Tag: survival

  • The Quiet Reckoning of Leftovers

    The Quiet Reckoning of Leftovers

    Salt, Ink & Soul — Humanity Through Food Series

    There’s a certain hush that falls after Thanksgiving — not the fullness or fanfare of the holiday itself, but a softer, more settling quiet. The kind that wraps around a home like a warm blanket. The kind that whispers that the celebration may be over, but the comfort isn’t.

    Because today is when the real magic begins.

    Today is the day the leftovers come alive.

    The fridge becomes its own little universe of possibility — containers lined like tiny promises. Dressing that deepens overnight, turkey that’s ready to reinvent itself into a dozen different meals, pound cake that turns into breakfast without anyone questioning a thing. Leftovers are the afterglow of a holiday well-lived, and maybe even better lived the day after.

    For those of us raised to stretch meals like muscles, leftovers weren’t just “extra food.” They were reassurance. Security. A quiet kind of abundance that steadied you through the next few days. Maybe even next week.

    Leftovers meant:

    We’re okay. At least for now.

      There’s a joy to leftovers that feels almost childlike — the thrill of opening the fridge and imagining what new creation you’ll craft from what remains.

    Turkey and rolls?

    That’s a sandwich ritual.

    Dressing and gravy?

    That’s comfort in a bowl.

    Macaroni and cheese?

    Somehow it gets better every time it’s reheated — nobody knows the science, but nobody questions it.

    In a world obsessed with novelty, leftovers teach us a quieter truth:

    There is beauty in returning to what you already have, in transforming what remains, in finding comfort in the familiar.

    The feast is flashy.

    The leftovers do the real work.

      And then there’s the kind of generosity that only shows up after the plates are cleared — the people who send you home with more than you expected, more than you asked for, maybe even more than you felt worthy of receiving.

    The friend who packs you a dessert “just in case.”

    The auntie who fills your container until the lid strains.

    The host who insists you take another tray, their eyes saying what words never do:

    I want you fed.

    I want you steady.

    I want you to be cared for when you walk out that door.

    That is its own kind of love.

    A quiet, intentional love that doesn’t perform — it provides.

    Sometimes the food you bring home is better than anything you ate at the table, not because of the taste, but because someone wanted you to have it.

    Leftovers can be a love language, too.

      If the holiday feast is the performance, the leftovers are the truth.

    They reveal:

    • what was made with abundance

    • what was shared freely

    • what was loved most

    • what people wanted you to take with you

    • and what gets better when it rests

    Leftovers tell the story of a household — the real version. The version where people quietly look out for each other. The version where meals stretch because life requires it. The version where comfort doesn’t disappear once the guests go home.

    Leftovers tell us that survival doesn’t always look heroic.

    Sometimes it looks like enough food for tomorrow.

    Sometimes it looks like mac and cheese after a long day.

    Sometimes it looks like a pound cake eaten slowly because it feels like a blessing wrapped in foil.

      Leftovers aren’t scraps.

    They’re gifts.

    Gifts of ease.

    Gifts of warmth.

    Gifts of a holiday that lingers.

    Gifts from people who fed you in more ways than one.

    They carry the flavor of yesterday into today.

    They soften the week ahead.

    They remind you that abundance doesn’t always roar —

    sometimes it whispers from behind a refrigerator door, waiting for you to reach in and begin again.

    Because leftovers aren’t just evidence of what you had.

    They’re evidence of what still remains.

    And sometimes?

    That’s more than enough.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • A Love Letter to Potlucks, Church Basements, and Aluminum Trays

    A Love Letter to Potlucks, Church Basements, and Aluminum Trays

    Salt, Ink & Soul — Humanity Through Food Series

    There’s a special kind of magic that happens when a community decides—quietly, without fuss—that everyone needs to be fed.

    Not in some grand, official sense.

    Not with grants or committees or agendas.

    Just fed.

    Fed the old-fashioned way:

    On a folding table in a warm room that smells like memory, grief, pride, and somebody’s auntie’s best Fried Chicken.

    I’ve always had a soft spot for potlucks. Maybe it’s because people bring their best selves to those tables—literally. Every dish arrives covered in foil and hope, carried by someone who has spent the whole morning stirring and tasting and adjusting because they wanted to show what they could do. Not to brag. But to share.

    A potluck is a quiet confession:

    This is the dish I trust to speak for me.

    And there’s something beautiful about the way people place their food on the table and then pretend not to watch. They hover from a distance—not out of ego, but out of longing. Waiting for that smile. That small nod. That moment when someone tastes their dish and closes their eyes, just for a heartbeat, because something familiar touched them.

    You can’t buy that moment.

    You can only feed it.

    Church basements have their own flavor of truth.

    The ceilings are low. The chairs wobble. The lighting flickers. But none of that matters, because the food—the real food—is honest. Greens cooked down until they surrendered. Cakes that lean to the left but taste like heaven. Macaroni and cheese that could heal almost anything.

    People don’t come to impress in those spaces.

    They come to belong.

