i hope this doesn't tread on sentiment, but i'm a cancer after all

moving is tough. alicia and i both have now made multiple moves spanning massive distances, and you'd think with that it'd be something we're a bit more accustomed to. not the case. especially when not one of us, but both of us, have made this move with absolutely no job, job prospect, or even grad program to cling to like with our previous moves. we've been in chicago now for forty-five days and have somehow managed to keep our depleting bank accounts afloat, but the job market, something we thought our advanced degrees and expensive education kept us immune to, is literally bone dry. we're responding to those job posts—and asking along the way why in the world i'm applying to be a teacher's assistant at an elementary school when i've never had the desire to teach elementary school—but they're just not responding back. what black hole has opened up in this world that sucks up all these jobs?

this isn't how we drew it all up.

but, things are turning around. after i wrote the piece on stephanie izard's wandering goat dinner, i was lucky enough to get my hands on her contact info, and rolled the dice and sent her what i'd written. the night of her dinner she'd mentioned the need to bring on somebody to handle her online media work, which was just the slight opening of a door that i needed. she loved the piece, and really did need somebody to help her out, and after meeting over lunch, i was the newest member of team stephanie. and it's been unreal ever since.

i tagged along a couple weeks ago to kinnikinnick farm in caledonia, il, which was a little over an hour from the city and deep in the heart of the illinois country. steph was the guest chef for a $200 per head, seventy-five guest dinner hosted by outstanding in the field. i'd never heard of outstanding in the field, but steph was all about it, and so too were the cooks helping her out. it's an organization based in my home state, outside of santa cruz, that packs up an old bus every year and tours the country from late spring to early fall, stopping at farms along the way and setting up shop with one long, white cloth covered table. and like i said, it's not cheap to take a seat at this thing. but at each stop, a guest chef cooks the dinner, creating the menu around the produce and product of the farm. it's a very free lovin', flower child kind of idea—and i fell for it immediatly.

just a few days before i was an out-of-work-mfa-holding-usc-alum-living-in-chicago-with-few-friends who had started the very thing i despised: a blog. but, it got me somewhere. on the farm that day, it got me in steph's makeshift kitchen, chuck taylor clad and sweating through my tee shirt while i picked the stems from five pounds of arugula. it took me five hours, and i cursed myself every five minutes at the pile of arugula that seemed to grow rather than diminish with every handful of leaves i plucked—and at the end of the night my five hour stem picking was playfully toasted to by the chefs—but i felt, however dysfunctional of one it might have been, at home.

that's the five-hour-arugula tossed with julienned kohlrabi, sitting on top of steph's braised goat. arugula picking has gotta be my natural calling—just at a slower pace than the next guy.

and look how the food showcases the farm and the season. heirloom tomatoes and a basil emulsion wait to be finished by the sweet onion soup steph made.

and goat cheese and pine nut covered beets.

and aged wood feeding the flame under kinnikinnick farm's chicken.

and sausages made by steph's sous dave with new potatoes and mustard greens picked at the farm with watermelon radishes and ground lamb.

i came home wreaking of smoke from the farm's huge fire pit—my jeans covered in grease and dirt—but i was a heck of a happy guy. there was no money for this, nor will there be for what i'm doing with steph. but she's providing me with the very thing i wrote about hoping to find last month. the thing i hoped i'd find by forking out the cash for her goat dinner. the thing i'd left behind in boston that had taken me so long to unravel: a chance to get behind the backside of this city's food culture.

since then, alicia's been offered jobs at two different colleges and i've been working on content for stephanie's website that'll be finished any day now. it's not what i envisioned when we made the move here, and i'm still not dropping money in the bank, but i'd be an idiot if i didn't say that things are looking up.