Cut-up poetry and prioritizing joyfulness even in the face of pain

In 1951, the American Surrealist artist, author, and poet Dorothea Tanning, working in the very special light of the cabin that she and her husband, the artist Max Ernst, had built in Sedona, Arizona, completed a 2-by-3-foot oil-on-canvas painting. She called the piece “Interior with Sudden Joy.”

The painting, like all of Tanning’s work, and for that matter, her whole life, is remarkable. The title, though, is what caught my attention. Joy, for a whole range of reasons that I’ll share below, has been very much on my mind.

Tanning once opined that “art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity.” Her image of an interior existence being regularly brightened by sudden bursts of unexpected joy is, well, giving me joy, and also a bit of much-needed sanity while I work to cope with the rather frightening flow of current events in the greater ecosystem around us.

Joy was not something I remember being taught about as a child, but I learned later in life that joy matters far more than I would ever have imagined. While it’s not taught in too many business school settings, joy is actually an essential element in the making of a healthy organization. In fact, joy fits nicely into #12 on the list of Zingerman’s Natural Laws of Business:

Great organizations are appreciative, and the people in them have more fun.

With that understanding in hand, I have worked hard for many years now to make the title of Tanning’s painting come alive—to have an interior life regularly punctuated by bursts of unplanned joy! And, as best I can, help make similar joyful experiences a regular reality for everyone who works in our organization, and for all of our caring customers as well. 

Half a century after she finished the painting in Arizona and a few months after she had turned 83, by then living in Manhattan, Tanning was interviewed by writer Jane Kramer for a piece that was later published in The New Yorker. Near the end of the essay, Kramer asks Tanner about the flow of her writing, in particular her poetry. “Well, sometimes,” Tanning explains, “an idea keeps rolling around in your head, or a pair of words, but you don’t really know what it is. It has to emerge.”

I can absolutely relate. Thanks, in good part, to stumbling on the title of Tanning’s painting, joy emerged as the topic of this essay after rolling around the rocky corners of my mind for the last couple of weeks! In these challenging times, as we try to figure out how to lead effectively, living out Tanning’s title is, I believe, an essential act of existential health. It’s true for each of us as individuals and for our organizations as well. 

It might seem strange—or, to some cynics, sort of silly—to focus any of our limited attention on joy when there are so many other issues that seem more pressing. I, of course, take the opposite approach. Joy has the power to transform organizations and the lives of the people who are part of them.

My friend Rich Sheridan, co-founding partner of Menlo Innovations here in Ann Arbor, literally wrote the book on joy. Actually, he wrote two: Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer. I have found what Rich writes to be right on: “The journey to joy at work is personal. It has to be. You want a job or an organization that brings you joy.” Even if they’re not conscious of it, people want to frequent joyful businesses and live in joyful communities and countries. And while the news may not reflect it much right now, joy can and does remain a healthy, positive, uplifting, smile-evoking, eye-opening act of resistance.

If you doubt the power joy can have on a national level, check out the history of Chile. Frank Greer, the founding partner of the progressive global consulting firm GMMB, worked extensively with the fledgling Chilean democracy movement that went on to unseat the longtime brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet through an effective electoral process back in the late ’80s. In a retrospective he wrote two years ago this coming February, Greer noted:

The slogan “Chile, joy is coming” signified a bright future with democratically elected leadership, the rainbow logo illustrated the many parties working together and the inspiring music captured the hope of the nation. … [These efforts] brought joy and democracy back to Chile!

If joy can change a country, I’m confident it can effectively alter our organizations as well. Whether it’s in companies or countries, joy is an effective strategic tool for anyone who wants to improve their quality of life and bring more dignity and democratic practices into play. NYU history and Italian studies professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, “Joy is precious and noble and also the basis of effective anti-authoritarian strategy.” In 1988, roughly 2.5 million people in Chile (nearly a third of the country’s voters) participated in what was widely known as the “March for Joy.” On October 5th of that year, the pro-democracy program won nearly 55 percent of the vote while 43 percent went to the military dictatorship. The government had the guns and a grim determination to hold to power; the democratic opposition, though, won the day with joy front and center. I smile now, realizing that Lucinda Williams’ classic song “Joy,” released a decade later in 1998, summed up the whole situation: 

I don’t want you anymore, you took my joy
You took my joy, and I want it back!

The power of joy has been effectively exercised far closer to home as well. In the second week of December 2009, writer Toi Derricotte, who grew up in the Detroit neighborhood of Hamtramck, posted a poem entitled “From the Telly Cycle.” Dedicated to her beloved pet fish that had recently passed away, it leads with the line “Joy is an act of resistance.” That poetic pronouncement has since been used by others, but it seems that Dericotte was the first. It would go on to become a significant slogan of what came to be called the Black joy movement. Professor of African American Studies Mei-Ling Malone makes clear that “Black joy is an act of resistance. The whole idea of oppression is to keep people down. So when people continue to shine and live fully, it is resistance.” Joy, it turns out, is both more fun and a powerful force for change—both individually and collectively— at the same time. 

All that said, these are not, I know, the easiest of times in which to focus on and feel joy. When anxiety is high, when costs are rising, and consumer confidence is dropping, when national leaders are known to be lying, when innocent people are getting iced right in front of our eyes, it would be easy and understandable to feel down. Some days, some hours, and some other times, too, I most definitely do. My determined focus on finding joy, though, helps me get through. It keeps me focused, determined, and resilient. It makes my eyes light up, and my smile grow wide, no matter what is going on in the world around me. Joy, for me, is an essential ingredient in resilience and resistance both. Without joy, my internal ecosystem suffers; with it, everything goes better. Joy doesn’t just immediately make all the challenges we face go away, but it does give me the energy to deal with them far, far more effectively. 

Having spent many years now studying the subject, both in my own life and in our organization, I can say with confidence that you can feel the difference joy makes. This little story from last week reminded me how much of a difference. 

Two weeks ago tomorrow, I cracked a tooth. My caring dentist came in on her day off to take a look. Ten minutes into treating me, she delivered the bad news: The tooth had already been filled twice before; there was really no way to save it. Taking it out, and then the rather intimidating insertion of an implant, she said, would be next. The following Thursday afternoon, I had the tooth extracted. It’s not the most painful thing I’ve experienced, but it wasn’t all that much fun either. Pain followed, as expected. Being like jazz musician Pharoah Sanders, Sarah Harris of the band Dolly Creamer, and the other inspiring folks I wrote about a few weeks ago, artists and leaders who keep going even in tough and awkward times, I went back to work that evening. Since it wasn’t going to be any less painful sitting at home, I figured I’d just power through at work, where the bustle of a big dinner rush at the Roadhouse could take my mind off it. I gritted my teeth (metaphorically, given the circumstances), got centered, smiled, and decided to make it a great evening anyway.

A little before nine that night, I found myself in conversation with a nice young couple, first-time guests from Ohio who were dining at a table across from me while I worked on the computer. Turns out I know his parents, both longtime chefs from Chicago. He and I had a lovely chat, with my tooth—or the spot where my tooth had been—quietly throbbing in my head the whole time. When the couple was leaving—heading to Bay City to see Jerry Seinfeld and likely having a very joyful evening—he and I shook hands and agreed to stay in touch. He looked me in the eye, and with a wonderfully grounded, sincere energy and a big smile, said, “You really seem like someone who just feels so much joy!” Caught off guard in a really good way, I smiled back, surprised that despite it all, joy—not tooth pain—is what came across. In hindsight, I realize that what happened was Dorothea Tanning’s title come alive. Despite the pain from my missing tooth, my emotional interior was immediately made brighter by this sudden burst of joy. And it was a great reminder that, in a focused setting, joy will trump pain. I’m fortunate, I know, to live in a joy-filled ecosystem where situations like this are so much more likely to happen. Not everyone has the same opportunity. I have learned, though, that joy isn’t something that happens to us. Rather, it’s something we need to actively look for. Far more often than most people realize, even in hard times, joy is there for the appreciating. If we don’t pay attention, it passes us right by. 

Having spent 25 years learning to tune in and notice joy, I tend to stumble on it almost everywhere I turn. Sure enough, sudden interior joy showed up for me a couple of days after the tooth incident, at about 7 pm on Saturday. During a quiet couple of minutes, I checked my email, where I found a lovely note from my East African friends at Indigenous Resistance (IR). I closed last week’s essay about the import of Edgewalking in the modern world by citing the exceptional way that IR exemplifies the willingness to engage with intriguing and interesting worlds, ideas, cultures, and more. The regenerative study I had engaged in to write the piece had already brought me a great deal of joy. But, as Dorothea Tannin’s writing reminds me, there is more to almost every story than it might seem. She would regularly tell anyone who was listening to stay open and curious, “Behind the door, always another door…” And, sure enough, another door into this already good story about Edgewalking unexpectedly opened up for me. My evening was brightened by this email from the other side of the Atlantic:

Greetings in Dub 

Hope all is well on your end

I wanted to share something truly amusing with you.

I was reading your latest newsletter and really really loving it, especially when it came to the section with the Vietnamese artist having lived in Vietnam. … I caught the dub of when he’s using artillery shells to make beautiful sounds. But here’s the dub. As I was reading what you were writing about moving between different worlds and edges and actually liminal is one of my favorite all time words.

I was reading it and thinking my goodness this is so dub, this is so what IR is about. I need to write him to tell him I appreciate it and then I read the next paragraph and it’s about IR.

I couldn’t stop laughing 🙂 

I laughed right back when I read it. I couldn’t not smile seeing that the writing had connected. The note touched my heart. Joy, of course, ensued. I think anyone who makes art will be able to relate. We make art for ourselves because we believe in what we’re writing, singing, sculpting, cooking, and so forth. Still, knowing your work has resonated with someone you respect a great deal tends to bring a lovely bit of sudden joy. It’s something I’m always happy to experience!

While experiencing joy is a wonderful thing, its absence can be painful. Dorothea Tanning grew up in the very conservative community of Galesburg, Illinois. It was, apparently, a rather joyless place. Journalist Richard Howard reports that Tanning would say, “It was a life unsweetened by culture,” and, as Tanning told it, “Where nothing happens but the wallpaper.” If my friend Shawn Askinosie is correct that our life’s vocation is nearly always the healing of our childhood wounds, Dorothea Tanning delivered in style: she went on to live a remarkable, productive, vibrant, joyful, and joy-filled life until she passed away in the winter of 2012. Tanning was 101, and making art right up until the end. 

In 1920, at the same time that Tanning was turning 10 in central Illinois, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Jewish-Romanian anarchist poet Tristan Tzara had just celebrated his 24th birthday. The previous year, Tzara, who would later turn out to be one of Tanning’s artistic influences, had left his native Romania and moved to what one could consider the spiritual opposite of Galesburg: Paris. There, Tzara turned out an abundance of edgy, intriguing artistic work.

Tzara, who was instrumental in founding the Dada art movement, is a joy for me to study. Tzara was born Samy Rosenstock in the Romanian town of Moinești. At the time of his birth, roughly half the town’s population was Jewish. Thanks to my friend, Alabama-based Romanian poet Alina Stefanescu, for turning me on to Tzara’s work. Anyone who knows me even moderately well will immediately recognize how regenerative study—especially reading about Tzara’s life—has evoked an enormous amount of joy. After all, Romanian Jewish artists and anarchist poets are not a dime a dozen. Tzara, like Alina Stefanescu and Dorothea Tanning, is one of a kind. How could I not be fascinated by a guy who once wrote that “morality is the infusion of chocolate into the veins of all men”?

In 1920, Tzara penned a piece called “How to Make a Dadaist Poem.” It was a day-to-day way to take the Dadaist philosophy that he helped pioneer, and put it to work. Tzara put the instructions in poem form:

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

While it may sound silly, a whole series of rather famous people have used and advocated this “cut-up” technique. Writer William Burroughs is one. David Bowie is another. In fact, the famous line “I’m an alligator” in Bowie’s early ’70s classic “Moonage Daydream” seemingly came from practicing Tzara’s method. Given my recent work around poetry and desire to lean into Dorothea Tanning’s idea of an interior filled with sudden joy, I challenged myself to follow Tzara’s recipe. 

To get going, I printed out the piece I wrote on joy in this newsletter a few years ago. The beginnings of what I created from the cut-up are in the photo above, but here is the whole joy-evoking poem. To be clear, other than the title, all the words were already on paper—all I did was cut and then arrange them in an order that resonated. Sure enough, joy ensued as I assembled (or, I suppose, reassembled) the pieces: 

A Bit of Romanian Dadaist, Jewish, Anarchist Poetic Joy for the 21st Century

Unlike long-term visions or well-built buildings
joy is fleeting
a
couple of minutes
or a few seconds,
on a newly opened blossom,
enjoy the joy
it’s there to be appreciated.

If we miss it,
the world won’t end
life goes on apace;
but our energy
erodes a bit.

If we notice it
we smile, our eyes light up,
like a butterfly alighting
endorphins are released.

Maybe
moments of joy
become precious memories.
we can carry forward into our
collective futures.