    They come to be held by the warmth of a room that has seen everything: baptisms, funerals, heartbreak, and survival. And in every season of life, the table stays set.

    Long before the world used terms like mutual aid, this was it.

    This was the safety net.

    This was how communities kept each other alive.

    No one asked, “What can I bring?”

    They asked, “Who needs to eat?”

    And somehow the table always balanced itself—one person bringing meat, another bringing bread, someone else bringing something sweet, and a few saints making sure the greens showed up so the ancestors wouldn’t fuss.

    It wasn’t organized.

    It was instinctual.

    Care doesn’t need a sign-up sheet.

    It just needs a kitchen.

    I think about those aluminum trays—the ones that bend if you hold them wrong. They don’t look like much, but they’ve carried entire histories. Weddings. Funerals. Reunions. Wednesday nights where people just needed a reason not to be alone.

    Aluminum trays are our generation’s scarred cast-iron skillets: humble, overlooked, essential.

    And they remind me of something I fear we’re losing in our digital, curated world:

    We were feeding each other long before we were performing for each other.

    A potluck isn’t content.

    It’s a community.

    It’s generosity without ceremony.

    It’s survival disguised as Sunday comfort.

    That’s probably why I love them so much.

    Because in a culture obsessed with individualism, a potluck is a rebellion.

    It says: We do this together.

    It says: Come as you are, and bring whatever you can.

    It says: There is room for you at this table, even if life hasn’t been kind, even if you feel small, even if all you could manage today was paper plates.

    Food has always been the language that makes room for the parts of us we don’t know how to name.

    So here’s my love letter—

    to the potlucks, the church basements, the community centers, the too-small living rooms, the aluminum trays carried in trembling hands.

    To the people who show up with their best dishes and their quiet hopes.

    To those who feed others before feeding themselves.

    To the tables that held us long before we had the words for what we were carrying.

    May we never forget how to gather like this.

    May we always remember that survival was never meant to be a solo act.

    And may we keep spreading these tables—wherever we can, with whatever we have—so no one has to face the world hungry, unseen, or alone.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • A Veterans Day Reflection

    A Veterans Day Reflection

    Lately, this space has been about doing what I can — small things, quiet things. Writing about food that costs less but still feeds fully. Reminding people that hard times have come before, and somehow, we made it. Trying to turn memory into a map, so maybe others can find their way through their own lean seasons.

    But today, I want to turn that attention outward — toward a different kind of endurance. Toward a group of people who also know what it means to do what they can — and often, far more. The ones who gave years, limbs, sanity, and sometimes everything, in the name of something larger than themselves.

    We set aside a day for them — Veterans Day — meant to honor those who served this country and, in too many cases, came home carrying its invisible weight. We say “thank you for your service,” and we mean it, most of us. But I keep wondering if that’s all we’ve learned to say.

    You don’t have to look far to see the contradiction: a country that never stops telling itself that it leaves no one behind, and yet, at almost every intersection, you can see someone it did. Veterans sleeping under bridges. Holding cardboard signs. Waiting at food pantries. People who once trained to survive in the most hostile places on earth are now fighting to survive at home.

    Yes, there are programs. Yes, there are benefits. But if you’ve ever stood in line at the VA or talked to someone navigating that system, you know the difference between what exists and what works.

    I’m not here to offer solutions. I don’t have them. I don’t know how to fix the machinery of a government that can spend billions on war but seems to run out of compassion on the return trip. What I know are smaller things — human things. I know how to say thank you. I know how to feed someone. I know how to remember.

    And maybe that’s something, even if it isn’t enough.

    When I write about food, I’m really writing about survival — about how we keep going when everything feels stripped bare. And in a way, that’s what veterans know better than anyone. They know how to keep moving through the noise. How to turn discipline into a ritual. How to make meaning in the middle of chaos. They’ve done it for us, even when we didn’t deserve it.

    The stories I tell, about stretching enough to feed a family — they’re small, domestic wars of endurance. Theirs were louder, bloodier, lonelier. But the lesson is the same: survival costs something, and someone always pays.

    I think about the phrase “thank you for your service.”

    How tidy it sounds. How quick. It fits easily into conversation, into tweets, into holiday speeches. But behind that politeness are pieces of people scattered across decades — the ones who never came back, and the ones who did, but not completely.

    I don’t have parades or medals to give.

    I have words — small, imperfect ones, but offered with weight.

    To every man and woman who served — thank you. For your strength, your sacrifice, your impossible patience. For doing what many couldn’t or wouldn’t.

    And to those still fighting their own wars at home — for housing, for healthcare, for peace of mind — I see you. I don’t have answers, but I have recognition. I have gratitude. And I have the conviction that we can do more, that we must do more, for a country that still calls itself free.

    So today, I’ll do what I can — remember, write, feed whoever I can reach.

