Squelch: A Memoir of Food, Love, and Uncertainty 🍅

an interview with Nina Katz, author of Squelch

I’m desperate to tell you about a short, intimate memoir I just read. It’s called Squelch by

Nina Katz

and it brings us into a queer situationship defined by impermanence, home cooking, and the early, socially distanced days of Covid. Nina takes the feeling of heartbreak--a hunger that will have you eating popcorn for dinner, overcooking the pasta, and hiding from your ex’s mom in the grocery store--and pins it to the page with alarming accuracy. I, personally, have not been fucked up by love in a long time. I don’t mean that as a brag; I’m just saying that Squelch really brought me back to that frantic place of trying to do something normal and necessary like cooking whilst experiencing terminal levels of lesbian longing. Just read the book!!

Nina and I met up via GoogleDoc for a conversation about queer potlucks, why oysters are trans, and the best things to eat in Pittsburgh and Albuquerque. I’m a huge fan of Nina and their work, and I’m so excited to share this conversation with you. Be sure to read to the end, where Nina reveals the theme of their Bat Mitzvah.

author Nina Katz

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Maddy: There are several different kinds of hunger in Squelch–there’s hunger for food, of course, but also for a relationship with someone who’s unavailable. There’s a really beautiful scene when you visit a queer couple on their farm and find yourself longing for their version of partnership and parenthood. All of these different wants and hungers are resolved through cooking and/or eating, at least partially. What is it about food that compelled you to put it at the center of this story?

Nina: Making food for the people I love is my greatest joy in life. Actually, recently my friends gave me the nickname “Strega Nina” because I’m always cooking for the people around me. During this relationship, we connected so much over food. It was one of the best parts of our relationship, but it was hard for me to accept that no matter how much care and effort I put into, say, the tapioca pudding or Singapore noodles, our dynamic was not necessarily working out. Moreso, food, cooking, and eating is a sensory experience, and therefore, it is a testament to a time and place, just like how listening to certain music can really feel like time traveling. Since the period of time that’s outlined in the book, I’ve evolved as a person in how I relate to others and the foods have changed too. Instead of a turmeric juice and poor impulse control, I’m now more of a tart cherry juice mixed into seltzer and a better communicator kind-of-partner. Or at least, I’m trying to be. 

M: There’s a stereotype that lesbians, queer women, and the queer people who love them have really tortured, drawn-out break-ups. Why do you think that is?

N: I have only been in queer relationships, but I am sure straight people feel tortured too? But, I think it’s because lesbians come from the demographic of folks who are encouraged to process their emotions, and whatever it is, it’s probably the same reason so many queer folks stay friends with their exes. The person, besides myself, who Squelch hinges on and I are still close but maybe finally taking some real space from one another for a while was actually the gayest thing we could have done–I get a comphet vibe from the idea of staying with someone longer than you should. That’s giving “Good Luck, Babe.” But that’s harder to do when the thought of losing a queer partner can feel like losing a queer part of yourself, especially in those early relationships. With the person I talk about in Squelch, I saw a lot of the queer person I wanted to be, which I think made the feelings of enamoredness more complicated, and harder to give up. This wasn’t my first queer relationship, but it was certainly early stages of my romantic life, and I was totally in the deep end of figuring out how to navigate it. Also, the circumstances of this relationship were simply wack given the long distance element, COVID, etc…I think in some ways I wasn’t great at handling it all, but that doesn’t change how much we cared about one another. As they say, you live and you learn.

oranges are not the only fruit (there’s also tomatoes)

M: There are so many connections between geography, food, and feelings in Squelch, and I read in your Instagram bio that you live between Pittsburgh and Albuquerque. Can you tell me about your favorite things to eat in these cities, or how spending time in these places has impacted what you cook and eat? 

N: Ah yes, I am such a sucker for gritty mid-size cities. It’s not so much that I live between the two (although I have joked that I would like to be more bi-coastal, as in, between the shores of the Monongahela and the Rio Grande), I’m just currently in the drawn-out flux of relocating to Albuquerque via Pittsburgh. As I write this, I’ve just wept my way out of PGH until later in the year. I’m so sad. It’s the greatest city in the world. The birthplace of Mr. Roger’s AND Heinz Ketchup? C’mon. There’s great restaurants - Fet Fisk, Apteka, Cafe 33, Di’Anoia’s…I love all the breakfast places too, like Nancy’s and Cafe Raymond. Incredible Taiwanese and Szechuan cuisine. Some of my favorite nooks and crannies would be the delicious affordable cup of drip at Trace Brewery ($1.60!) and a loop through Gina’s Linea Verde Green Market. I do find my cooking adapting pretty heavily to regional flavors, including recreating menu items from favorite restaurants. In New Mexico I learned how to really embrace iceberg lettuce as a topping for chili and posole and green chile stew. In Pittsburgh, there’s a huge Italian presence, and I got really into sourcing specialty radicchios and chicories from the farmer’s market (shout out to ColdCo!) for bitter salads and beans and greens. 

M: I just read your history of queer potlucks where you write that “potlucks are meals that center community and celebrate variety” and that choosing and preparing a food to bring is an opportunity to show up at a queer space as yourself. The other magic of a queer potluck is that the food functions as an ice-breaker. Lesbians and the lesbian-adjacent are famous for being indirect and reticent when it comes to approaching each other, but a potluck provides so many chances to be like, “Wow, who brought the kale salad? ” And if your dish is prepared thoughtfully and with care, other attendees will seek you out and compliment you. They will want the recipe and you can be like, “It’s in a cookbook I have at home. Give me your number and I’ll text it to you later.”

