Welcome to on Palmer's plate.

Writing from the Denver Central Market, my most-loved hub in this mess of a metropolis, massed with murals and surrounded by mountains, I welcome you to On Palmer’s Plate. Your being here won’t determine my being here—egotistical or humble, I’m not sure how that may read, but I am grateful for you, and I do mean that genuinely. I need only myself to sit and eat pastries and sip coffee and write. To watch butchers restore the lights in their low boys, the organization behind their glasses. But what added value something has when its appreciation is shared. I don’t need you to say yes, this is true, you are right, the fact of food is not to fill or fuel but to explore art. I know this within me, from somewhere that feels like my innate-most part, but it seems as though the art itself is strengthened when that fact is noticed by many. When everyone behind the kitchen and around the table believes yes, this is what is, this is the truest part of life.

When I was growing up, our ‘plate,’ was a metaphor of sorts for the life we were living. What we had, metaphorically, ‘on our plate,’ described how we were getting by.

“You have a lot on your plate, P,” my mom would say to me.

Just when she could tell something was pressing a bit too heavy. Just when she noticed I needed a little love. Not in the form of a hug—that wasn’t always the way I wanted it, but in a look, in recognition of a full plate in front of an appetite that didn’t want a single bite.

Now, somewhere between growing and grown up, I go to the kitchen when my plate feels full. I cook—whatever I can, for however long I can. So, welcome to my plates and all that’s on them. What you see here are products of my other plate, my more figurative ‘life plate,’ so to speak.

My most recent serving’s been a position as a line-cook in an upscale, high-volume, fast-paced restaurant in Downtown Denver. That has filled myself and my plate in the most daunting and satisfying of ways. There’s nothing else like it.

More on that to come, but for now: to the artistry filling our plates.