Peak Experiences | Feed Your Fire Podcast Episode

What does a family meal mean to you? In today's episode, we share how shared meals can become magical moments in our life, filling us beyond what we eat, as we take inspiration from the final season of The Bear and our favorite culinary family. 

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Feed Your Fire Podcast Episode Transcript:

Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm your host, Kim Baker.

Every year, the end of August kind of sneaks up on us, masquerading as the height of summer, as it inches us closer to the fall. And as that transition looms closer, we're gonna slow down to enjoy it with a recipe that beckons us to do just that –a summer staple that's spotlighted on nearly every Labor Day picnic table.

There's a lot to the month of August, and if both Taylor Swift and Noah Kahn wrote a song about it, you know it's dramatic. What's really interesting about this month is that it's both a peak and an end. It's the height of summer and the end of it. And initially, I thought that was a rare combination. The word "ending" can carry kind of a sense of longing around it, and certainly we all know that not all endings represent a peak experience. But every peak, by definition, is an ending. That idea feels really useful, allowing us to reclassify and reflect on certain moments in our lives not as endings, but rather as high points, and that reframe sort of changes everything. What we might have seen as an ending then becomes a testimony, evidence of an achievement.

In psychology, there's this concept called the peak end rule, and it essentially is where we remember and judge an experience by its most intense points, or by its ending, and everything in between kind of gets lost. And I think maybe that's why August stands out so much. It's the reason songs are written about it. There's almost a synergy that happens because it's both a peak and an end.

My son started his last year of high school yesterday, and even though I thought I was ready, I found myself in tears the last couple days. I had been enjoying seeing him mature and grow and develop, and then suddenly a sense of disconnection was looming. I felt an ending approaching quicker than I was really ready for. But as all parents know, this was the assignment; it's what we came for. And I'm really grateful that we've gotten to this point—that climbing that mountain didn't take us out. And that is cause then for genuine celebration.

And maybe you're approaching your own peak experience, some type of intense inflection point that you may or may not feel ready for.

In those times, one of our greatest tools is our presence, taking in what's in front of us and slowing down enough to process it and encode those experiences. And today, we're going to prepare a recipe that embodies that—a summer favorite that belongs on your Labor Day menu.

We're not taking any shortcuts. This recipe should not be rushed. We're making baked beans, and not the kind that come from a can. This recipe is not hard, but it does take time—like two days' time. And maybe you're rolling your eyes and opening the cabinet to grab some of Bush's finest. But I think you will be missing out, not just on a recipe that, if you ask me, is way better, but for the chance to practice moving at a different pace of life.

So to get started, we're gonna grab a bag of navy beans and we're gonna soak them overnight the day before you want to eat them, and I mean like a full 24 hours of soaking. So grab a big bowl, and cover a pound of those dried navy beans in water, fully submerged, with several inches of water above them, and just let it be. Once they've hydrated, we're going to cook them. Drain them from that water, and put them in a stockpot, preferably a Dutch oven, filled with cool water and a pinch of salt. Once they come up to a boil, you'll want to let them cook for about 40-45 minutes until they're just tender. Drain them from that water and set them aside.

Now we've spent a fair amount of time on prep, but we haven't really done any work. Preheat your oven to about 375 degrees. Then grab that stockpot or Dutch oven and add in about four slices of bacon, chopped up. Let it render and get crispy over medium-low heat. Then add in half of a large chopped onion, along with a little bit of jalapeno seeds removed, chopped up. Let that all cook together until the onions translucent.

When that's done, add your beans back into the pot along with the other half of that onion chopped up. Fill it with fresh water until the beans are just barely submerged. Add in two thirds a cup of molasses and six tablespoons of brown sugar. You're also going to want to add in about two tablespoons of Dijon mustard. Add in about two teaspoons of salt and bring it up to a boil. Cover the pot and then put it in that hot oven.

This is pretty much a set it and forget it. They're going to cook for about four hours, just soaking in that water, thickening and absorbing all that flavor. Check them periodically, and if you need to, you can add a little bit of extra water. The liquid will reduce down, but you need enough in there to create that sauciness. You know they're done when they look and taste like baked beans. Grab a chef's spoon and see what you think.

Now this makes a big pot of beans. It's meant for sharing. This is sort of a quintessential Labor Day menu item. If you're having a barbecue, this belongs on the table. It's not a quick recipe, but we really only had to do like 15 minutes of active cooking. And if you have leftovers, you can do what the Brits do, and put the beans on some toast for breakfast—The perfect transition from an ending becoming a beginning.

Because if peaks are endings, and all endings are beginnings, then where does that leave us? Suddenly, it feels like we're doing algebra, and maybe these peak experiences then are kind of like a hologram. They could become almost anything, depending on how you look at it, and maybe then the question we have to ask ourselves is: How do we want to look at it? Is August the peak of summer, its ending, or the kickoff to fall?

That psychological concept, the peak-end rule, it doesn't presume that all peaks are positive. They're really referring to a peak of intensity, which some might consider a valley.

I remember when my brother died. It was particularly profound because he was sort of at what seemed like the peak of his life. He was young with so much promise ahead. His death felt like a break in one of those logic equations, and so at the peak of his life, we experience this ending, not just from his passing itself, but the ending of our family as we once knew it, the end of innocence, if you will. But in many ways, it also set off a new beginning, one of living with my sisters in solidarity, living life more vulnerably and authentically, and opening a doorway to deeper empathy and compassion, and in that sense, it's kind of one of those holograms. They're all true.

As I apply these feelings and ideas to my son's developmental journey, and the milestones we're reaching together, I can embrace it as a victory, a separation, or a stepping stone. And I think that's a useful exercise to at least imagine our experiences through those three lenses. It may not change some of the emotion behind it, but it presents us with a menu of sorts, and we can choose what parts of that we want to take on each day.

So as we gather around this table with our big pot of baked beans, we can enjoy what's on our plate with the presence of mind to savor it.

Until our next episode, I say so long. Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.

Feed Your Fire is sponsored by Kasari Consulting, where insight meets innovation. www.kasariconsulting.com