Making Miso, Sharing Cultures
Our collaborative book on how to make miso in community is here!
Several years ago, my friends Yuri Baxter-Neal, Sakiko Setaka and I decided to host a community miso making party. We had a few requirements for our first community miso party. We wanted every person’s microflora to contribute to the flavor of our group miso, which meant everyone had to touch every batch. We were thinking about the many meanings of the word “culture:” bacteria, mold, way of life, taste, heritage. This would be a conglomeration of all of those meanings. We wanted to make the miso outside in nature. We wanted to include a communal meal. And we wanted to gather again one year later to unearth and share our miso together.
For two years, we made this shared dream a reality and hosted miso making with 30 and then 60 people at Vibrant Valley Farm. And then the combined force of COVID and Yuri’s leukemia diagnosis ground us to a halt. But the power of the event stayed with us.
We decided to make a book sharing our stories and empowering other people to host their own community miso making parties. That book is about to land! I’m excited to have copies for sales, sliding scale pricing: $14-$26.
It has been a moving collaborative project. Yuri, Saki and I all came together around the contents and its purpose, sharing our own essays and thinking through the instructions. We decided we wanted all of our essays to be in both Japanese and English. Yuri, Saki, and Makoto Kikuchi took on the real work of translation.
I love the artwork that illustrates the story while also expanding on it. Artist Alix Jo Ryan made collages for the cover and interior spreads, photographer Shawn Linehan took photos during our second miso making that tell the story visually, and designer Timme Lu brought all the pieces together. We had help with copy editing from Margarett Waterbury and many people shared their words and ideas. All told, it felt like the creation of a whole community.
We relied on support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Umi Organic, Life Sampling, and Vibrant Valley Farm. A portion of proceeds will help us send copies to nonprofits across the US.
Perhaps there is someone in your life who would love to learn all about miso. Or maybe you know a community organizer who would benefit from another tool to bring people together in ritual. Maybe you love beautiful handmade books. For all those reasons and more, this book may be for you or a wonderful gift for a loved one! We’ll be selling books until we run out of copies. Any orders I receive by December 12 will get into the mail on December 14! If you are in Portland and order by December 19, we can deliver them on the 20th or arrange for you to pick them up.
Making Miso, Sharing Cultures for sale at lolasbeef.com.
More than ever, I believe community is the beating heart of life. This book is an expression of my close world. I’m thrilled to share it with you! I hope it empowers you to create rituals that knit your community together like a mycelial network—strong, flexible, and symbiotic!
Congratulations! Wonderful book and an inspiring story 🙏🏼