In his “Dada Manifesto 1918,” Tzara reminds us that “everybody practices his art in his own way.” Performer Patti Smith happens to be particularly good at it. In a recent interview with the New York Times’ Ezra Klein, Smith put the current state of the country in perspective and showed how she connects to joy in the face of adversity:

Despite everything that’s happening in the world and everything around us and any frustration or helplessness we feel or betrayal we feel, we have to remember it’s also all right to feel the joy of being alive and feel the joy of your own possibilities. Even in the face of the suffering of so many people around us.

Smith, who Spin Magazine called “a cross between Tristan Tzara and Little Richard” after an interview in March 1979, also reflects on her long career as a performer and poet: “I feel grateful because people are still interested in this work that was committed half a century ago. It’s a lot of joy.” Of the many loved ones she’s lost over the years—her husband Fred, her brother Todd, her lover and friend Robert Mapplethorpe, her longtime pianist Richard Sohl—she says, “They remain within me. And I can still access joy.” Providing more evidence that those who do well in life can find joy in the face of adversity, she continues, in an expression and explanation that sounds remarkably like what we might say here in the ZCoB:

Despite that [loss], I feel also the joy of celebration—and happy to be here, happy to be physically able to do it, to feel my voice is strong and that I can give the people, as authentically as I can, the experience of the record as a new experience every night. I want everyone who comes in wanting a special night to leave feeling that it was a special night. 

Speaking of special nights, I am reminded with great regularity that joy will almost always appear at some point, and usually in ways that I least expect it. I just have to be paying enough attention to notice it. 

To wit, on a rather mundane mid-autumn Tuesday evening, I ran into a family with two young daughters. The youngest, maybe 10 years old, was celebrating her birthday. When asked where she wanted to go for dinner, she chose the Roadhouse. That, to me, is one of the best compliments a restaurant can get. Curious, I asked what she had for dinner. With a big smile on her face, she rattled off the elements of her birthday meal: “The salmon. And mashed potatoes. And spinach. It was really good.” Lo, that I had been that into food when I was her age! For me, that sort of thing is far more meaningful than an award. Joy at its hospitality-focused best.

About 10 minutes later, dining room manager Zach Milner, who was expediting that evening (assembling orders, checking for quality, and sending them out into the dining room), asked me to run a lone fried chicken leg over to table 206. When I got to the table, I saw a new mother with a relatively young infant. The child was holding another chicken leg tightly in her fist and awkwardly but passionately eating it. She was far too young to talk, but the message was clear. The mother smiled and said, “I gave it to her to try a bite. She’s never eaten chicken. And she ate the whole thing!”

Sometimes, of course, joy comes in these beautifully upbeat and innocent moments. But it’s of equal import when we’re struggling with a serious issue and unsure of how to move forward. Nearly a century ago, Tristan Tzara gave some advice that our whole country—me included, of course—could take to heart. “Let us try for once not to be right.” Instead, we can listen with open hearts and remember that joy is a part of living a good life, even in stressful situations. We can, in that context, skip the lectures and instead lean in and then learn some more. If we’re paying attention, the odds are pretty high that some joy will ensue. Choosing joy, even in the face of adversity, is one of the best ways we can lead positive change.

Last weekend, the campus newspaper at the University of Toronto ran an article by student Augustus Crysler-Hill entitled “Indigenous Joy, The Backbone of Colonial Resistance.” In it, Crysler-Hill writes:

I believe that it’s important to recognize Indigenous joy as an essential part of colonial resistance. … I consider the joy and humour that are present in Indigenous cultures to be resistance in multiple ways. … By expressing this joy, Indigenous peoples show that they are still alive and well and reject the societal narrative that Indigenous peoples are simply victims of the past.

Indigenous joy is not only important in the context of resistance, but also due to its healing and connecting qualities. Laughter serves as a connection between family members and is key to Indigenous communities. It gives relief in times of hardship and allows our people to discuss traumatic events.

In the metaphorical organizational ecosystem pamphlet I’m partway through working on, butterflies are akin to joy. They show up in abundance in healthy ecosystems and are diminished on land that is not healthy. And because butterflies flutter past so quietly, we need to pay careful attention. If we don’t, the joy flutters past, and our lives are a bit poorer for having missed it. 

If butterflies are joy, a lovely one landed on the back of my metaphorical hand as I looked deeper into Tristan Tzara’s life. It turns out that Tzara was, for a number of years, also active with the Symbolist movement. As a young man, Tzara—at that point, still in Romania and known as Samy Rosenstock—even helped cofound a Symbolist magazine. As you may remember, symbols have really been on my mind a lot in recent months. Tzara, it turns out, also used butterflies as a symbol in the Dadaist philosophy he helped to frame, noting that “Dada covers things with an artificial gentleness, a snow of butterflies.”

On the 5th of May, 2012, Patti Smith, who I now keep thinking of as “the Tristan Tzara of punk,” played her first show in Mexico. It was held in what had been the home of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Journalist Guillermo Urdapilleta writes that Smith, who had turned 65 six months earlier, performed “with evident joy.” Her joy, it seems, was contagious. By the end of the evening, Urdapilleta reports, the audience had become “a joyful mass with a wonderful vibe.”

The night before the show, dealing with pain from a fall the previous day, the staff at the house had suggested that Smith sleep for a bit in Kahlo’s bed to rest her body. While she was sleeping, she dreamed of a poem. The next morning, she wrote it down, calling it “Noguchi’s Butterflies,” inspired by the butterfly collection that Kahlo had hanging on the ceiling above her bed. The butterflies were gifted to Kahlo, many years earlier, by architect Isamu Noguchi. The two met 90 years ago this year, in 1935. They were briefly lovers and then friends. The butterflies were, Noguchi said, something Kahlo could look at while she lay in bed with the pain she suffered from polio. These lines, pulled out of the center of Patti Smith’s poem, show what joy makes possible:

Within my sight
All pain dissolve
In another light
Transported thru
Time
By the butterfly

Symbolism, of course, makes me think about apricots, which I’ve come to see as a symbol of dignity and democracy. I think apricots can also help us find joy when we’re facing adversity. I’ll leave you, then, with this little joke that brought me a bit of joy when it popped unexpectedly into my head a couple of weeks ago! It brought me a good bit of sudden interior joy, and I hope it does the same for you. 

Q: What do you call a group of dignity- and democracy-loving musicians that get together for an impromptu session?

A: An apricot jam!

Create a joyful future

Photographers, circles, Edgewalkers, and important new insights

One of the things I love most about the experience of regenerative studying is how other insightful people’s perspectives can help me to suddenly understand things I’ve been around for ages—and understand them in wholly different and intriguingly inspiring ways. It’s very much what Tomasz Trzebiatowski, photographer and editor of the terrific FRAMES magazine, wrote this week about the renowned Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert. Gruyaert, who turned 84 in August, was a street photography pioneer half a century ago and a colleague of the remarkable Joel Meyerowitz, whose photographic work and writing have inspired me any number of times over the years. Writing about Gruyaert’s unique style, Trzebiatowski says:

Gruyaert’s work has always been thrilling in the way it articulates a particular way of seeing. He has had the good fortune to travel widely, and whether he’s taking images in Belgium or Morocco, London or Paris, airports or alleys, it’s not that he sees things differently. He emphasizes differently.

And this is, indeed, what happened to me in studying the work of another photographer who’s also a filmmaker, the Vietnamese American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. A single comment by Nyugen, a small part of a much longer conversation he had with Art21—the group that produces the PBS documentary series Art in the Twenty-First Century—offered me a wholly new framework with which to look at what makes our lives, organizations, and countries healthier, livelier, more creative, and ultimately more meaningful.

In the interview, Nguyen talked about his own life experiences, including the moving around the world he has done over the course of his nearly 50 years on the planet. He shared this thought that stopped me in my tracks:

I don’t think that being in between worlds is something that limits us. Learning to understand different worlds is going to be a skill that helps us to navigate a very precarious future. That liminality actually empowers people.

I had never considered the connection Tuan Andrew Nguyen made in that comment until I heard him say it. I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind, and, a week later, I agree. His statement makes total sense. My belated, Nyugen-inspired glimpse of the obvious, my interpretation of what I learned from him, is that as we look ahead to the second quarter of the 21st century we would be wise to work with this understanding front of mind:

People who regularly move through multiple worlds with a modicum of comfort and effectiveness have much higher odds of doing more and better work in the world.

Two months ago, I wrote a lot about the import of edge in organizational health. In that essay, I reminded myself and maybe you as well that the edges of an ecosystem—not any imagined hierarchical center—are where most new creative ideas, cool initiatives, and organizational innovations tend to come from. Which means, then, that the more edge we create in our companies and our communities, the healthier we are likely to be. Instead of pulling back from the edge, putting up walls around a theoretical center to “protect” us, we would be wise to shift the focus to creating more edges, and then spending a significant portion of our time in them. Edge work like this won’t always be fancy, but it can be exceptionally effective. Get out of the office, call customers, answer phones for a few hours, work the front door if you have one, riff freely on routines, read widely, engage enthusiastically on the periphery. To use a baseball metaphor, it’s useful to skip the skybox sometimes and sit, instead, out in the center-field bleachers, sipping beer from paper cups and squinting to see home plate—things look a lot different from the 23rd row in right-center field than they do from the front office.

This essay is, in a sense, a follow-up to that first one on edge. In the spirit of Harry Gruyaert’s good work, I’m taking something that I know well and emphasizing a different element of it. Spending time in and near the edges of organizations, philosophies, natural ecosystems, and more is awesome. But better still, as I now see thanks to Tuan Andrew Nyugen, is that taking things further, engaging with the edge, and then deciding to keep going into less familiar, or at times wholly unfamiliar, territory helps us enter a different world and often really wonderful new worlds.

Tuan Andrew Nyugen’s work is all about this approach to life. He is constantly moving between worlds and always doing it with grace, sensitivity, and skill. As the bio on his website states:

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s practice explores the power of memory and its potential to act as a form of political resistance. … Through collaborative endeavors with various communities throughout the world, Nguyen sets out to cultivate and empower these strategies enacted and embodied by his collaborators.

Born in Saigon in 1976, Nyugen came to Oklahoma three years later with his parents and brother. From there, he went west to the University of California, Irvine, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1999. He followed it five years later with an MFA at CalArts. A few months after that, he decided to move back to Vietnam, where he still lives now. He settled in Ho Chi Minh City, in part to reconnect with his roots. He also reconnected with his grandmother, a poet and writer, who passed away not that long ago at the age of 102. Nyugen’s work has always been about learning to create collaboratively, something we attempt to do here in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB), too. We both believe that the more good people can weave into the creative circle, the better things will go at every level.

The fact that I gained this new insight about the import of moving regularly between worlds is evidence to offer in support of Nyugen’s belief. Tuan Andrew Nyugen is not a big name in the food business, nor has he written about leadership, anarchism, or any of the other subjects I engage with so regularly. Nyugen’s comments were shared from a country I know relatively little about, in a city I’ve never been to, in relation to a line of work that is way outside the realm of what I do every day. And yet, as you can tell, engaging with the new world of Tuan Andrew Nyugen got me thinking. And then writing. Journalist Kenn Sava says of Harry Gruyaert’s art, “His photographs will make you stop and wonder—what’s going on here?” And that’s pretty much what happened to me when I encountered Nguyen’s words about moving through multiple worlds.

Being able to understand and engage with multiple worlds, I’ve realized in reflecting on all of this, is a big part of what makes Zingerman’s what it is as we approach our 44th anniversary this winter. I can now see that even in those awkward early years after we opened the Deli in 1982, both Paul (for those who don’t know, my business partner since the beginning) and I were able to move from one world to the next and do reasonably well in any of them. I don’t mean that we couldn’t have done it better, or that we didn’t mess up many times, or that we don’t have a lot to learn. I just mean that from the get-go, we have each in our odd and awkward ways been reasonably adept at engaging with people from circles very different from our own. We relate fairly well to people of pretty much any age, race, religion, or walk of life. We have both, for as long as I can remember, been as comfortable talking to dishwashers as to department heads at the university. We happily work with bakers and busboys and also with bankers and big-time business leaders. We have both traveled a lot. We read a lot, and we go to a wide range of conferences. We move from one world to the next pretty regularly. It’s not uncommon for me to meet with someone who was just released from incarceration, and then move straight into spending time with some new business owners who are eager to understand how to incorporate. My passport doesn’t get stamped each time I do it, but the truth is that I’m crossing multiple borders almost every day.

Paul and I were, I can see in hindsight, what the team at ZingTrain would call “unconsciously competent”—we gave it little thought, and we were just good at doing it. Next time I talk about what makes us who we are at Zingerman’s, I’m going to tell the audience that this ability is embedded in the essence of the organization. Countless others here in the ZCoB are adept at doing it as well! And this ability to shift rather fluidly between worlds is now the norm for me and many of the people who work here.

