Salt, Ink, & Soul
Writing on food, family, and identity
“I write so that our food, our struggles, and our stories are never forgotten, but carried forward as legacy.”
Support the Journey
Salt, Ink & Soul is a reader-supported journal built from memory, flavor, and truth. If these articles move you ,consider helping keep them alive.
Felix the Fox Collection
Gentle adventures from the Whispering Woods — stories of courage, friendship, and resilience for children, and for the adults who read beside them.
Latest Post
-
Grams Not Guesses
So I wanted to cook, Not to become a chef. Not to impress anyone. I wanted to cook because I loved sweets. I loved good food. That pure, unsophisticated craving for something warm, buttery, something you pull out of the oven and burn your tongue on because you just couldn’t wait. But there’s a difference between
-
Mise en Place and the Mess That Made Me
When I first started cooking, it was chaos. A beautiful, clumsy, borderline dangerous kind of chaos. Pots clanged, drawers opened, and knives were in all the wrong places. Every piece of silverware I owned was used, and every pan was dirty. And the recipe? I was reading it while I cooked, squinting through steam and panic, trying
-
When the Lord Smiles on You (And Brings Soup)
I’ve lived in New Mexico for years now. Long enough to know the smell of roasting green chile means autumn and that the line between red and green isn’t just about salsa—it’s about identity. Long enough to pretend I’ve tasted it all. But that’s the thing about New Mexico. You never really taste it all. This
-
Memory Is a Beautiful Lie: On Prince, the Midwest, and 1999
Being from the Midwest, Prince holds a special kind of weight. It’s not just admiration. It’s proximity. Growing up in the Quad Cities, we weren’t Minneapolis, but we were close enough to feel like distant relatives of the revolution. Close enough to claim some of the Minneapolis Sound as our own. He was our alien. Our genius. Our mirrorball Messiah who
-
The Sound of Something True: On Bob Marley’s Legend
By Kyle J. Hayes Since I began this journey through the Greatest Albums of All Time, I’ve never been more excited to write about an album. And that sentence feels too small for what I’m about to say. Because this—Bob Marley’s Legend—is not just an album. It’s a threshold. A bridge. A sanctuary. A memory you carry
-
Homecook, Not Hero
By Kyle J. Hayes I didn’t go to the Culinary Institute of America. Never wore crisp whites in some Michelin-starred kitchen, never barked orders across a brigade. I didn’t stage in Paris, and no, I never took a sabbatical to harvest sea salt in Portugal or study fermentation under a Zen monk in Kyoto. I’m
Salt,Ink, & Soul 