Full Circle Meal 2019: The Meal of It All (Part V)
Perched on a rock right in the middle of the creek was Liz Fullerton, having positioned herself there before the rest of us took to the water, so she could usher in the last aspect of our little gathering with a final gesture of intentional and selfless creativity.
“The Song the Yarrow Sings,” performed with little more than vocals and a Shruti box (an Indian instrument that makes a beautifully droning tone somewhat like a harmonium), provided a true example of medicine music, in that the song meant exactly what it needed to mean, to whomever was experiencing it in that moment.
Conceived by Liz during a medication hike through the sweeping Big Sky vistas of Montana, “The Song the Yarrow Sings” deliberately calls to mind the gorgeous flowering yarrow yarrow that Liz encountered, dappling the landscape as she made her way through it. She was struck by the almost effortless beauty the flowering yarrow brings to the environment: It just is.
Liz’s vocals rolled across the water like a diaphanous mist as everyone circled up for the annual Quaker Blessing that begins every meal…after which point, it was finally time to eat.
Food! Glorious Food!
At this point, it’s become somewhat clear — the annual Full Circle Meal is much, much more than a simple preordained time at which several people sit down to eat in the same place. But if all those other activities and aspects are planets, the sun around which they all orbit is, without question, the meal to which everyone eventually sits down.
Ever since he showed up and built a fire kitchen directly on the ice at the Bacon & Lox Society Ice Dinner last winter, Chef André de Waal has been instrumental in designing and executing the yearly Full Circle Menu. This year, of course, Alisa knew that she wanted to incorporate the themes of collaboration and rippling contributions, and André took these ideas very much to heart, even going so far as to fold his own conceptions about the kaleidoscope into the mix:
A kaleidoscope is three or more mirrors reflecting back on an item, or items. With this as inspiration, we chose a main ingredient and each Chef reflected back other ingredients or cooking methods, until a dish was deemed complete.
We did this via text message to create a “sterile” environment, devoid of ego, control, or judgement. The goal being a menu that was equal parts from each Chef. The menu was then divided and each member of the team made two of the six dishes on their own.
Working together with chefs Brandon Grimila and Michael Carrino, the three chefs designed a veggie-forward menu, in a truly kaleidoscopic fashion.
As Chef Grimila describes it:
The vision for this was collaborative. The other two chefs are people I look up to and [who] have been doing this a hell of a lot longer than I have. We wanted to make a meal where every course had a mutual amount of our input into it.
Most meals like this, each chef makes two dishes that are completely theirs. In this case, each ingredient to every dish was picked by a different chef, to form one dish. Once all the dishes were laid out on pen and paper, we then chose which ones we wanted to be responsible for. This gave each chef the opportunity to have a piece of their cooking in each dish and really showcase the true collaboration.
The End, My Friends
As everyone feasted on the incredible food and enjoyed each other’s company, it became inescapably apparent why the Full Circle Meal has become such a hotly-anticipated yearly occurrence. This simply isn’t the kind of thing you can do once and then forget about. Rather, the Full Circle Meal — true as ever to the concept of the “ripple”— is something that stays with you, long after your ankles have dried and Liz Fullerton’s gorgeous music has stopped floating through your head. The influence of the collaborative spirit that the Bacon & Lox Society calls up and out of the ether is not an easy one to shake, and you might just be surprised to find it spreading and touching other parts of your life.
As the meal was winding down guests mixed and mingled even further, enjoying cocktails and participating in the yearly After-Dinner “Baptism” — a series of misty, magical, water-bound portraits shot by resident photo artist Rob Yaskovic (a somewhat permanent photographic fixture at just about any Bacon & Lox event), which served as a fun and whimsical “induction” into the Bacon & Lox Society.
This act of personal creativity, intent, and meaning-making was the perfect cap to a truly incredible experience, but the final act of collaborative magic wound up coming from a somewhat unexpected place: Once the meal was over, every single guest pitched in, helping to break down the entire thing, together.
One wouldn’t think that an act which could so readily be classified as a “chore” would take on such a magical meaning, but there it was — proof positive that the Bacon & Lox Society can make magic medicine from just about anything.