Introducing In Season
an extension of the world I have built through Westerly Canteen with notes on intuitive cooking, an evolving collection of adaptable recipes, stories, and musings on food and culture
Hi and Welcome! I am Molly- the owner and chef of Westerly Canteen - a *sort of* restaurant in the Hudson Valley. I am a glut for the farmers market. I’m obsessed with the smell of freshly cut herbs. I believe a really good dish can be pared down to a few simple ingredients. I plan most of my life around where I want to eat, or meals we have to cook together. And I’m guessing if you have found your way here, you might too.
Cooking rules my life in ways far beyond what I eat for dinner — I obsess over ingredients, and the procurement of them, I think breaking bread is the ultimate love language, and believe communities subsist through the act of feeding each other and gathering in spaces around meals. I have a deep passion for the intersection of food, agriculture, and lifestyle and I am stubbornly unwavering in my sourcing principles. Mostly, I care about making good, simple food adaptable, approachable, and accessible.
I cut my teeth at Chez Panisse where we relied on the oral tradition of recipe sharing, without measurement, with tasting and seasoning being the only requirements for good cooking. It’s more intuitive than technical. More romantic than clinical. We simply started with really excellent ingredients and did our best not to mess with them too much. My own cravings inform this practice of ingredient forward cooking and I believe appetite is the only pre-requisite to make good food.
My style of cooking has evolved over the years as I have lived and worked in different corners and coasts of the country, driven by a curiosity of the connection between cooking and place, and in pursuit of community often found in the farmers who grow our food.
When I moved back to the Hudson Valley and spent my first winter away from CA, I struggled to stay true to my seasonal ways. I’m not perfect and nothing here is meant to be either. The dishes and stories I will share are not precious or prescriptive- they are simply in service of living and eating well where you are. I happen to think doing that in tandem with the seasons aligns with what I find delicious and also in support of the community I live in.
I want to share all of that with you here. So that in the depths of February we can find inspiration after months of root veg redundancy, or to give tomatoes a new purpose in October when we begin to devour them out of obligation because we know they are fleeting.
I am a small business owner, not a content creator. I just feel strongly about sharing the joys (and the challenges) of our food-ways, no matter the medium. It is impossible to remove what we eat, what we crave, and how we attain it from the seasons and from larger cultural conversations. So we’ll do it all here.
The reason for In Season
If you are familiar with my 1971 airstream- turned restaurant on wheels- Westerly Canteen then you are probably familiar with my California inspired, locally sourced, seasonal cooking. If you aren’t - then I am so glad you found me through other channels.
Westerly is currently looking for a permanent property to call home, after three years of roving, popping up, and growing our sort of restaurant community on someone else’s turf. The search is ongoing and like most things, taking longer than I would have hoped.
I am desperate to keep feeding this community. And that is what motivates me to write to you now. So I can join you in conversation and in your kitchen by way of your inbox. By cooking and writing to you weekly, I know we can maintain and grow the community through food that I find so central to its joy.
I will share dishes I am craving and cooking from my home kitchen, recipes from the Canteen archives, stories of sourcing, reflections on the state of food and culture, an inside scoop on the hunt for our brick and mortar, and most importantly instructional guides on how to cook from the heart.
paid vs unpaid
As a small business owner, I reflect on and share the unique pit falls of the hospitality industry in hopes of forging new paths ahead. While I would love to feed everyone for free at my restaurant, that’s just not a reality. Similarly, upgrading to a paid subscription is another way to support my work.
Free subscribers will get one monthly newsletter. All posts, which will occur 3-4 times monthly and include full recipes and more will be made available to paid subscribers.
Thank you for joining me on this new journey and learning together. Given this new endeavor, please share feedback, which posts you enjoy most, and any other comments as we go so that this can be a long lived, enjoyed space.