Both Harry Gruyaert and Tuan Andrew Nyugen have traveled all over the world. Here at Zingerman’s, we do it a lot, too. We travel to study food, understand where our products are coming from, and, as in the case of Food Tours, for a living. That said, while movement between worlds may certainly include going to other countries and exposure to cultures of all sorts, a plane ticket is not a prerequisite for making it happen. We can enter new worlds without leaving our bedroom. Reading books about topics we don’t usually engage with is one way to do it. We also do it when we talk to people who have backgrounds that are wholly different from our own or beliefs that we may not share. It can be done, too, by experimenting in different areas of insight, or regenerative studying in specialties that are significantly different from our own. This is, I see now, what is coming out of my collaboration with Michael Dickman, which involves learning about poetry and how to put it to use in my everyday life. You can enter new worlds by taking classes in new-to-you fields of study, or, if you’re a city kid like me, by taking time to walk through local fields and pay close attention to what you find.

While I have embraced this new-to-me understanding, I know that moving fluidly and regularly between worlds is not the way much of the world wants to work these days. In fact, it’s the opposite of what seems to be happening around us in many settings right now. Far too many people are reacting to understandable bouts of discomfort by trying to minimize contact with other worlds. Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote a whole column a couple days ago about how super-wealthy people are withdrawing from the world the rest of us inhabit today, and how a similar thing happened a hundred years ago during the Gilded Age. We have leaders who are working to wall off, to ban books, to forbid “foreign” philosophical frameworks, to remove people who don’t “look right,” “sound right,” or “write right.” All of this is happening, right now, right in front of us.

It seems that, out of understandable insecurity and anxiety, many people are living out something that my friend, the Irish writer Gareth Higgins, and his coauthor Brian McLaren have written about in The Seventh Story. As I wrote about a few years ago, the book is about the “seven stories” that are lived out regularly by human beings like you and me. The most rewarding option on their list is “the seventh story,” a story in which “love is the protagonist.” It’s certainly the story we are working hard to live in here in the ZCoB. Love is in our mission statement, our 2032 Vision, and our hearts. The authors also detail the six “other” common but destructive stories that dominate in many societies. Two stories that Gareth and Brian lay out in the book are what seems to be happening around us: The Isolation Story, where “we get away from them,” along with The Purification Story, where “we get rid of them.” Both stories reduce access to other worlds.

Nyugen’s theory is pretty much the exact opposite of isolation. When we seek to engage regularly with other worlds, we invite others in so they can experience our work and our world at Zingerman’s. And rather than getting away from others, we are regularly trying to spend time in their worlds to learn about what they do, as well as why and how they do it. This kind of positive work doesn’t have to cost a lot. It can be done quite effectively simply by spending time in different neighborhoods, studying an unfamiliar language at the local community college, reading books about philosophies that are wholly new to us.

Listening to TED Talks can be helpful, too. Fifteen years ago, the Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak, about whom I wrote a fair bit a few weeks ago, did a TED Talk in which she shared a good deal about her upbringing. Born in Strasbourg, France, her parents got divorced when she was still a young girl, and a young Shafak then moved to her mother’s homeland of Turkey. There she was raised by her mother and her maternal grandmother. Her mother, Şafak Atayman, was a westernized, modern Turkish woman. After graduating from college, she became a successful diplomat who worked for many years in the foreign service. By contrast, Shafak says, her grandmother was “more spiritual, less educated, and definitely less rational. This was a woman who read coffee grounds to see the future and melted lead into mysterious shapes to fend off the evil eye.” A young Elif watched as people came to her grandmother, who was not trained in modern medicine, to be healed of any number of ailments. Surprised by the effectiveness of grandmother’s seemingly very old-school healing work, Shafak asked her for the secret. Her grandmother’s suggestion was to “Beware of the power of circles.” As Shafak explains:

From her, I learned, amongst many other things, one very precious lesson—that if you want to destroy something in this life, be it an acne, a blemish or the human soul, all you need to do is to surround it with thick walls. It will dry up inside.

Now we all live in some kind of a social and cultural circle. We all do. … But if we have no connection whatsoever with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted, then we too run the risk of drying up inside.

Our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle, and our humanness might wither if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons. Our friends, neighbors, colleagues, family—if all the people in our inner circle resemble us, it means we are surrounded with our mirror image.

Isolation—either individual or collective—is an idea that, to some, can sound good. I get it. I’m an introvert who regularly leans into having time alone, so I’m all for solitude. Used well, for reflection, regrounding, reading, and recharging, alone time can lead us to engagement with other worlds of knowledge, culture, and understanding. In other words, it can be conducive to connection rather than implicitly about isolation. But alone, on its own, will not likely get us where we want and need to go.

I mentioned the other week that Shafak calls our current era “The Age of Anxiety.” It’s an apt assignation. She also, though, refers to it as “The Age of Division.” The same walls that appear to protect also restrict. And as Shafak says, “It worries me immensely, seeing the walls rise higher and higher.” Walls limit access. They reduce the amount of edge, and they make it harder and harder to freely and fluidly move around any number of different “worlds.” As Shafak says:

Ironically, [living in] communities of the like-minded is one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world. And it’s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people.

Shafak cites the wisdom of Lebanese American poet Khalil Gibran, who said, “I learned silence from the talkative and tolerance from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind.” She transposes those lines into a learning for our present-day challenges:

From populist demagogues, we will learn the indispensability of democracy. And from isolationists, we will learn the need for global solidarity.

So, what do we need to do this “world-traveling” work? And how do we do it more effectively? Well, I’m just learning. Let me know what you think. Here’s my opening bid:

• An abundance of humility
• Dedication to dignity
• A generous spirit of generosity
• A worldview rooted in positive beliefs
• Consistently high levels of hope
• An endless cache of curiosity
• A healthy sense of self that allows us to learn, engage, and share without worry that we will lose ourselves in the process

People who don’t have these skills remain, of course, good people. But without these skills, it’s harder to engage outside our comfort zones effectively. Those who do have these attributes are far more likely to move freely to and from multiple worlds, learning well from each in the process. I’m talking about people like Harry Gruyaert, Tuan Andrew Nyugen, and Elif Shafak, people who move from one world to the next with regularity. They have learned how to take pain—which, of course, we all have in our own ways—and turn it into art that helps them heal and helps the rest of us lean into and learn from their creative expression. For example, one of Tuan Andrew Nyugen’s best-known works was a collaborative project entitled The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon that included turning spent U.S. Army artillery shells into beautiful hanging bells that make a symphony of lovely sounds.

In a metaphorical sense, that seems to be what the team at Emerge (which includes philosopher and chess Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson) is trying to do on a bigger scale: Take what has gone wrong in the world, learn from it, and combine it with what has long been right, to write about new approaches to the future. It’s an intriguing organization that seems to be involved in this work of moving through, into, and around multiple worlds, reflecting regularly on how to blend traditional wisdom with new insights and ideas. Of the present moment, they write:

We are at a fork in the road. Two kinds of possible futures for humanity are likely: further entropy and collapse, or the emergence of a higher-order system that is more complex and elegant than our current one.

It seems clear to me that the people Tuan Andrew Nyugen was talking about in the interview that sparked all this thinking—those who, like Nyugen, can move well between different worlds, those who learn well from others and who can embrace and engage with difference and diversity, all the while learning to be truer to themselves—will almost certainly fare well in the rest of the 21st century. They are the ones who can lead us towards Seventh Stories, and towards learning, dignity, humility, and more health for more people.

From the outside looking in, writer and speaker Judi Neal seems to be one of those people. Neal, who earned an advanced degree in organizational behavior at Yale University, has already given a name to people who walk in many worlds. She calls them—or us, I might be wiser to say—“Edgewalkers.” I love it. Neal explains:

I am passionate about organizations and teams understanding the value that Edgewalkers bring to the workplace. Usually people who have Edgewalker qualities are seen as strange and they are often marginalized. But Edgewalkers are the ones that see what others cannot see, and they have a commitment to making the world a better place. … We need our Edgewalkers more than ever in this uncertain and unpredictable world. The old ways of doing business no longer work, and Edgewalker leaders, and Edgewalker organizations can show us a new and better way.

Edgewalkers, to my sense of it, are the kind of people Tuan Andrew Nyugen was talking about. They spend a lot of time in and around the edges, and they regularly move past the edges and explore other worlds as well. With each metaphorical trip abroad, they add to their already wonderful wealth of knowledge. Over 10 or 20 or 30 years of practice, what an effective Edgewalker can enable is impressive. This description of Edgewalkers feels like a fair way to frame the work we do here in the ZCoB. It’s true, too, of many of the people I learn from and write about here in this enews. Elif Shafak, Tuan Andrew Nyugen, Little Mazarn, Pharoah Sanders, Sarah Harris from the band Dolly Creamer, adrienne maree brown, Harry Gruyaert, and so many others. Neal shares a quintet of critical characteristics that all Edgewalkers have in common:

1. Self-awareness
2. Passion
3. Integrity
4. Vision
5. Playfulness

All five resonate with me. Neal also shares five skills that we can practice that help us to become more adept at walking the edges with excellence instead of anxiety. Again, I can relate to all of them, and they show up in the adaptive approaches each of us uses:

1. Sensing the future. A healthy sense of where we’re going, per what Tuan Andrew Nyugen shared up top.
2. Risk-taking. One example is Elif Shafak’s willingness to write about topics that are “taboo” in Turkey.
3. Manifesting. To me, it sounds like what we call “visioning” here in the ZCoB.
4. Focusing. The ability to actually implement learnings from the other worlds we have visited.
5. Connecting. The decision to value others, to see their uniqueness, and to draw out the best in them.

Folklorist Henry Glassie, who led the Turkish Studies program at Indiana University, has spent his whole life engaging with different worlds. His work has taken him to Ireland, Turkey, Nigeria, the Appalachians, and Bangladesh for significant amounts of time. Insights abound in Glassie’s work, but this particular quote really caught my attention in the context of edges:

The creation of the future out of the past [is] a continuous process situated in the nothingness of the present, linking the vanished with the unknown, tradition is stopped, parceled, and codified by thinkers who fix upon this aspect or that in accord with their needs or preoccupations.

The ability to move fluidly from present to past to future and back again, over and over, is another way to effectively engage with different worlds. I realize we are actively teaching everyone in the ZCoB to do all three:

• The past by studying food, writing a lot about history, and staying committed to traditional food. This is not always what organizations do. Of her homeland, Turkey, Elif Shafak says, “Nations don’t always learn from history … If anything, we [Turks] are a society of collective amnesia.” The past, for those willing to use it though, can be a powerful tool for managing more effectively in the present moment. Tuan Andrew Nyugen says he “explores memory as a form of resistance and empowerment, emphasizing the power of storytelling as a means for healing, empathy and solidarity.”
• The present by teaching mindfulness and energy management, appreciating and cultivating great service, staying dedicated to finding joy, and actively looking for beauty. We work hard to help people learn to be in the moment.
• The future through our visioning work, which challenges us to regularly move our minds into the future. Tuan Andrew Nyugen’s short dystopian sci-fi film, A Dream Of The End At The End Of A Dream, uses an imagined future to send a message to us in the present moment.

This work of traveling regularly between worlds is, I can now see, a big part of what makes the books and music of my friends at Indigenous Resistance so compelling for me. They are all based on engaging with worlds and worldviews that most of us in the West would not otherwise know about. They are Edgewalkers extraordinaires. They share the histories of indigenous cultures in Africa, elucidate elegant insights from Ethiopian spiritual leaders, and visit Mongolian record shops. Through their records and books, they explore the writing of Native American activists, East African anarchists, and so much more. Each of their works makes clear what Tuan Andrew Nyugen knows—that it’s all about healthy connections with, dignity for, and active learning from other worlds.

Reading each of the Indigenous Resistance books has been a wonderful example of regenerative studying at its best. They have exposed me to an incredible array of new, always inspiring, often anarchist sources. They guide me from Uganda to Ulaanbaatar, Senegal to South Dakota, and everywhere in between. They introduce me to Jamaican musicians and Mongolian shamans, Native American poets and North African spiritual leaders, revolutionaries and writers, and so much more. They bring me into contact with a plethora of places and people I might likely never have known on my own. Their most recent print publication even has a photo of the ancient stone in Mongolia where the word “Turk”—now Elif Shafak’s homeland—was carved into writing for the first time.

This passage from Indigenous Resistance’s new book, Mongolian Dub Journey, seems to sum up much of this traveling-between-worlds work:

When one sees boundaries dissolving between ‘genres’ and art forms, this has always been very inspirational for me to observe. This is because I believe that is in these spaces of dissolved boundaries … where we can create the space to be truly creative and forge new pathways.

The people who move between worlds in this way, the Edgewalkers among us, are setting the positive, collaborative, and inclusive pace for the 21st century. It’s work we can all do. I smiled when I saw these words in a recent retrospective write-up about Harry Gruyaert’s work at the Helmond Museum in the Netherlands:

The origin of all his work is the world around us.

Look around. Listen. Breathe deep. Be ready. Other worlds, with a wealth of beauty and wisdom, await.

