A Catastrophic Amount of Parsley

Hello. <Sneeze.> How are you? <Sneeze.> Happy Spring. <Sneeze.>

It’s May in Provincetown, which means that it’s either the most beautiful day you’ve ever experienced — flowers bursting with scent and petal tension, the sun gently warming but not obviously abusing your skin, longer days, friends back in town, restaurants reopening, an occasional stolen glance with a cute stranger — or it’s a grizzly, gray, 48º Fahrenheit with wind gusts off the bay that make you shudder like an urchin in a Dickens story. There is no in-between. 

Parents and parental figures who (blessedly) subscribe to this newsletter: we’re going to talk about spring fever today, so adjust your expectations accordingly. Also, if you’re planning to read my book, Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir, this will be a great set of training wheels for how much horny shit you’re going to read in there (in March of 2024 from Unbound Edition Press OH MY GOD, it’s really happening!). 

I fell in love several times over the last two weeks: first with the lilac bush in our backyard leaning dangerously into the garden, finally in bloom, then with Janelle Monae’s new video for “Lipstick Lover” (beware: it’s actually too hot to exist), and eventually with a new newsletter by a new friend that addresses exactly why we’re all so thirsty for everything right now. 

“Crushing is an art,” says Casey Dienel of Notes from Lantern House, “you don’t need to have a specific paramour in mind to participate. If cuffing season is about getting cozy and staying home, horny season is about unleashing. It’s externalizing our desires and seeing what happens. More sun, make-outs, flowers, skin, and surface area to notice beads of sweat. But it’s also bigger than fucking (although, yes, summer’s when we have the most sex). Horny season is for leaning into your eros and luxuriating in it. It’s not here to make us feel comfortable, but to ask, “What are you aching for?'“

This existential ache always arrives when a familiar and very literal physical ache returns — the foot, back, arm, shoulder, neck and brain pain associated with re-opening Pop+Dutch for the season, which we did this week for the tenth time (!). Getting the shop dusted off and back up and running in is always bittersweet. In some ways it signals an end — the end of long, lazy mornings with hot coffee and backgammon in our little house, the end of the freedom to travel to new and familiar places, and the return to the ritualistic abuse we subject our bodies to every summer. But the sweetness is there too. It’s rewarding to do something you’re really good at, to sweat in the pursuit of feeding a lot of people every day, to feel a little stronger, and a little more lithe, just by virtue of carrying 50 pound sacks of flour up the stairs. (Don’t you get turned on by being really good at something? Is that just an Aries thing? *Ed Note: Flynn read this and said, “Oh god, IS IT?” While simultaneously reminding me to talk about how great her boobs looked in the jumpsuit she was wearing today. Do with this what you will.) It’s the season of tackling the prep list, of hunting down the chip vendor who always might be dead by spring, and of cooking outside with our friends at the end of a long day, wine glasses and eyes twinkling, falling in love with each other all over again in a different season. 

My favorite times in the shop before it’s open are the quiet moments alone, when Sean or I have selflessly let the other one stay in bed a little bit longer while we go in and deal with whichever one of our respective deliveries are on their way down Commercial St. I had one such day this week, dragging an absolutely enormous produce order in through the basement, unpacking each box like a present I bought myself but forgot about. There are the usual suspects, of course — size B red potatoes for potato salad, a whole case of celery, the avocados I have to order at exactly the right time, lest they be hard as rocks on opening day (always running the risk that they will arrive that day and be the texture of a water balloon about to spring a leak instead). But I also build in a few treats for myself: a few pounds of rhubarb, a pound of ramps, some squash blossoms if I ordered them before they ran out, just to remind myself that I do this work because I love food, and eating, and how the seasons dictate what we can be most excited for. 

And then there are the surprises. Arugula is out of stock until tomorrow. Lentils are three times the price. And this week, my surprise was that I forgot parsley is bunched in twos, not individually. 

“It’s really summer,” I said to Daniil, “because I just said out loud, to no one, ‘Well, this is a catastrophic amount of parsley.’”

Catastrophizing is on my mind lately, not just for the obvious reasons that made Flynn and I start this newsletter in the first place, but also because a lot of my dearest ones have done a lot of therapy over the last few years, and therapists love to say that word. It feels like we’ve been crashing from catastrophe to catastrophe for so long now, I was startled to realize this week that I feel pretty happy? I’m about to start doing burlesque once a week this summer, I’ve learned a few pole dancing tricks this spring, I went to Paris and Barcelona and New Orleans this winter, all the people I love are healthy, I’ve gotten back into a gorgeous groove of kissing my friends, grinding my hips against them on the dance floor with abandon, and going to the grocery store without having a panic attack. Those were the things I had been aching for, and I’m deliriously grateful that they are back. I didn’t realize it, but I feel a lot less close to catastrophe than I have for quite some time.

A parsley catastrophe is, of course, a pretty gentle one. That parsley found its way into the places I expected it to this week; huge vats of smashed chickpea salad, a jacuzzi-sized bowl of green goddess dressing, maybe lentil salad in a few days. But the accidental overabundance also made it so that I could pull together a verdant, rich vegetable stock on the fly. Which made it so that I could pull together a white bean stew absolutely riddled with the ramps I got myself as a treat. Which made it so that I could float a chunk of ramp butter on top of said stew and absolutely delight a few key Pop+Dutch VIPs. Which made us all happy, and more than a little horny, and so grateful for spring and each other.

Listen to This Shit: I Made You a Playlist“Electric Razz” on Apple Music

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a (sometimes) weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!