security line with only ten minutes left to board, I finally made it on the plane.
I pressed my forehead against the window and teared up. Tears streamed down my face, but not out of sadness or fear…it was an overwhelming feeling of relief.
I was flying alone for the first time in my life. No husband beside me…no one who needed me for the next few days. It was just me, my camera, a heavily researched list of restaurants mapped in my journal, and a grant that dared me to light something on fire.
Below me, Charlotte disappeared into the clouds. I had a thought I didn’t know I was brave enough to even think...What if I don’t go back?
The flight attendant brought coffee. I took it black, even though in those days I usually drank it with flavored creamer. It felt like practice. Like doing something different just because I could.
Los Angeles: The First Breath
I flew to LA to cook with Adriana Adarme, a food blogger I’d been following. Her recipes felt like stories. Her photography made me believe food could be a language all its own.
We met at the farmers market in Echo Park. Heirloom tomatoes stacked like jewels…stone fruit so ripe it begged to be bitten…herbs bundled with twine.
Adriana moved through the stalls with ease, knowing exactly what she wanted. I watched her hands…how she held apricots, how she smelled basil before buying it, how she chose a fresh baguette.
“I eat with my eyes first,” she said. “But let’s cook with our hands today.”
Back at her apartment—sunlit, plants spilling in from one huge bright window—she showed me how she staged food photography. A movable filing cabinet fitted with marble on top for a backdrop, she showed me how the light from that one window changed everything.
“Food photography isn’t about making it look perfect,” she said. “It’s about finding the light and using it to make the food look like you HAVE to eat.”
We cooked together that day, grilled apricots, broke open balls of burrata (my first time having burrata…life changed, I was immediately obsessed) and made an herb gremolata (I totally had to Google what that was later).
Standing there, tasting the herbed sauce off a wooden spoon, taking photos between stirs, I felt something crack open.
This. I want this.
I didn’t know if it was the cooking or the creating or just being in a space where no one expected me to perform. I just knew something had shifted.
That night, Adriana took me to INK, Michael Voltaggio’s restaurant. The kind of place where every dish felt like a dare. We sat near the kitchen and watched the cooks move…fast, focused, fluid.
Duck rillettes with charred leeks on a charcoal waffle. Creamed corn with miso and house-made Doritos. Egg yolk gnocchi with brown butter sauce. Lamb with mushroom-fried hay.
When I left that night, lying in bed at my Airbnb, I thought: I really want to do this.
It wasn’t ambition exactly, but it was recognition. It was the moment I saw myself walking towards a door I didn’t know existed, and I realized I had actually been walking towards that door my whole life.
San Francisco: The Table
I flew north the next day to San Francisco for the photography workshop. I booked an adorable AirBnB brownstone in the Mission District with a gay couple who welcomed me with wine and easy laughter.
“You’re here alone?” one of them asked. “Yeah,” I said, like it was normal…like I did this all the time.
I’d planned to eat at Mission Chinese that first night. It was on my ever-growing “restaurants to try” list, but when I got there, a printed sign on the door: Closed this week. This week. My luck.
I stood there for a moment, disappointed but not defeated, and then I did what I would’ve NEVER done back home.
I wandered. No plan, no immediate backup. I tucked my anxiety in and just walked until something felt right.
I found a pizzeria a few blocks away. It was small, warm with light spilling onto the sidewalk. It was an open kitchen concept where diners could see cooks stretching dough by hand.
I paused at the door and felt my heart kick. I walked in and up to the hostess and said the thing…calmly, clearly with fake confidence: “Table for one, please.”
She smiled. Not with pity, not with judgement or even curiosity. Just normal, sweet warmth that comes from a hostess who knows her role. “Right this way.”
She led me to the bar. I could see everything from there…the cooks working dough, the flour dusting the air and the rhythm of a kitchen in motion.
I ordered a salad, and then made an intentional choice: I didn’t take out my phone. I wanted to be present…like fully present. Not performing or documenting it for proof or for audiences at home. I just wanted to be there.
The server chatted me up. Where was I from? What brought me to San Francisco? I told her about Charlotte, the workshop, traveling alone for the first time.
“That’s SO cool!”
A few minutes later, the GM sent over wine. “On the house,” the server said. “For the solo traveler.”
I laughed. Poured myself a glass. And then I stayed…for four hours.
I talked to the cooks as they fed me little treats to taste from the kitchen. I watched them move through the tickets like a dance I wanted to learn. I ate slowly, drank slowly, let time stretch and unfold.
It was the first time in years I’d felt fully like myself. I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t managing. I wasn’t trying to be good enough to earn love.
I was just being. And being here, in this moment, was enough.
When I finally left, I walked back through the Mission’s cool night air, I felt it in my bones:
Something inside me had begun to shift. Not dramatically…not all at once…but some small essential part of me remembered what it felt like to choose myself.
And I couldn’t unknow it.
What January Is Really Asking
We talk about New Year’s resolutions like they’re about addition…adding habits, adding discipline, adding goals…and ultimately, adding pressure and guilt when those things don’t get done.
But what if this New Year, this turn of the calendar page is actually asking you to subtract?
To let go of the life that looks good on paper but doesn’t fit your bones…to release the version of yourself you’ve been performing…to stop apologizing for wanting something different.
What if the bravest resolution you make this year is just this: I choose myself.
Not in a selfish, burn-it-all-down way (although sometimes prescribed burns are necessary!)…but in a quiet, steady way. In small acts that honor what you actually need, in saying yes to the things that make you feel alive and learning how to say no to the things that make you shrink.
In sitting at the bar alone and ordering wine without apologizing for taking up space.
Building a Table Big Enough
Through The Freckled Fork, I am here to help people build tables—literal and metaphorical—that are big enough to hold every version of who they are.
Tables where you don’t have to perform or shrink or apologize. Tabes where the food is thoughtful and nourishing and made with care. Tables where you can show up as yourself and be fed, fully.
Whether that’s a private dinner in your home, weekly meal prep so you have more margin in your life, or consulting on how food can shape the culture of your creative business, I’m here to help you build something that fits.
Because choosing yourself isn’t selfish. It’s the foundation everything else is built on.
And you deserve a table sturdy enough to hold the weight of becoming.
Simple Arugula Salad with Fennel, Lemon & Parmesan
For the nights you need something uncomplicated and true
Sometimes the best meals are the simplest ones. The ones that don’t ask you to perform or prove anything. The ones that just let you be.
You’ll need:
- Fresh arugula (the peppery, assertive kind)
- Good olive oil
- Fresh lemon
- Fennel Bulb
- Shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano
- Shallots
- Flaky sea salt
- Freshly cracked black pepper
How to make it:
Pile arugula in a bowl.
Thinly slice shallots into rings and trim & cut fennel bulb in half, thinly slice or use a mandolin (very carefully) to slice. Spread throughout the arugula.
Drizzle generously with olive oil—more than you think. The oil should coat each leaf like a whisper.
Squeeze lemon over everything. Let the acid brighten and balance.
Sprinkle with flaky salt and a few cracks of black pepper.
Use a vegetable peeler to shave thin ribbons of Parmesan over the top. Let them fall where they want.
Eat immediately, with your hands if no one’s watching, with a fork if they are.
This salad doesn’t need to be anything other than what it is…Peppery. Bright. Honest. Just like you.
If you’re ready to start the year choosing yourself—starting with how you’re fed—I’d love to help. Whether you need a private chef for weekly meals, an intimate dinner party where you’re the guest instead of the host, or culinary consulting for your business, let’s build a table together.
Reach out to The Freckled Fork and let’s start the conversation.