Explore other worlds

P.S. If you want to move through a whole range of different culinary worlds in a matter of hours, consider coming to one, or both for that matter, of the two “Best of 2025” tastings I’ll be doing at the Deli next month. The first one is Tuesday, December 2, at 6:30 pm, and the second one is the following Tuesday, December 9, at 6:30 pm. Hope to see you there!

Digging into any subject yields fascinating results

The amazing Austin-based band Little Mazarn, whose music I have loved for many years now, released a new EP, Election Results, last week. Like everything Little Mazarn has done over their decade of playing together, it’s poetic, poignant, touching, and, for me, exceptionally engaging. With Lindsey Verrill playing banjo and singing, Jeff Johnston performing on a remarkable electric saw, and, of late, Carolina Chauffe adding guitar and vocals, the band’s music sounds like no other. Here’s the backstory on the new release as Little Mazarn’s leader, Lindsey Verrill, tells it in the liner notes:

On November 5th and 6th, 2024, Little Mazarn had some studio time booked and went in to start a follow up album project to Mustang Island. It was a beautiful time of year, we had some fresh songs in the mix, and our friend Jolie Holland was in town. What could go wrong? Needless to say, things did not go according to plan. The heaviness of the American election results crashed through the studio door and landed right on top of us in our merry music making.

This EP is the result. After some tender listening, we decided these recordings needed to stand alone from a moment where things were very heavy, but we didn’t allow ourselves to be crushed. We made art, we were together, and we did manage to have some laughs. Now a year later, this message rings truer to me than ever. Though much has been taken, much abides.

We each, of course, have different ways of dealing with despair. Lindsey Verrill crafts lyrics, strums her banjo, and sings. I start studying.

For me, studying—whether it’s reading books, mindfully focusing my attention on a particular pattern over time, listening to talks online or in person, or spending time engaged in personal reflection via journaling—is, and always has been, central to the way I live my life. When I need a boost, I crack open a book. If I’m feeling down or confused, overwhelmed or out of sorts, 20 or 30 minutes of studying is almost certain to turn my mood around. Studying, I can see now, feeds both my mind and my spirit, and more often than not, it benefits our business at the same time. So, while many people think of studying as a burden they left behind when they finished school, I see it as a blessing that will be with me for the rest of my life.

I’ve never really framed it as such, but in recent weeks, I’ve begun to see that studying can be a regenerative process, a way to boost our own energy while putting ever-increasing amounts of good out into the world. I’m not talking about the kind of studying driven by grades or fear of failing that so many of us struggled through in school. I’m talking instead about studying as a way to get my own mind moving and to then actively share what I’ve learned with others in helpful ways. Studying that benefits me, the studier, and also the people and products that are part of our ecosystem. Studying that, rather than sapping energy through caffeine-fueled all-nighters, can now be framed as a fun activity to help with self-management, inspire new ideas, and give us the energy we need to stand up for what we believe in, even in the face of enormous pressure to fold our cards and retreat to a safe corner. The new Little Mazarn album is really a great example. The musicians took their despair and turned it into a different kind of election result, one we can listen to and learn from at the same time.

I am, by this point in my life, “intuitively” inclined to study, probably through years of neuroplastic shaping of my brain. Here’s a bit of evidence for the way studying is woven into my routines. It’s true to life and, in truth, a little hilarious.

I’m pretty sure it was about 10:30 this past Saturday morning when the penny fell out of my pocket and landed square in the center of the brushed suede of my Doc Marten sandals. My first thought was how cool the copper looked against the black of the shoe. My next thought, seconds later, was that I really knew next to nothing about pennies and probably would be wise to start studying them. Then I laughed out loud at my strangeness. With everything going on in the world around me and a long to-do list on my yellow legal pad, pennies were definitely not a top priority.

Most people, I’m fairly certain, would simply have picked up the penny, popped it back in their pocket, and gotten on with their day. I, though, am more than a bit odd. It used to make me feel estranged. Now it mostly just makes me smile and then get back to work. So, low priority as pennies were, I started looking up more about them about 20 minutes or so after the coin appeared atop my sandal. Within a matter of minutes, I was magically transported into the world of monetary history and the culture of coin-making. It didn’t take long for my mind to start spinning like a coin on its side—so many mental roads to go down for far more in-depth study. It turns out there’s a history major’s treasure trove of cool stories to tell about these little copper coins. Here are a few highlights of my brief foray into “pennyology”:

• During Revolutionary War times, all kinds of European coins were used in what is now the U.S.
• Indigenous Americans had their own methods of making “coinage” for trading purposes. In this part of the country, the Ojibwe people commonly used cowrie shells as currency.
• In 1787, over a decade after the big Independence Day of July 4, 1776, the colonies made what were called Fugio cents. Designed by Ben Franklin, the two sides of the coin captured the paradox of the creation of any democratically oriented organization. One side read, “We are one,” while the other warned, “Mind your business.”
• In 1792, the new U.S. mint in Philadelphia began making pennies similar to those we use now for the first time. Lady Liberty was pictured on one side. The coins were 100% copper.
• In 1857, a flying eagle landed, taking Lady Liberty’s place. Pennies went to 88% copper and 12% zinc that same year.
• Abraham Lincoln’s profile was placed on one side of the penny in 1909, a little over half a century after he was murdered.
• In 1982, the same year we opened the Deli, one-cent coins became 98% zinc with a thin copper coating on the outside. Maybe we could have called our business “Zincerman’s”? Or perhaps titled the business plan for the Bakehouse “Pennies from Leaven”!
• If you find yourself close to Colorado Springs, consider visiting the Money Museum there.
• Sadly, next year’s batch of pennies is scheduled to be the last.

Oh yeah, I can’t continue here without pointing out that a cover of “Pennies from Heaven” just happens to be the fifth track on the new Little Mazarn record. The original song, I know now, was written in 1936, with music by Arthur Johnston and words by Johnny Burke. Back in the middle of the Great Depression, pennies falling from heaven was, after all, a wonderful fantasy. A number of famous vocalists have recorded the tune, but the version I love most from that era is by Billie Holiday. She recorded it 89 years ago next week, in a New York City studio on November 19, 1936. For context, Holiday was performing in an era when concert halls and the country at large were still strictly segregated.

My point, though, is not about pennies. It’s about my proclivity for studying and what happens to my head in the process of engaging in it. As you can probably tell, I can get energized by studying just about any subject. Sure, it’s more interesting to engage with things I’m already passionate about, but even subjects that I’m essentially oblivious to—in this case, pennies—can turn out to be fascinating, too. The more I learn, the more I lean in. Studying can, in a very short time, shift my energy from down to almost elated.

To illustrate the point, I’ll share here that my despair in the days following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022—comparable, perhaps, to how Little Mazarn felt a year ago last week as they read election results—turned into what I now conceive of as Deep Understanding of dignity and a concerted long-term effort to evoke a real-life “Revolution of Dignity in the Twenty-First Century Workplace.” My studies, of course, didn’t stop when the pamphlet came out, which is why my continued engagement with Ukraine and its language, culture, and history has led me to imagine apricots as a symbol of dignity and democracy recently. All of which, I can see now, evidences the excellence that regenerative studying can contribute to our companies, communities, and countries, and to our own quality of life at the same time.

I’ve always just assumed that this pattern—struggle, study, and then put new learnings to work in lasting, constructive ways—is part of who I am, but I didn’t take it as particularly relevant for anyone else. When I look around at the world now, with all this in mind, it’s pretty clear that nearly everyone who gets to greatness has done a lot of studying, each in their own unique way, to get themselves to where they are. Studying for people like this isn’t exhausting; it’s a big part of where they get their energy from!

The subtitle of poet and writer Jacqueline Suskin’s wonderful book Every Day is a Poem is “Find clarity, feel relief, and see beauty in every moment.” What Suskin describes is exactly what studying in this regenerative way has done—and is still doing today—in my life. It helps me to see what’s happening around me, inside me, or both. I definitely feel relief as I begin to learn. Keep studying, I’ve told myself 10,000 times over the years, and the answers will become clear. And sure enough, they almost always do. Studying has, without question, helped me see the beauty that’s already all around me. Regular and regenerative studying has given me many, many metaphorical pennies from intellectual heaven. And while the cost of studying can be high if you’re in grad school, studying can be done elsewhere, on the fly, for mere pennies—by borrowing books from the local library, watching videos, and listening to podcasts online.

Jacqueline Suskin says of her own work and life experience, “To be able to look around and find beauty and inspiration in every little thing, that’s what makes me a poet. I want to show anybody that they have that in themselves.” Her statement is inspiring, in part because, as you might already know, I’ve been studying poetry over the last couple years. More to the point of this piece, though, I’m inspired because what Jacqueline Suskin posits about poetry is what I’m suggesting about studying. Done in a regenerative way, as I’m framing it here, it helps to remind anyone who’s interested that with a relatively small investment of time, we can raise our own energy levels, see beauty everywhere we decide to engage, and find inspiration even in something as mundane as a simple one-cent coin.

So, what goes into this sort of regenerative studying? For me, more often than not, it’s reading, but for others, it could be anything from time spent learning to play a musical instrument from a master to sitting and meditating. For athletes, it might be watching game film or studying the history of whatever sport they engage in. It could be taking a class at BAKE! or beginning to learn a new-to-you skill you’ve long been curious about. The list is, of course, endless. If you’re in doubt, pluck any single subject out of this enews and spend 10 to 20 minutes learning as much about it as you can. Let me know how it goes!

I’ve realized in recent weeks that all of these regenerative acts of learning, when they’re done well, create more energy than they take. Did I put a lot of time into studying and defining dignity, figuring out how to practice it, and then publishing all my learnings in a pamphlet? Of course! But that time has, without question, radically enhanced the quality of my own life. And over the last few years, it has improved the quality of life for many thousands of others as well. If I were to track that studying in the form of dollars and cents (profits and pennies?), I’m sure I’d find that I got an incredible return on my investment. Heck, even my 15-minute foray into pennies the other morning made my whole day better!

I now know that regenerative studying, done well, is a life skill. It’s something that helps to elevate the quality of what we do every day in a wide array of ways! Here are eight lessons I’ve learned from studying, reflecting, and working to better understand what it means to me to practice regenerative studying in this way:

