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Father’s Day weekend is upon us, which means somehow we’re nearly halfway through June. I’m also realizing that I have yet to wish readers of this recipe column a happy Pride, which makes me fear that I’ve become a weary queer person.
The thing is, I don’t assign my pride to a single month, parade, party or event. I am grateful to be a queer person who gets to live proudly every single day, no matter the date. I do my best not to take this daily out-and-proudness for granted.
I have a bit more to say about my version of pride, but if you’re just here to figure out what to make for dinner, I’ve got you covered: rice bowls with seasoned chicken; lots of fresh, colorful vegetables; and a few other flavor enhancers. It’s a simple and incredibly good recipe that’s easy to adapt to the ingredients you have at home.
Back to pride. “Queerness in a way saved my life,” the writer and professor Ocean Vuong said in 2020 in a conversation with writer Bryan Washington. He continued: “Often we see queerness as a deprivation, but when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me, I had to make alternative routes. It made me curious, it made me ask [if] this is not enough for me because there’s nothing here for me.”
My spouse, Grace, has a print of this quotation framed in our shared home office. I look at it just about every day. We have built a home that celebrates queerness and embraces all the alternative routes Vuong talks about. Our home is not just a queer home because of the art on our walls; it’s because of us, the people who live in it. Our family is a queer family, which isn’t merely about our marriage, our gender identities and expressions, or our sexualities. It’s about our way of living our day-to-day lives. Grace and I both approach things through queer lenses.
Grace is a question-asker, a researcher, a person who never hesitates to press pause instead of just going along with the status quo. Of the many gifts being married to Grace has given me, this regular reminder that pausing is an option is one of the most important. Grace reminds me so often that life is more abundant when we don’t just pick the first option available.
I like to queer just about everything, to look at things from alternate perspectives and question if the norm is the only possibility. This could be as simple as when I write recipes and permit myself to wonder whether there’s another way to make something, or as big of a life decision as my career and being willing to create my own stability if it means I get to make my own path. This approach, for me, isn’t about substituting one thing for another. It’s about expansiveness. When it comes to choosing this or that, I am always interested in “and.” For whatever it’s worth, this makes me a fun person to order food at a restaurant with.
This is all to say: I’m not much of a parade person. I am less a “special occasion” queer person and more of a “day-to-day life” queer person. (“Where do the quiet gays go?” asked Hannah Gadsby.)
It’s true of my cooking, too. I am so much more interested in the food that gets us through our everyday life than I am in fancy meals. I’m interested in dishes like these rice bowls, which feature generously seasoned chicken with tons of savory flavor from garlic powder and oregano, tartness from sumac and vinegar, and a little sweetness from a spoonful of honey. You could put this chicken in a pita sandwich or serve it like I suggest, on rice with lots of no-cook toppings, such as feta, cucumbers, olives and marinated tomatoes. A veritable rainbow flag for dinner you can have at any time, because, in our kitchen, Pride is every day.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiVWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9mb29kLzIwMjQvMDYvMTMvY2hpY2tlbi1yaWNlLWJvd2xzLXJhaW5ib3ctdmVnZXRhYmxlcy_SAQA?oc=5
2024-06-13 16:00:00Z
CBMiVWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9mb29kLzIwMjQvMDYvMTMvY2hpY2tlbi1yaWNlLWJvd2xzLXJhaW5ib3ctdmVnZXRhYmxlcy_SAQA
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