    Because service shouldn’t end when the war does.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

    Please like, comment, and share

    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • Bread, Memory, and the Price of Enough

    Bread, Memory, and the Price of Enough

    There were five of us—three girls and two boys—and we were poor. The kind of poor that leaves fingerprints on your adulthood. Back when “food stamps” weren’t digital cards but booklets you tore from and handed to the cashier like confessions. We weren’t the only ones, though it sometimes felt that way. Poverty has a way of isolating you, even when the whole block is living on the same prayer.

    Back then, families were closer. Sunday dinners were sacred, not just for the food but for the ritual of it. You could smell a neighborhood coming alive—collard greens wilting slowly on one stove, beans softening on another, cornbread baking somewhere down the street. These weren’t meals for show. They were meals that stuck to your ribs—food that held you up when money couldn’t. The kind of food that whispered, You’ll make it another week.

    Now, everything feels fragile. Groceries cost more than rent used to. People work two jobs and still stand in lines that stretch around food banks. The price of “enough” keeps climbing, and somehow, we’re supposed to just keep smiling through it.

      And with this government shutdown—when paychecks stop, and benefits are frozen—it’s hard not to feel that same hollow echo in the stomach that so many of us grew up with. You start to realize how close the edge really is, and how many are already there.

    We have celebrity chefs and cooking competitions, but fewer people know how to create something from almost nothing. Food has become entertainment instead of education. We scroll past videos of perfectly plated dishes while families debate whether to buy milk or gas. Somewhere between delivery apps and drive-thrus, we forgot how to feed ourselves.

    Maybe the answer isn’t some new system or trend. Perhaps it’s about remembering what our grandparents knew—the art of stretching a dollar, of savoring time itself, and learning to make the basics again. Bread. Beans. Rice. The things that built us.

    Because bread isn’t just flour, salt, yeast, and water, it’s patience. It’s a skill born from necessity. It’s history kneaded into muscle memory. Once you have the supplies, it’s cheaper than store-bought—and better for you, body and spirit alike. I’ve found that unfortified flour—the kind left untouched by additives—makes a difference. It’s raw, honest, and stripped down to its true essence.

    That’s what we need more of now.

    Less enrichment, more essence.

    Less spectacle, more survival.

    Learning to make the basics again might not fix everything, but it’s a start—a quiet way of reclaiming control in a world that continually raises the price of dignity. Because the table, when it’s full of simple food and shared stories, still has a kind of wealth that can’t be counted.

    And maybe that’s what it really means to eat something that sticks to your ribs.

    If you want to start anywhere, start with bread. The most basic bread is humble—just flour, salt, yeast, and water: no milk, no butter, no sugar. You stir, you wait, you fold. You give it time to rise, and it teaches you patience in return. Baked until golden and stiff on the outside, soft and honest on the inside. Tear it apart while it’s still warm, and you’ll understand why people around the world have made it for centuries. It’s not about luxury—it’s about survival, about care, about transforming the simplest things into something that sustains.

      And in moments like this—when uncertainty feels like the new normal—maybe that kind of bread, bare and honest, isn’t just food. Perhaps it’s a reminder that we’ve been here before and we made it through.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Note from the Author:

    If this reflection stirred something in you — that quiet urge to create, to remember, to feed — you can start where I did: with bread.

    I’ve shared the simplest recipe I know, one that costs little and teaches much.

    👉 The Most Basic Bread Recipe

    Four ingredients. A little patience.

    And a reminder that even in hard times, we can still make enough.

    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • The Most Basic Bread

    The Most Basic Bread

    (Flour. Salt. Yeast. Water. Nothing else.)

    Ingredients

    • 3 cups (375g) unfortified all-purpose or bread flour
    • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
    • ½ teaspoon active dry yeast
    • 1¼ cups (300ml) warm water (around 105–110°F / 40°C)

    Instructions

    1. Mix the Basics
    2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and yeast. Pour in the warm water and stir with a spoon or your hands until it forms a shaggy, sticky dough. Don’t overthink it—just bring it together.
    3. Rest and Wait
    4. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or plastic wrap. Let it sit at room temperature for 12–18 hours. Time is your secret ingredient here—patience transforms the dough into something alive.
    5. Shape and Rest Again
    6. When the dough has doubled in size and is dotted with bubbles, scrape it onto a floured surface. Gently fold it over a few times, shaping it into a round loaf. Place it on parchment paper or a lightly floured towel, cover again, and let it rest for 1–2 more hours.
    7. Preheat and Bake
    8. Place a heavy pot with a lid (like a Dutch oven) into your oven and preheat to 450°F (230°C). When hot, carefully place your dough inside, cover, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for an additional 10–15 minutes, until the crust turns a deep golden brown and becomes hard.
    9. Cool and Remember
    10. Let it cool before slicing—if you can resist the temptation. The crust will crackle, the inside will steam. Tear off a piece, hold it warm in your hands, and remember that this is what survival tastes like.

    Notes

    • If you only have instant yeast, reduce to ¼ teaspoon.
    • Whole wheat or rye flour can replace up to one-third of the white flour for more depth.
    • The flavor deepens overnight, just like the memory of meals that once held families together.

    This bread doesn’t ask for luxury—just time, trust, and a little hunger to remind you what’s real.

    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times