1. The energy we bring to our studies has a huge impact on what we get out. Nearly 20 years ago, my longtime friend, the energy teacher Anese Cavanaugh, taught me the import of setting one’s intent before entering any interaction. The intent is, consciously or not, going to end up being reflected in the outcomes. In “What Is It Worth?,” a wonderfully worthwhile essay in last winter’s Southern Cultures, Libby O’Bryan, co-founder of the small Asheville, North Carolina, craft company Sew Co, shared:I believe objects hold an embodied energy that is cultivated as it is being created. Objects can be made with renewable, regenerative materials, as opposed to ones ravaged from the earth. Objects can be made with caring, attentive, respected hands as opposed to oppressed, disgruntled labor. These objects hold a memory that we can feel when we engage with them.What O’Bryan writes, I believe, is the same for studying: What we learn holds the embodied energy that we had when we were studying it. If the studying was done when we felt pushed or under pressure, like someone walking a forced march, the odds are high that nothing really good is likely to emerge from our engagement with the learning materials. A box on someone’s to-do list would have been checked, but the much more important box inside of them, the place where the learnings are stored and later put to use, would still be empty. By contrast, if our energy is open, eager, curious, and rich in wonder and awe, wonderful things are far more likely to come from it.
2. The process is a big part of the point. I’m with writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who says, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” It is, I realized this week while writing, the same with studying. For me at least, it’s as much about traversing the challenges of the route as it is about really “finishing.” Mindfully appreciating the positive feelings that emerge from the learning is, in this context, almost as important as the learning itself. The good news is that we don’t have to choose one over the other.
3. Study with purpose. Jacqueline Suskin writes, “I also understand that I have the power to transform my experience into one of import by way of perspective. Poetry helps me with this process of understanding.” Same goes for studying! It’s a lesson I learned a long time ago from reading the autobiography of the Russian-born anarchist Peter Kropotkin. Over the course of his 78 years on the planet, Kropotkin studied relentlessly. The results of his studies showed up in a plethora of publications: He authored a dozen books, close to 50 pamphlets, and hundreds of articles.Kropotkin’s two best-known books are probably Mutual Aid, which was published in 1902 (the same year the Deli’s building was built), and Memoirs of a Revolutionist, which debuted three years earlier. The year before Memoirs came out in book form, Kropotkin agreed to have pieces of it published monthly in The Atlantic, which was then billed as “A Magazine of Literature, Art, Science and Politics.” From September 1898 until September of the following year, 11 different essays detailing Kropotkin’s life story came out in the magazine, making their way to a rather wide American readership.Kropotkin would have celebrated his 56th birthday the week after the third installment arrived on newsstands in early December of 1998. That month, The Atlantic also included essays by naturalist John Muir and author-poet Julia Ward Howe. What Kropotkin—a trained scientist, a writer, and a well-known anarchist—wrote really resonated:Our father gave us very little spending money, and I never had any to buy a single book; but if [my older brother] Alexander got a few rubles from some aunt, he never spent a penny of it for pleasure, but bought a book and sent it to me. He objected, though, to indiscriminate reading. “One must have some question,” he wrote, “addressed to the book one is going to read.”I believe Kropotkin’s brother was correct: If we start studying merely for the sake of telling a teacher that we did our homework, the odds that we’ll learn a lot are low. If, on the other hand, we study because we are truly curious, because we are eagerly seeking new insights, or because we are, as Kropotkin was, open to intellectual exploration, the odds that something good will come out of the work go up significantly.
4. Use study as a focused way to shift energy. Feeling down? Stuck? Unsure of what to do? In The Once and Future King, Merlin advises Arthur, “When you’re very sad, the only thing to do is to go learn something.” That fits my own philosophy fully. About 10 or 15 minutes of reading, or the same amount of a good podcast or YouTube video, can absolutely turn my entire day around.Whatever seems to be dragging you down is, at the same time, presenting itself as a topic worth pursuing. Anxious about what’s going on in the country right now? Start studying autocracy! Read about resistance! Take a deep dive into the workings of democracy.Jacqueline Suskin asks us, “What would it look like to find inspiration everywhere you look? It’s a sacred challenge to mine the wonder out of every day, out of trauma and pain, out of the mundane.” Poignantly, Jacqueline has found an infinitely amazing way to work that way with her poetry. For me, the solution is arrived at through study. I’ve come to understand that I can study pretty much anything and, within a short period of time, sometimes a matter of minutes, find myself enthralled and fascinated with something I had previously known next to nothing about. Study opens doors to magical learnings.
5. Create a study regimen. No one gets in shape with random workouts done only when time permits. You’ve got to plan, prepare, plot out your time, and practice with purpose in your own way. People who are in school have often been handed at least something of a regimen that they feel pressured to stick to. Once school is out, most of that structure for learning goes away. We can, though, commit to meaningful study time that, just like going to the gym, takes priority and keeps us engaged with intellectual “working out” at any point in our lives.I’ll add that if we believe, as I do, that the healthiest ecosystems are the most diverse, then we would be wise to learn from diverse sources. The fact that free choice drives this learning makes a huge difference. As historian and founder of Black History Month Carter Woodson writes, “​​What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.” Writing this enews every week has proven to be a wonderful way to keep my study skills sharp—I learn a lot every week, and, in the spirit of regeneration, I hope that I’m able to turn what I learn into insights and frameworks that help others to do the same.
6. Acknowledge the different types of studying. Some work is clearly the result of years and years of deep study and contemplation—the kind that creates a Deep Understanding that reflects “history, theory, practice.” The folks doing this work run ultramarathons of study—lifeworks of remarkable learning. But one can also get a lot of benefit from studying in much simpler, shorter sprints. My foray into “pennyology” took only minutes, but it definitely increased my energy for the rest of the day! What you read in this enews is often the result of shorter bursts of studying. In contrast, the 600-page Power of Beliefs in Business took years to produce! Both have merit, each in their own educational way.
7. Study with purpose. According to Jacqueline Suskin, “The moment we let go of our purpose, our own worth can go away with it. So holding on to purpose is in turn a radical act of self-preservation.” Of course, for many people, the purpose of studying is only to prove to a parent or boss that you’ve been doing what you were supposed to do. This is, I would suggest, kind of the corollary to industrial agriculture. A quick look from the outside would lead you to believe that good things are happening, but a deeper understanding makes clear that land is being harmed, the soil is being drained of nutrients, the topsoil is eroding, and more.Regenerative studying is the exact opposite. It’s done because we decided to do it. It comes from curiosity, freely chosen. It creates new learning. It opens intellectual and emotional doors, entry points we often didn’t know existed. It leads us to cool new places that open up fascinating new possibilities. It creates energy, both in the person doing the studying and in at least some of the people with whom the learnings are shared. Regenerative studying is purposeful, productive, and enjoyable. Rather than being exhausted by learning because someone else made you do it, we can get a big energy boost from regenerative studying. Free choice makes learning fun!Autocrats, I’ll add here, are not inclined to let people have access to unrestricted sources of information. Much of Peter Kropotkin’s life was spent smuggling banned books into or out of various countries—most especially in his Russian homeland. Limits on learning, autocrats naively believe, can keep people in line. In the long run, that never works. Countless people—Kropotkin included—chose prison rather than giving up their freely chosen studies. And books and learning have kept many incarcerated yet independent thinkers alive and energized, even when they were under enormous pressure from prison authorities.
8. Put our studies into practice—adapt, don’t adopt. The point of studying in this regenerative context is not to memorize. It’s to make meaning and make the world a better place. It’s to take in new knowledge, not repeat at a quiz contest what was learned by rote. It’s to learn in a way that adds depth and understanding to what we already knew the day before. It’s to learn from others and then adjust the learnings to fit what we do in our own workplaces.

Jacqueline Suskin says, “The strength of this mind is that it can turn any experience into one of worth, into something meaningful, into an answer or a gift of clarity.” This, in my experience, is exactly what regenerative studying is all about. Suskin says of her poetry work and her project, the Poem Store, “This work is transformative and healing.” That is exactly what I would say is true for me of studying.

The other day, I stumbled into some strong supporting evidence for the veracity and value of all this. It happened when I was talking to a longtime ZCoB staffer. Fionna Gault does great work and brings wonderful, grounded energy to what we do every day. Pretty much everyone has loved working with her over the 10-plus years she’s been a part of the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB). As part of the upcoming Roadhouse renovations, Fionna took on the task of reconfiguring the display cases that hold hundreds of sets of salt and pepper shakers. For context, I’ll say that in all the years we’ve worked together, I can’t remember Fionna ever mentioning the shakers other than to relate that a longtime guest wanted to donate a set, or that another customer had a question. The other evening, though, Fionna was on fire. She started sharing all sorts of cool learnings and at least half a dozen different ideas for how she wanted to organize them more effectively going forward. Here’s what she had to say on the subject of studying:

Being raised by parents who enjoyed studying in a time before the internet allowed me to see the joy that came through exploration and learning. The excitement of studying was the digging, the creative sources, the human connections that could be made. It was truly about the journey, often without knowing where it would even lead.

The opportunity to study the Roadhouse’s salt and pepper shaker collection has been a nearly bottomless pit. Every time I learn something new, I suddenly see something in the collection that I’ve just been looking at for more than 10 years. Having learned what a Van Tellingen is, I can now tell you there are at least three sets in the Roadhouse, and I’ve recently uncovered the patent for the set, held by Ruth Van Tellingen Bendel, and images from some of the books that she illustrated. Now I don’t just see cute little hugging bears on the Roadhouse shelf, I see a woman’s career. With over 2,000 shakers to look at, you can imagine my mind has been reeling!

Small studies like this, I’ve learned over and over again, start stories that later lead to places I would never have imagined existed. Fionna told me the other day that she’s now planning to attend a conference on salt and pepper shakers this coming summer! Who knew? Not her, and definitely not I. But in a practical sense, Fionna’s already-good energy will now be even better still, which impacts our ecosystem in a whole host of positive ways. And the Roadhouse shaker collection, which is already really cool, will soon be better organized and more engaging for guests.

Two or three years ago, my friend Gareth Higgins taught me that we never know where a story will end, especially when we’re in it. Regenerative studying can have positive effects far down the road, effects that we would never have imagined at the time we did the original work. On the same Saturday that that now-famous penny fell onto the top of my shoe, a longtime ZingTrain client texted me a photo of page 1 in his copy of The Power of Beliefs in Business. He’s been having a rough go of it and determined that a short stint of studying might help. He decided to sit himself down and do some reading. His wife, who I knew as well, passed away sadly and unexpectedly five years ago last week. Then the pandemic came. My heart goes out to him and his kids. He’d been meaning to read the Beliefs book for many years but hadn’t gotten around to it until then. Anyway, when he opened the book, he found his wife’s underlines and notes all over the pages. A sad but meaningful spiritual and emotional penny from heaven that studying—mine many years ago, his last weekend—made possible.

There’s a quote from writer Rebecca Solnit on the page my friend photographed for me. I believe it offers a good framing for any sort of study we decide to undertake. The work, Solnit makes clear, is not to find the “right answer” but to find ourselves and to study with purpose while staying open to surprises and unexpected ideas and insights. As Solnit writes in A Field Guide to Getting Lost:

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from.

Looking back all these years later, I realize that the Beliefs book actually began in ways that were not a whole lot different from the penny plopping down on my shoe. An unexpected finding I stumbled on while reading turned into a life-changing set of learnings. Strange things happen. Interesting outcomes, more often than not, ensue.

On Little Mazarn’s previous album, Mustang Island, there’s a song entitled “The Dark Pleasure of Endless Doing.” In it is a line written by Lindsey Verrill that sums up all this work on studying in a very lovely way:

Wonder and wander be untethered with our only connection to our senses and each other. Even if the path we ride is an endless circle, let us trust.

Study up a storm

Democracy and doing good business both depend on it

Feeling sort of uncertain as we move into the final months of 2025? Anxious about the state of the world that, like it or not, we are living in? Trying to figure out how to lead with dignity when the greater ecosystem around us seems stuck in darkness and the ascent of autocracy? World affairs going awry, millions of people about to go hungry, thousands getting killed in conflicts around the world… I struggle with what to do about all these things pretty much every day. Add to that the far more mundane issues involved in helping lead the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB)—costs going up, coolers going down. As you likely know by now, based on what I wrote last week, I find a way to keep going anyway. Small steps can feel insignificant, but they add up to make a big, big difference.

While there is not a lot that I can do to get things into shape at a national level, I can and do focus my energies on doing the right thing right here at home. Every morning, when I do my daily journaling, I remind myself to practice Richard Rohr’s belief that “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” Trying to make our workplaces more delicious and more democratic at the same time. Pushing against the national trend of corporate consolidation by spreading ownership amongst our staff ever more widely (over 300 ZCoBbers now own a Community Share). Working to advance the idea that apricots are an amazing and inspiring symbol of dignity and democracy.

This week, my call to action—to myself and maybe to you, too—is to lean into the spirit of generosity. Any time you find yourself in even the smallest bit of doubt about what to do, default, wherever it’s possible, to acting with generosity.

I know that generosity is not a quick fix, nor an overnight national panacea. But in the spirit of small steps, seemingly tiny acts of generosity do add up. In an era in which cruelty has come to dominate the headlines, the spirit of generosity becomes, quietly but compellingly, all the more significant. Small shifts toward taking a generous stance in the world are examples of the kind of caring and nonviolent practices that I wrote about a few weeks ago. As I pointed out then, we can practice nonviolence in both the workplace and the world around us. Generous individuals create generous organizations, which in turn contribute to increasingly generous communities, which, over time, come together to create countries in which the spirit of generosity is valued far more than power grabs, IPOs, and the like.

To be clear, I’m not talking about donating more money per se, though for those of us who can, that also makes sense. This is about spirit, something that is essentially free, but can, when used well in the long run, help us all to secure our freedom and grace and dignity. As Yi-Fu Tuan, the Chinese-born American author and geographer, observed, “A spontaneous act of generosity, performed with unselfish grace is an example of moral beauty.” And moral beauty is, without question, something we could sure use more of right now.

I’m not suggesting that it’s easy to stay focused on acts of generosity in the face of issues that seem far bigger. There are, of course, difficult days, days when withdrawing from the world feels like the most desirable option. After all, apathy often appears easier than active engagement. I know, though, that apathy is not a very good answer. Looking away from what’s wrong for long periods of time has never, in my many decades of leadership, served me well. Constructively communicating our visions, values, beliefs, and anxieties is a good way to practice the spirit of generosity by sharing our own spirit with those around us.

If I doubt all that, I can turn to the words of the inspiring and insightful writer Elif Shafak. Shafak—born in France, raised in Turkey, and now living in London—spent a year here in Ann Arbor teaching at the University of Michigan (U of M) from 2003 to 2004. I remember meeting her once on the patio at the Deli. She is a remarkable writer and one of the most courageous people I’ve come into contact with. In a conversation on the World Economic Forum podcast a couple of years back, she described a struggle I experience almost every day now: Is it better to speak up or tune out? Say something or hope we can survive by sitting on the sidelines in seeming “safety?” Here’s a bit of her very clear call to action:

I think as writers coming from wounded countries or wounded democracies … we don’t have the luxury of being apolitical. We don’t have the luxury of saying … I don’t want to talk about what’s happening outside the window. … When so much is happening outside the window, you need to speak out and speak out.

Anne Applebaum, an author and a historian of Central and Eastern Europe, has certainly practiced what Shafak is suggesting. She writes and speaks regularly about the dangers of autocracy, sharing significant historical lessons we can all learn from. Applebaum has an excellent and impactful, if also serious and sort of scary, essay in the new issue of the Atlantic. Entitled “The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark,” it offers eerily insightful observations about the state of the greater ecosystem of which all of us living in the U.S. are a part:

The image of the ugly American always competed with the image of the generous American. Now that the latter has disappeared, the only Americans anyone can see are the ones trying to rip you off.

