Permission (Stinky cheese with a spoon)

Finding freedom from self-judgment

I followed the suggestion on the wrapper and cut the top off the Harbison with a pair of kitchen shears, spruce bark holding a form for its gooey insides. I plunged a spoon in from the top. I’d never eaten a cheese in this way before. Briny and thick, the cheese clung to the spoon until my mouth closed around it. It was just me, in my kitchen, with my cheese and my spoon. Why did it feel like I was giving myself permission to do this? To do something that feels so good, it must be bad.

There are real things that justify asking permission. To borrow something. To touch someone else’s body or enter their space. To use someone’s image or their voice, like for the recordings from our farmers’ market community we just published as a trailer for a podcast, my first official Potluck Production.

But doing something that is actually good for me is not one of those things that requires consent to cross a boundary. I’m looking for a different kind of permission: to be without self-judgment. 

I have old patterns, I realize, of hiding what I want to do. I remember being three years old, before my mother died, hiding in the corner of my bedroom, using a pair of scissors to cut off every one of my curls. She was mad when she found me. A little bit older, I remember stealing my brother’s apple juice bottle and hiding behind the thick curtains of our living room. My mom was sick, or maybe had just died, and I wanted comfort, I guess, and I knew it was wrong. Much older, when I was 17 and dating a chef at the restaurant where I hostessed in the summer, I remember driving to visit him where he lived in the off season in Rhode Island. I called my parents from the road, telling them where I was going but not exactly asking if it was ok. I had already decided what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to risk being told “no.” 

And now, I see I have the same pattern with my husband. I want to keep going in this creative process I’m in, and use some of our savings to fund our living expenses. “You say our savings, but you act like it’s yours,” he said, calling me out on a behavior that was undermining trust between us. He was right. I was so afraid he would tell me no, I felt like I had to push ahead, and even worse, fool myself into thinking I was being collaborative in our decision-making. “Even if I wanted to control you, Sarah, I don’t think I could,” he said, and I laughed. He was right. I was free the whole time. I don’t have to hide.

I unwrapped the Merry Goat Round and set it on our picnic table, high above the Hudson. I was with my neighbor Sandra, my friend and collaborator on the farmers’ market podcast, on planning our friend Genevieve’s 50th birthday, and on many other dreams. I brought a spoon, of course, along with crusty bread and a few figs. Sandra brought pistachios, clementines, little peppers. We were on the Lenoir Preserve, having walked south on the Old Croton Aqueduct from our local cafe, The Good Witch. The warm October sun kissed my back. We ate the cheese and the other goodies, our conversation meandering and eventually touching the war that had just broken out in Israel and Gaza. It felt incongruous, how good I felt in this moment, and how deep the suffering of so many people in the world who have violence instead of picnics. But hiding that I felt good didn’t seem like the answer. 

In the remarkable book The Gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relations, Wayne A. Newell describes a Passamoquoddy word for two things that appear to be in conflict but are not: unci skat keq kisesinuhk. Like feeling good and having empathy for suffering – I can hold both of these in my heart without anyone’s permission.

I feel like it’s time for me to move beyond this old sense of permission I have – that I need to ask it from myself to express myself, to nourish myself, to have adventures that are only mine. To feel good and feel ok saying I feel good. The deeper truth is that I can allow myself to feel all those things and not hide. The hiding is the part that feels bad.

When Genevieve’s birthday came around, we canceled the party. Sandra was going to host but she got COVID. She notified the guests, and I canceled the food, oysters from Dobbs Ferry Lobster Guys and a cheese plate from Bloomy. Then, spontaneously, the party reformed over a text thread. Genevieve’s friends still wanted to celebrate her, so I offered my house. I opened the fridge and took out the rest of the spruce-wrapped Harbison, still plenty of gooeyness inside. The ladies scooped it clean, drank Prosecco, made little paintings. Released from any expectations of what the party was going to be, it became exactly what each of us wanted.

Permission becomes its own release. When it’s in you to say yes to the things that make you vibrate, you don’t need permission. When you give up explaining or justifying why you deserve something that’s not accessible to everyone. When you forgive yourself and appreciate your privilege. To be in a body in this lifetime, healthy and able, dreaming and worthy, spoon in hand.

Recipe as feeling: Permission (Stinky cheese with a spoon)

Pierce through the surface.

Plunge in.

Bring your texture into the light.

Scrape it clean.

Actual recipe

Stinky cheese with a spoon

Buy an excellent, stinky cheese with a structured rind from a trusted cheesemonger. Cheeses that work well for this technique include Jasper Hill Farm Harbison, FireFly Farms Merry Goat Round Spruce Reserve, and Uplands Cheese Rush Creek Reserve. Leave the cheese out of the refrigerator for at least an hour so it is fully at room temperature. Using a paring knife or kitchen shears, snip off the top (you can peel it back and replace it if you’re going to store it again). Plunge a spoon in from the top and enjoy on its own or with crusty bread and crackers.