Tomato Risotto

and community care

Risotto recipes are a myth.

Unpopular opinion #987, brought to you by yours truly.

I know, I know, but I said what I said. More on this to come.

Tomato season is still in rare form here on the front range. Crops this time of year a true surprise week to week. Apples? It was too damn hot this year mostly, leaving popular apple orchards across Colorado to have an extraordinarily (unfortunate) short harvest season, some even relying on other local growers to import, simply to generate enough income to satisfy locals of the Instagram-worthy apple picking experience and photos. But tomatoes? Without a frost and temps still hanging in the 50’s overnight, I find myself with an abundance every week after the farmers market.

Who’s to complain?

My community gathers every Saturday at the market we both attend and vend at, a swap of pastries from my bakery for local produce, one of my favorite forms of community care.

I have found myself in a particularly beautiful time where community abounds in several spaces of both my professional and personal lives. A couple weeks ago I woke up to an aching body, but it was localized to my joints. What I figured to be stress manifesting as physical tension, turned into a week-plus long, intense aching, loss of strength and mobility, landing me on that crinkly paper sheet we all hate for a slew of blood tests. I was telling Hannah, a dear friend and co-host of our podcast, Feed Me Your Stories, and her response was immediate, full of love, but very much to the point.

“I’m firing you from the market tomorrow and you are going to let your community love on you. You need to listen to your body.”

What a thing, hey?

What a privilege, really, to know when to fold em’. Hell, to trust in your community, not only to literally run your business in your absence, but to do it from a place of love.

When I tell you that I have always had a specific vision for my life, my kid’s lives, and to be living it?

A dream (vision) come true.

I am stubborn and reminded of this not only by Anaya, but my community as well, and often.

When I need the rest but am compelled to follow the capitalistic rule book to a T byway of Pushing Through or Boot Strapping, it is the people around me that love me most to encourage me to trust my intuition.

It’s no surprise that this risotto method, rather than full recipe is any different.

Trust yourself.

Your taste, your eyes, and your wrist as you stir. Use this recipe as a guide as opposed to the end-all-be-all. Lord knows you’ll get served the lesson other ways if you’re unable to do so.