I agree, sadly and somewhat reluctantly, with nearly all of what Applebaum writes. There is, though, one minor exception, a spot where we’re not 100% in alignment. I’m not quite ready to buy the belief that the “generous American” has disappeared. Generous Americans may be endangered, but we are absolutely not extinct.

Trying to revive increasingly hard-to-find traditions is, of course, what we have spent most of the last 44 years doing here at Zingerman’s. Since day one, we have dedicated ourselves to restoring centuries-old, culturally significant, full-flavored foodways that were nearly lost during the emergence of a modern-industrial model that’s much more focused on speed, efficiency, long shelf life, low prices, and consolidation of decision-making power and money. If we have contributed, in some small way, to the revival of artisan cheese and naturally leavened bread, we can certainly do something similar now for the spirit of generosity. Generosity may not be dominating news cycles, but it is still, quietly and effectively, very much alive. Of that I am certain. I live in an ecosystem in which generous-minded folks—coworkers, customers, suppliers, and supporters—are clearly in abundance.

The good news, then, is that we can help bring generosity back to its rightful position of prominence. After all, an organization in which the spirit of generosity is the norm and not an occasional “feel good for five minutes” aberration is almost certainly a more positive ecosystem to be part of. This is true in companies and true in countries. The national issues at hand right now are anxiety-evoking and highly uncomfortable, but they can be overcome. We can begin that work by leaning into the spirit of generosity and learning to live with it front-of-mind. We can do it even when—or especially when—the world around us appears to be going in an opposite, cruel, unusual, and wholly ungenerous direction.

In her most recent enews, British musician Dana Margolin wrote that she started her band Porridge Radio back in 2015 “to understand my own emotions through writing, to allow myself to be vulnerable and to feel and connect with my own experiences.” I didn’t start a band, but I have written a lot of books. For many of the same reasons Dana Margolin details.

While Dana Margolin was just beginning to get her music going in the U.K., I was working on The Power of Beliefs in Business. To Margolin’s point, in the process of doing the research, writing and reflecting, I learned a lot about myself, about business, about people, and about how big a role beliefs play in all aspects of our lives. These are six of my most significant learnings:

• So much of what we do, see, experience, and even taste in our lives is driven by what we believe.
• Our beliefs are all learned.
• If beliefs are learned, they can also be changed. As Elif Shafak learned from her grandmother, “We inherit our circumstances, we improve them for the next generation.”
• If you change a belief, you change the story that emerges from it.
• Negative beliefs lead to negative outcomes; positive beliefs create positive outcomes. And you cannot get positive outcomes from negative beliefs.
• We have the freedom, space, ability, and power to choose our beliefs. To wit, if we base our belief system on a scarcity model and assume that there won’t be enough to go around, then it is logical to conclude that everyone must be out only for themselves. A few people may gain wealth, but in the long run, things will not go well. But we don’t have to choose this kind of belief system. Instead, we can opt to believe in abundance and act accordingly—with generosity.

It will not surprise you, I’m sure, that we lean into the latter here at Zingerman’s. The spirit of generosity is a positive belief, a belief we both embraced and documented in our Statement of Beliefs. It’s the belief that most people want to help other human beings. That sharing is better than taking. That compassion and kindness are far better than cruelty. That if we help and share and collaborate, there will be enough for all. The Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti—Elif Shafak says she has read his 1954 book, The First and Last Freedom, twice—frames the issues at hand in this way:

Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity. … Why?

My answer is that we always have the option to choose. It may not be easy, it may go against the social or organizational grain, it may be uncomfortable or even have significant consequences, but in all those cases and then some, the decision to stick with the spirit of generosity is one we all get to make many times a day.

While the challenges with autocracy in the U.S. are new for many of us, they are anything but for Elif Shafak. She has lived through a lot. Most of her writing life has been spent in service of spreading the word about the drastic downsides of autocracy and the inspiring possibilities of art, human rights, democracy, and diversity. She is all too aware that these are challenging times. In an interview with Prospect magazine a year ago last month, Shafak said:

I think we’re living in the Age of Angst. Everyone is anxious, old and young, east and west; the only difference is that some are better at hiding it than others.

That may sound dark, but as Shafak notes, it is better to be dark and real about the situation than it is to simply disengage. As she puts it, “It would be more troubling if it became the Age of Apathy.” I agree. I’m all about anarchism (and also alliteration), but I have learned over the years the import of having antipathy towards apathy. It can be appealing, but it is never the answer.

So much of what we hope for in life, after all, depends on the spirit of generosity. Everything from democracy in our companies and countries to acts of everyday kindness, to the work we do to lean into collaboration and consensus. Without the spirit of generosity, none of them will work well. The evidence, unfortunately, is all around us. Looking at the headlines over the last few days, millions of Americans who have depended on federal food support systems for years are on the verge of having to live without. Which means that now is a good time to engage with the spirit of generosity more often and with more intensity.

Elif Shafak says that “Undemocratic countries are essentially unhappy countries.” That unhappiness is not without consequence. “If a nation is unhappy,” she adds, “sooner or later it will become unstable.” Shafak doesn’t use the word “generous,” but I will. Ungenerous countries and ungenerous companies are also unhappy places to be a part of. You cannot, I’ve come to believe, have happiness and well-being in a meaningfully healthy and authentic way without an abundance of generosity to “water” the cultural soil. If generosity dries up, democracy dies with it. Empathy evaporates. Dignity is diminished. Inclusion is eliminated. Compassion becomes increasingly hard to find, an activity to be commenced only in private settings, not a part of the publicly celebrated culture. Unhappiness and instability are almost sure to follow.

One American writer answering Elif Shafak’s call to constructive action, it seems, is novelist Marilynne Robinson. Robinson, who will turn 82 towards the end of this month, declared in a recent essay what I have also come to believe: “True Generosity is an Act of Courage.” It is also, she notes, “the noblest of virtues” and “an act of freedom.” Robinson also warns us that “the language of public life has lost the character of generosity.” The work to restore it, Robinson and I agree, belongs to all of us. That work does not begin in Washington. To the contrary, it’s work we can and need to do at every level of our lives. If you’re inspired or even just intrigued, take a two-minute break from reading and go take action right now! Generous countries are created by generous people. Generous companies help create generous communities. And the better each of us is prepared to stay true to the spirit of generosity when we’re under pressure, the better everything around us is going to go.

One little-focused-on element of the spirit of generosity is the work of learning to stay centered when we find ourselves under stress. In the workplace, that can mean practicing caring ways to stay calm even when someone comes at us with surprising strength in the middle of a meeting. We need to learn to meet that moment and be ready to return to generosity, even if at some level we want to lean into revenge. Given recent news reports about war plans, Lesson #18 in Timothy Snyder’s terrific On Tyranny is a bit chilling for me:

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

Snyder, of course, is talking about countries. On a far less dramatic scale, I believe the same is true in our organizations. We can all be caught off guard when others around us act in ways we were not ready for. Snyder’s advice remains sound in these far less significant but still important situations. The spirit of generosity can help us avoid reactivity. It reminds us to stay centered, to believe the best about others with whom we are struggling. And, I have come to believe, it’s impossible to build a healthy business without it. Provocative actions will always occur to throw us off our game. Remember: Remain calm. Do not fall for it.

Our future, at work and in the world, may well depend on our ability to do this well. British sociologist Gary Younge says:

It is difficult to imagine building a society that thrives on more sharing, redistribution and collective endeavour without a spirit of generosity—you cannot liberate humanity and dislike the people you are ostensibly doing it with and for at the same time.

How does all this happen here in the ZCoB? Off the cuff, here are just a few of the ways I can count:

• Deciding to start with positive beliefs in job expectations. See our Statement of Beliefs for more on this.
• Practicing our 10-4 Rule (at 10 feet, make eye contact and smile; at 4 feet, greet) amongst ourselves as well as with guests.
• Sharing our organizational frameworks, philosophies, and recipes liberally.
• Teaching everyone who works here how to think and act like a leader. It helps enhance home lives, makes kids likely to be healthier, and makes people who work here far more likely to ask for help when they’re struggling.
• Bringing better food and higher service standards to Ann Arbor. This helps make our community an easier sell to in-demand leaders in a range of fields who are being recruited from bigger cities.
• Sharing our practices with positive leaders on campus. This can make the university a more appealing place to come study or work, which in turn helps us do more business.
• Asking for—and being willing to accept—help all the time!
• Going “the extra mile” with both customers and coworkers. It’s our third step of great service for a reason. It means doing some small but meaningfully positive thing that no one saw coming. Done well, delight will always ensue!
• Creating an internal Community Chest that can be tapped by staff members who are in crisis.

Ignoring the import of generosity will not make it irrelevant. Creative business thinker and author Carol Sanford says that an organization can improve the health of the society around it simply by putting positive values and beliefs into action:

A business’s character—how it behaves, how it maintains integrity, how it lives up to its promises, how it engages with its people and its world, every action it takes no matter how large or small—affects the character of society. Responsible businesses understand and embrace the critical role they play.

The bottom line? Everything goes better when we do it with the spirit of generosity in our hearts and close at hand. Marketing guru Ann Handley, who regularly coaches her clients about effective writing, said this past weekend that “punctuation is a kind of wingman to your words; it helps your words confidently come alive in another’s mind.” I want to suggest that the spirit of generosity (I’m talking authentic spirit, not supposed spirit adopted to trick others into believing) can punctuate our actions more effectively. Done well, it helps one’s work “confidently come alive in another’s mind,” as Handley puts it. When we do what we do with generosity, our impact is almost certainly going to be significantly more positive!

In the face of so many social challenges, and as autocracy is on the rise, I believe one of the best things we can do is practice generosity with ever greater energy and intensity. Generosity works on our brains a bit like tai chi does for our bodies—with diligent practice, you can do it gracefully. It won’t make overt waves in the world, but done consistently well over time, it improves strength, balance, and grace. As Arthur Brooks notes, “Generosity is like the circulation of the blood, healthiest and best when it goes around and around.” The more we practice, the better our metaphorical blood flow will be. Practice won’t make perfect, but it will “make permanent,” Brooks concludes. Sasha Dichter, co-founder of 60 Decibels, adds this about generosity:

I’d argue that being wildly, inappropriately generous has two potential effects, if you’re open to them. The first is short-term, a kind of giddy euphoria that washes over you when you’re generous. That may lead directly to more right action. And the second (drip, drip, drip, over time) is an integration into one’s “code” (whatever it is, and wherever it comes from) of generosity as a core operating principle, an integral part of how we describe ourselves to ourselves. Plus, I like the fact that it’s about action. … The only way I’ve found to really change my behaviors is by actually changing my behaviors.

“Secret #46: The Spirit of Generosity” shares 22 tips on how to live the spirit of generosity in everyday life. Here are a half a dozen that strike me as especially meaningful right now, in the Age of Angst that Elif Shafak says we are in. They are the same things, I will emphasize, that we’d do well to try both at work and in the world around us. If we focus on making the spirit of generosity come alive, I am confident we will succeed. As Dana Margolin observes, “It is interesting to me that what you give your attention to is what has power over you.”

• Choose positive beliefs. Positive beliefs, or what my longtime friend, restaurateur Danny Meyer likes to call “generous assumptions,” are one of the most practical and ultimately most meaningful ways to make the spirit of generosity come alive. There’s a wealth of material on this subject in “Secret #41: Leading with Positive Beliefs.” This is not a vote for false positivity or putting Pollyanna up for president. But it’s important to remember that one can have negative beliefs about a problem (“We’re victims,” “It’s their fault”) or positive ones (“This sucks, but we can do something!”). The negative makes noise but ultimately leads nowhere (or at least nowhere we want to go). The positive framing, by contrast, leads to good long-term outcomes!
• Deal with dignity in every direction. Dignity is, by definition, based on the generous belief that everyone deserves it. As I wrote in “A Revolution of Dignity in the Twenty-First Century Workplace,” dignity is something we can do all day, every day!
• Keep making art. Art makes a difference! Writer Robin Marie MacArthur rightly reminds us that “Authoritarians hate art; art is subversive, truth-telling, unifying, liberatory, spirit-filled. Keep that spirit burning, fiery, alive.
• Make yourself authentically and effectively vulnerable I’m not suggesting we all need to bare all, all the time. But there are ways to share fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams in authentically meaningful ways. I have a feeling we all have anxiety about letting our true selves out into the world. I sure know that I do. Elif Shafak says:In a world that is ever shifting and unpredictable, I’ve come to believe it is totally fine not to feel fine. It is perfectly okay not to be okay. If truth be told, if from time to time you do not catch yourself overwhelmed with worry and indecision, demoralised and exhausted, or even incandescent, maybe you are not really following what is going on—here, there and everywhere.”
• When in doubt, give it out. This is a small practice that I made up for myself when I was working on “Secret #46: The Spirit of Generosity.” It was a way to overcome my tendency to think of a small act of generosity, but then, if I didn’t act quickly, have my conscious brain override the original thought with what seemed like a list of good reasons not to follow through. These are little things—the thought of sending flowers to a friend, writing a thank-you email to a coworker, sending a taste of a new product to a customer’s table, gifting a Bakehouse loaf to a bread-loving guest who hadn’t yet tried that particular variety. All of these, each seemingly minuscule on their own, add up to have a big long-term impact. We can keep the generosity flowing in small ways that are ultimately meaningful!
• Be willing to unlearn. Elif Shafak says that “unlearning is an important part of learning.” With that thought in mind, our collective ecosystem is going to have to unlearn the idea that consolidation of wealth and power is positive and that cruelty is perfectly okay, and start, instead, to lean back into the spirit of generosity. Our organizations can lead the way. I’m confident that we can make that happen: Good things are on the horizon, the spirit of generosity is resilient, and the return to prominence of the generous American, while it may not be right around the corner, is coming.
• Bring generous energy to everything! As my friend Anese Cavanaugh taught me nearly 20 years ago, it’s always a wise move to “set our intent” before we enter a meeting, a conversation, or really an engagement of any sort. I know from experience that if I imagine myself bringing generous energy into whatever encounter I’m about to have, the vibe will, indeed, pass through to other people. Coming into an encounter with the intent of being generous is a quiet yet generous radical act right now. I’ll go with what Sarah Harris from the band Dolly Creamer sings in “The Vibe,” a song on her 2020 debut album, Best of Luck. As you may remember, I wrote a good bit about Sarah last week. Here are the lyrics that come to mind—I’m right there with her:well I am always working on my vibe
  I am not promising it is always high
  but I am promising
  I am always working on my vibe

In the metaphorical organizational ecosystem model, the spirit of generosity is, like the title of Dolly Creamer’s new single, “Like Water.” In the tune, Sarah’s lyrics remind us all that even under great duress, we can all still “be flexible like water.” Things may look grim on any given day and autocrats may be trying to lock us out of decision-making, but as Sarah sings at the end of the song, our small actions add up: “I see great promise as water trickles through the doors.”

In a modern world filled with tall buildings and high-tech innovation, water can seem insignificant to the casual observer—especially here in Michigan, where we have it in abundance. Over time, though, water wears down pretty much any obstacle it comes into contact with. Autocracy builds walls, but the spirit of generosity can, drop by drop, break them down.

In an Age of Angst, generosity will, slowly but surely, get us where we want to go. In that context, I’m reminded of this quote from insightful author Margaret Atwood, who will be on stage with Elif Shafak in London a week from Friday in “Words Like Fire,” a talk about writers and the state of the world:

Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Learn how to make a positive impact

Need to catch up? Here’s Part 2.

21. Little Kim’s Eggs in Purgatory 

Creamy gochujang marinara, chickpeas, soft egg, served with Zingerman’s toast 

Chef Ji Hye Kim’s Eggs in Gochujang Purgatory is at the top of my list. It’s got a great gochujang (Korean chile sauce) spiked tomato marinara, lots of tender chickpeas, all topped with a sunny-side-up egg. Toasted Bakehouse Farm bread is served on the side! This super tasty treat is inspired by the culinary internship Ji Hye did many years ago in Rome. And that is only the opening bid on the great meals you’ll be able to eat and enjoy from the Little Kim kitchen!

Eggs in Purgatory is quite common in Italy, and other Mediterranean cultures make their own version of it as well. And now you can get Ji Hye’s awesome Korean-accented version at Little Kim! Worth driving over just to eat it!

22. Little Kim’s Paneer Sandwich!

A lovely lunch offering from our new vegetarian restaurant

One of the early favorites on the Little Kim menu is the Paneer Sandwich. Chef and managing partner Ji Hye Kim shared a bit about it:

It’s a paneer sandwich with Japanese curry mayo, farm tomatoes, slivers of red cabbage and pickled red onions, and the most delectable cilantro chutney from our line cook Raunaq. It’s based on Chef Nella Paniz’s Green Chutney—cilantro, serrano chiles, fresh mint, chickpeas, and a little lemon and salt.. People have been loving it!

The Paneer is flash-fried and then stacked onto slices of Bakehouse Farm Bread along with Japanese Curry Mayo, the Green Chutney, some shredded red cabbage, and pickled onions. Super tasty!

Little Kim is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11:30 am–5 pm. Swing by for lunch, either eat in or carry out! This sandwich is sure to become a signature item soon!

23. Herb-Crusted Whitefish at the Roadhouse

One of the Great Lakes’ greatest culinary hits

This dish has quietly become one of the regular bestsellers at the Roadhouse! And for good reason. It’s delicious! Fresh Lake Superior whitefish rubbed down with Dijon mustard, topped with herbs (basil and parsley) and toasted breadcrumbs, and then cooked until it’s golden brown on the griddle.

My grandmother cooked whitefish for the family regularly, just lightly floured, salted, peppered, and pan-fried. She used to tell us that fish was brain food and that we should eat it regularly to increase our intelligence. The Roadhouse’s wonderful Herb-Crusted Whitefish is sort of a 21st-century way to do just that. It comes with that truly remarkable Carolina Gold Rice and some sautéed spinach. I think it’s a meal that would make my great-grandfather and my grandmother happy. 

Truly terrific taste of the Great Lakes—really good American food at its finest!

24. Butterscotch Pudding with a Bit of Better Butter

A long-standing Roadhouse classic is more flavorful than ever!

If you’ve eaten at the Roadhouse in recent years, you’ll likely already know that the Butterscotch Pudding is one of the tastiest and best-selling desserts! Made with Muscovado brown sugar and plenty of Calder Dairy cream, topped with a small bit of French fleur de sel sea salt, the pudding has been a fan favorite—the Roadhouse makes many gallons of it every week. That’s a lot of slow simmering and a LOT of stirring!

Last summer, the already amazing after-dinner treat took a step up to an even higher level of excellence when the Roadhouse chefs started using the remarkably good Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter in the pudding. Wow! Like I said, it’s been great for years, but now it’s getting more attention than ever! Creamery, richer, smoother, and more delicious!

The benefits of the Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter are evident in every creamy, smooth spoonful. If you’re taking some of this stuff home—or for that matter, if you’re enjoying it at the Roadhouse—try it with a bit of a Bakehouse Ginger Jump-Up cookie crumbled on top. Pretty terrific!

25. Tellicherry Texas Brisket at the Roadhouse

A marvelous taste of tradition 

Over the course of the last six months, the terrificness of Texas BBQ has been front and center at the Roadhouse—and Head Chef Bob Bennett is bringing it to life in truly stellar form. He’s starting with super-premium briskets from Niman Ranch, known for their humane animal practices and exceptional flavor. The briskets are rubbed down with a LOT of the amazing farm-to-table Tellicherry black pepper from India that many of you will already know well from our wonderful pepper fries. Add some salt, a lot of hours of smoke over whole Michigan oak logs, and even more time in the oven after that, and you end up with a tender, super tasty, smoky, peppery, and ultra-delicious piece of meat! 

Much to my surprise, Texas BBQ like this—incredibly popular today in the Longhorn State—is a much more modern addition to Texas eating than I’d have imagined. It’s only in the late ’50s and early ’60s that Texas BBQ took off—right around the time President Lyndon B. Johnson was here in Ann Arbor delivering the University of Michigan commencement address in May of 1964, Texas BBQ was getting really big! It had long been made from various cuts of meat, but the president’s caterer, Walter Jetton, is who seemingly decided that Texas BBQ should be made only from brisket. Over time, the popularity grew and grew and grew. And brisket, once an inexpensive cut that was hard to sell, became highly prized!

The big point is, it’s terrific! If you’re a meat-eater, swing by soon and score some! With the quality of the Niman Ranch beef, that amazing black pepper from India, and the oak smoke … man, oh man, you’ll have a marvelous meal!

26. Tiny Weddings at Cornman Farms

Three days of small ceremonies with big significance!

What sort of wedding one hopes for is, like anything else in our lives, mostly about what we want, not what others will think we should do. The answer to that question is certainly up to you. We love to host big weddings at Cornman Farms, and we do just that nearly every weekend in the summer! On the other hand, you might be someone who wants to avoid a lot of the coordination that accompanies getting a few hundred people together for a wedding. If, instead, you would like to create a super cool and very intimate event at an exceptionally memorable nationally-recognized farm venue right here in Washtenaw County, we can help! 

Tabitha Mason, one of the two managing partners at Cornman, says,

Each year, we dedicate a number of days at our property to host a series of all-inclusive micro weddings in partnership with the best local Michigan wedding vendors. Our expert event producers coordinate everything from the ceremony to the cake cutting, making each wedding feel spontaneous, effortless, and stress-free. Meanwhile, each year we will feature an exclusive seasonal design from one of Michigan’s top event designers. The result is The Tiny Wedding—an elopement for the couple who desires the simplicity of a courthouse wedding but envisions a beautifully curated experience.

What is included in the Tiny Wedding package?

• A really wonderful little wedding ceremony with a totally official officiant
• An hour and a half of wedding time at an award-winning, nationally recognized venue
• A wedding coordinator (and witness if needed)
• Seasonal design and decor
• Our wedding photographer and 45 digital images
• A super tasty cake handcrafted by the crew at Zingerman’s Bakehouse
• One sparkling wine toast
• A surprise wedding keepsake
• Bouquet(s) and/or boutonnière(s) (a total of two)
• A lifetime of limitless joy and good memories!

27. Dark Chocolate-Covered Emirati Honeycomb from Dubai

A magical confectionery combination 

If you’re looking for a gift for someone who loves great food and is intrigued by the unusual, this rare, terrifically delicious, sweet treat from Dubai might just do the trick. For years now, the folks at Mirzam have been quietly making some of the best chocolate confectionery around. This exceptional combination of spun-honey-“seafoam” dipped into bean-to-bar 62% dark chocolate is one of the best examples of their cross-cultural creativity. 

To make this rare and magical confection, local mountain honey is brought to a light boil with a small bit of baking soda and vinegar. It makes the confectionery equivalent of the kind of foam that forms along the seashore from the waves, hence the name. You can imagine it as sort of a caramelly dark “honey brittle;” it’s made first into big sheets, then broken by hand into smaller chunks. The “honeycomb” creates a light, gently crunchy, melt-in-your-mouth confection that’s then dipped into 62% dark chocolate. Its chewy, gently bitter, subtly sweet flavor is unlike anything else I’ve ever eaten. 

Available at the Candy Store.

28. Kieron’s Cured Ham from Zingerman’s Cornman Farms

18 ingredients come together to make a great holiday ham

We’ve been making Cornman’s co-managing partner and chef Kieron Hales’ recipe annually for many years. They have, for those fortunate enough to get one, become a happy part of the Zingerman’s holiday tradition. How’s the ham made? Here’s what the British-born Mr. Hales says:

We take a fresh ham … Bone it and clean it. Then we net the ham. We dry rub it with salt and spices like clove, cumin, nutmeg … there are actually 18 ingredients. We hang it for a week, so the air circulates around it and it begins to cure. Then it goes into a “wet rub” with sherry, brandy, and a good bit of honey from the farm. It stays in there for about four and a half weeks. After it comes out, it spends two days drying. We smoke it for 16 hours over oak that was harvested in northern Michigan. Then we sous vide (low temperature-controlled cooking) it for 24 hours, then baste it with the honey we get from the bees here at the farm, Dijon mustard, and Gingras organic apple cider vinegar, and then blast it in the oven at high temperature to encrust it.

Kieron’s love and passion, along with the quality of the ingredients, come through loud and clear. Just heat it at home and serve, and you will have a marvelously memorable main course for your holiday meal, not to mention some lovely leftovers for sandwiches and snacks the following day. Each ham is about two to three pounds and serves four to five people. 

29. Summerdown Peppermint Chocolates

Made with English Black Mitcham peppermint

I love these remarkable mint chocolates, the story of the Colman family who created them to help revive the nearly lost tradition of heirloom variety British mint growing, the exceptional elegance, the balance of dark chocolate, cool mint, and sweet cane sugar. Let me just say I eat very little confectionery because I prefer bread and cheese, but I have a hard time if we don’t have some of these on hand in our house!

Mint-growing like this had gone missing from the British agricultural scene for half a century. The Colmans have brought it back, and in a wonderfully sustainable way to boot! As Sir Michael Colman, then already in his late 70s, said to the Guardian in the summer of 2007, “Everyone thought I was crazy. But occasionally in life you have to take a step and say to people, maybe there is more to this than you thought.” The Colmans use the Black Mitcham variety of mint, and man, is it marvelous!

There are Peppermint Creams (like an amazing artisan version of York Peppermint Patties). And also thin, crunchy Peppermint Crisps—like thin tiles of dark chocolate loaded up with slivers of caramelized fresh mint leaves! And now we have Peppermint Cream Dominoes—thin, creamy, domino-shaped rectangles of 55% dark chocolate and mint oil made from the Black Mitcham. 

Available at the Candy Store, Deli, and Mail Order.

30. Zzang!^® Bars from the Candy Manufactory

Exceptional artisan confectionery

The first of the now many amaZing artisan candy bars we craft at the Candy Manufactory! It remains a huge seller and for good reason! It has beautiful balance, great complexity, and a lovely, long, delicious finish!

For those of you who aren’t yet familiar, a Zzang! bar is a homemade peanut butter and honey caramel, mixed with giant-size Virginia Runner peanuts, dipped into dark chocolate, all accented by a small pinch of sea salt. A customer stopped me the other day to sing the Zzang! bars’ praises, and said it was “maybe the best candy bar I’ve had in my entire life!”

Psst: Did you miss Part 1? Find it here.

11. Zingerman’s Food Tours Make Terrific Gifts

A week of tasting terrific, traditional, full-flavored food at its source

If you want to go big on a gift this year, it’s for me to imagine anything more exciting than a seat (or two) on a Zingerman’s Food Tour. No matter which of the 15 different destinations you choose—Spain, Italy, Ireland, Oaxaca (Mexico), Korea, or Catalunya—the voyage is guaranteed to be beyond great. Visit with small artisan producers you’re unlikely to find on your own; meals cooked for the group in home kitchens; behind-the-scenes winery tours, and so so so much more! Imagine coming to the Deli for the first time and finding all those amazing artisan foods staring you in the face? And then imagine finding out for the first time that we have all of them open to taste? Now take all that and imagine doing that tasting in the places in which those foods were crafted. And having that tasting guided by the people who make them! Add in some remarkable scenery, beautiful farmers markets, and maybe a little local music, and … you’re starting to get the idea of what a Zingerman’s Food Tour is like!

12. Cultured Butter Croissants from the Bakehouse

A Bakehouse classic uses better butter to get even better than ever!

We’ve been making croissants for nearly 30 years now! And to be clear, they have always been really, really good. Nevertheless, in the last few months, we’ve done what we’ve done thousands of times over our now nearly 44 years in business—make a meaningful quality improvement to raise the flavor bar on a product that was already widely appreciated. By starting to use the Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter in the croissants, what has long been really good, just got better still. As we say so often, you really can taste the difference! The flavor and aroma are both bigger, more complex, and more buttery. Try it for yourself—break one open and stick your nose in to take in the aroma! To my taste—I should smell—they are remarkable. And the flavor follows suit!

P.S. Same goes for the Juliet Almond Croissants, Chile Cheddar Croissants, Parmesan and Prosciutto Croissants, and the terrific Pain au Chocolat (Chocolate Croissants) that we make with dark chocolate from French Broad Chocolate Company in Asheville! Kudos to the Bakehouse on taking classic croissants to incredible new heights of flavor!

13. Ginger Scones from the Bakehouse

A luscious little bit of buttery baked goodness to brighten your day

Although we’ve been baking these beauties for many years now, they remain a bit of what we call a “Zecret”—many long-time customers who are well-versed in the world of Zingerman’s know them well and love them. But for a first-time visitor, though, they’re easy to miss. 

The scone dough itself is incredible (as retired Bakehouse co-founder Frank Carollo would always say, “just enough flour to hold the butter and heavy cream together”), and that’s spiked with spicy cubes of crystallized ginger from the South Pacific (which means they’re dipped into sugar syrup then dusted with coarse sugar crystals). And now, just like those better-than-ever French Croissants, we’ve begun making the scones—Ginger, Currant, and Lemon—with that terrific Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter. And once again, what was already great got better still! It’s hard to imagine, but they are even more buttery than ever!

The ginger is lively but not dominant; the butter is rich but not over-the-top. Beautifully balanced, comfortably complex, and with a lovely long finish, the ginger scones are the epitome of how we think of “full flavor” here at Zingerman’s. A quick and easy way to add a bit of world-class eating to your day! You can buy ginger scones at the Bakeshop, Deli, and Roadhouse every day. And thanks to the Mail Order crew, we’re shipping more and more of these classic tastes of Zingerman’s to pastry lovers all over the country with each passing year! 

PS: If you want to bake Ginger Scones at home, pick up a copy of Zingerman’s Bakehouse!

14. Newly Arrived Olive Oil from Western Greece

Outstanding organic olive oil from Navarino Icons

Captain Vassilis Constantakopoulos was born in 1935 in the small village of Diavolitsi in Messenia in the southwest of Greece, due north of the town of Kalamata, and due east of the island of Sicily. As a young man, he was forced to flee the village for Athens during the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s. He went on to become a leading Greek businessman, most of his work centering around shipping, sailing, and the seacoast. Navarino was one of the capstones of his long and creative career. It’s the leading sustainable resort on the Mediterranean! 

The Navarino Icons segment of their work is very aligned with our longtime focus here at Zingerman’s on full-flavored and traditional foods. Offering, as they say, “Authentic food products inspired by the culinary history of the Peloponnese region, they are true to Captain Constantakopoulos’ hope to honor the kind of simple and delicious country dishes he grew up on.

Last year, we scored some of their limited-edition, single-estate extra virgin olive oil. It’s made from the beloved, native-to-Greece, Koroneiki olives. The trees are farmed organically, without any chemicals. All the olives are hand-picked, which is super labor-intensive and very costly but makes for exceptional oil. They are then pressed within two hours at a local mill—the impressively short time between the tree and pressing is a significant contributor to keeping the oil’s quality so high. The flavor is fantastic. Big, bold, and peppery, but not overpowering. I’m impressed anew each time I eat it. 

The oil is terrific on toast and great on salad greens. I used it the other evening to finish a dish of Mancini spaghetti, sautéed radish greens, and Fishwife anchovies. I added a bit of the IASA peperoncino as well! Great on sautéed fresh fish, potatoes, or pasta, or, for that matter, pretty much anything!

Available at the Deli and Mail Order.

15. 2024 Harvest Olive Oil from the Marqués de Valdueza

Amazing flavor from a 1000-year-old family business in western Spain 

If you’re looking for a wonderful, world-class olive oil, you might well want to buy a bottle of the Marqués de Valdueza from the 2024 harvest. The family—formally known as the House of Álvarez de Toledo—has been a fixture in Spanish history for something like 10 centuries. The farmland on which the olives grow was first worked by the family in 1624. This makes the current oil we have on hand the 400^th anniversary edition of what is made on the Marques de Valdueza lands. Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, who leads the family business today, is the 13^th generation to formally carry on the family tradition.

Everything about this special oil speaks to its excellence. The olives are all carefully picked by hand. Harvesting is done quite early in the autumn, when yields are significantly lower, but the flavor of the oil is far more interesting. The trees are grown with much wider row spacing than most of the huge commercial farms that have been planted in the southern part of the country to allow the wind to pass freely through the trees, reducing pests, and encouraging the roots to spread naturally without being piled on top of the root system of the surrounding trees. Most importantly, in the moment, the flavor of the Valdueza oil is exceptional. It’s made from a unique blend of four different varietals that grow on the farm—Hojiblanca, Picual, Arbequina, and the rare and unique to the region, Morisca. It has a super fine, long finish with well-balanced complexity.

The Valdueza oil is wonderful, eaten simply, with Paesano or Rustic Italian bread from the Bakehouse. Oil of this quality is at its best when used to finish a dish—drizzle it over fresh fish straight from the broiler, just-sautéed local spinach, or a salad. 

Available at the Deli and Mail Order.

16. Vintage Sardines from 2020–2023

Amazing and hard-to-find luxury for tinned fish lovers

Although most mid-century North Americans experienced sardines as low-end eating, they’ve actually occupied the other end of the culinary spectrum in Europe. According to John Thorne, writer of the simply wonderful, Simple Cooking, Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland, started London’s first sardine tasting club in 1935. Writing in the Spanish journal Gourmetour, Jose Carlos Capel said, 

In the larders of some European gourmets, tins of sardines in olive oil occupy a place of honour alongside pots of foie gras with truffles or jars of caviar. A cult has built up around these canned fish, which, with its preaching of the special qualities of the best brands, the correct year and maturity period within the tin, constitute a kind of gastronomical religion.

The most sumptuous sardines are those that have been allowed to mature and mellow for years—if not decades—before they’re eaten. I like to eat the aged sardines in simple ways—next to a small green salad, or with some toast topped with a bit of butter or extra virgin olive oil. A sprinkling of sea salt seals the deal. In this Breton fleur de sel would be geographically correct, and its delicate texture would be a good complement for the sardines. 

Available at the Deli and Mail Order.

17.  M’Hamsa Couscous from the Mahjoub family in Tunisia

Hand-rolled and sun-dried by a fourth-generation family business

The couscous is comparably world-class! It altered my entire image of what couscous could be! I love it!

The couscous comes to us from the Mahjoub family’s farm, about an hour outside of Tunis, in the small town of Tebourba. They grow the wheat for the couscous on the farm, mill it, and then use the resulting semolina flour to make couscous. They roll each small round by hand and then dry it all slowly and naturally in the sun. M’hamsa actually means “by hand.” “Phenomenal” is, far and away, an understatement when it comes to this stuff. When you cook it, your whole kitchen will smell like wheat. It’s also incredibly easy to prepare, so easy that I was skeptical when we first started stocking it 15 years or so ago. But sure enough, all you do is use 1½ parts water for 1 part couscous. Salt the water lightly, bring it to a boil, then add the couscous. Stir, cover, turn off the heat altogether, and let the couscous steam in the pot for about 12 minutes. It should come out light and almost fluffy once you move it around a bit with a fork. 

While the couscous is cooking, cut some fresh asparagus spears into 1-inch pieces. Sauté the pieces in hot olive oil. Sprinkle with a small bit of sea salt, stir, and cook til tender. When it’s done, remove them from the pan. Keep the oil hot, crack a couple of eggs per person, and cook lightly (or longer if you like them that way). I recommend the eggs over easy, so the yolk breaks nicely onto the dish. Additionally, coarsely chop some toasted almonds (or pine nuts, hazelnuts, or walnuts).

Available at the Deli and Mail Order.

18. 2025 Holiday Blend Coffee

An annual tradition from the Coffee Company

Every year, the Coffee Company crew convenes to come up with a way to take some of the year’s best single-origin coffees and bring them together in the form of an exceptional blend. I look at it as something akin to a rock supergroup, where each member has made great music on their own, but gets together with a handful of other great players for fun to produce music they couldn’t create on their own. The coming together isn’t permanent—it’s a special short-term collaboration that creates some really cool outcomes!  

This year’s Holiday Blend is a duo—beans from our long-time friends at Daterra in Brazil and also from Hacienda Miramonte in Costa Rica. The crew at the Coffee Company offers, 

Their flavors are playing especially nicely together this year, leaving us with an unmistakable richness and smooth finish. Think toasted nuts, caramels, and a silky smooth texture. Comfort and joy in a cup!

The Holiday Blend is designed to appeal to both serious coffee aficionados and those who are new arrivals to the specialty coffee scene. A bag makes a great gift—it’s wonderful way to send a taste of Zingerman’s to a coffee-loving loved one or colleague, and a beautiful addition to gift baskets! Enjoy it now while it lasts!

19. Il Molino Organic Apricot Preserves at the Deli

Lovely artisan jam handmade from Lazio in Central Italy

I just tasted some of this jam again the other day when I was walking through the Deli, and it was out for sampling.  I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, but it’s pretty darned amazing stuff.  The team at the Il Molino estate (a restored 17th-century farmhouse) in Central Italy does a marvelous job of making exceptional jam out of the wonderfully flavorful organic apricots that they harvest on their lands every June.  

My friend Lex Alexander in North Carolina, who’s studied the subject of artisan jam making for many decades, always tells me that apricot is the hardest fruit to successfully put up in preserves. With Lex’s wise words in mind, I am extra appreciative of the work of the team Il Molino—they’re a great way to put an inspirational bit of apricot into your daily dining, and a wonderful way to appreciate the beauty of the apricot at its absolute best. 

20. Brand New Vegan Chocolate Cake from the Bakehouse

Tasty and terrific with vanilla oat milk ermine frosting

Can you really make a super delicious vegan chocolate cake? No eggs? No butter? No honey? Yes, you can! This is evidence thereof from the Bakehouse team! That’s right—lots of flavor and verifiably vegan!

The Ermine frosting that covers the cake may be new to most 21st-century Americans, but its origins go back to the 1880s, when it was also known variously as “milk frosting” or “boiled milk frosting.” It’s made by starting with a flour-based roux—for this vegan cake, we’re using oat milk. The chocolatiness comes from cocoa powder crafted by the Dutch firm of Bensdorp, one of the first in the world to make cocoa powder. The vanilla is the real deal—from the island of Madagascar.

The results are terrific! Great anyway you like to eat your cake—alongside an AeroPress-brewed cup of the 2025 Holiday Blend at the Coffee Company, the marvelous Mexican Chiapas. Be sure to serve your cake at room temperature to get the full flavor!