What are you bringing to a queer potluck that you’re a little nervous to be attending, maybe your crush and/or ex are going to be in attendance? Would your dish change between Pittsburgh and Albuquerque?

N: Food is totally a social salve at any potluck! I graduated about a year ago with my MA in Food Studies, where I actually wrote my thesis on the queer potential and history of potlucking. So, I have about 95 more pages from where that came from if anyone is interested. Ok - in Pittsburgh I am bringing something that reminds of New Mexico (biscochitos or the makings of frito pies), and in New Mexico I am bringing something that reminds me of Pittsburgh (sandwich ring if I can find the bread or pierogies).

M: Squelch opens with this beautiful description of overripe apricots falling onto a public sidewalk, and you picking them up and turning them into cakes and galettes for your crushes. I’ve always lived in cold, winter-y places where this sort of fruit tree culture and abundance doesn’t exist, though there was a massive mulberry tree by my last apartment in Somerville. I don’t have a direct question here, I just wanna talk more about food and urban foraging in Albuquerque and elsewhere. 

N: Well, I should start by saying that Squelch does not take place in Albuquerque (though I hope I’ve nonetheless convinced you to visit). But somewhere in the Southwest, yes, there are foothills full of old pear and apple trees, trails lined with rosehips, piñon, and loads of other wild edibles, and streets lined with apricot trees. It’s like, frowned upon to purchase apricots at the store (those that are shipped in from California). You will be snarled at. It’s almost like, hey, we live in this town where there are probably triple the amount of apricots as there are people, so sourcing your apricots from anywhere besides the literal pavement isn’t really pulling your weight! People who aren’t from there (such as myself) are often struck by the abundance of the desert at first encounter. And then, this summer is actually the first season in about a decade that I am not working on a farm, but I love growing my own food, and using it to make meals for folks. My dream is to homestead. I’m totally fascinated with the natural world, which I hope comes through in Squelch. I love writing that makes connections between humanity and ecology; you could say that with parts of Squelch, I was attempting to dyke-alike with Lulu Miller and Sabrina Imbler. I’m actually working on a new piece about oysters and transness!

M: This is a chance for me to clarify that the city where Squelch takes place is not named because it’s written like a letter or an unsent email to your ex, who is also unnamed. So reading Squelch, that intimacy and longing is super visceral and real.

Tell me about trans oysters!! Also, I’ve never been to the Southwest. I would love to visit.

N: So, not to throw another place in the mix, but I grew up in the great state of Maryland, where I was not a picky eater. I learned to eat and love oysters at a truly special spot called Crisfield Seafood in Silver Spring; if you like old school, a little bit of grime, and decorative oyster plates, you’ll love it. So, maybe not a total coincidence that I am a lifelong oyster lover who grew up to be a lesbian, given all of the cliche around oyster imagery. I’ve always been drawn to write about it, but have stayed away from the topic because it feels overdone. And then, when I was doing research on the New Mexico Whiptail Lizard, an all female species, I learned that oysters actually change sexes throughout their lifetime. It was sort of this aha moment, that, like me, the queerness we can find in these mollusks is more complex than what meets the surface. In the last five years or so I’ve experienced more and more gender dysphoria, and I suppose it was really comforting to find this new connection to a species I already feel so at home with. I just finished a short piece for Queer Earth Food, an anthology put out by the same publisher as Squelch, to accompany a series of needle-felted oysters I made in reference to the work of Jeanne Vaccaro, who wrote this amazing essay on felting and transness. But, as I previously said, queer ecology is a topic I just get so excited about, so I'm hoping to explore my social connections to oysters even more. 

M: Oysters also straddle the line between animals and plants, right? I’ve heard that some vegans eat them.

N: Oysters are animals but they are believed to be a non-sentient species. They lack a central nervous system. They don’t have a brain. So, they are often likened to vegetables even though they are more closely related to members of the cephalopod family, like squid and octopus. I want to believe, however, that because mollusks are so different from humans, there’s just a level of mystery we’ll never be able to crack, and so it’s not fair to say we can understand what it feels like to be an oyster. I think if we are going to talk about oysters and ethics, the Atlantic species in North America have a history that teaches us so much about the intersections of colonization, greed, and environmental devastation. I get a pit in my stomach hearing that the oyster populations near where I grew up are at less than 1% of what they once were, and how interconnected the health issues of Chesapeake Bay biodiversity are with that statistic. I was so amped up on this stuff as a kid that “Save the Bay” was literally the theme of my Bat Mitzvah. I made my friends come with me to volunteer for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation as my “mitzvah project,” and then at my party, you could be seated at the “fight erosion” table, or the “restore oyster reefs” table. In retrospect, I fear that the party may have actually had a large carbon footprint, but hopefully my messaging about going green or whatever off put it at least a little bit. And no, oysters were not on the menu.

bb Nina, age 11, on a school trip to a marsh. I absolutely asked if they had any photos of their Save the Bay-themed Bat Mitzvah and alas, they did not

M: This is a powerful origin story and hands-down the best Bat Mitzvah theme I’ve ever heard. Thank you so much for talking, Nina. If you’re at home reading this, I really encourage you to get your paws on a copy of Squelch. 

N: Thanks, Maddy! See you in Albuquerque ;)

Squelch is available now from Combos Press, a small, queer-run press focused on publishing work by LGBTQ+ people and anyone involved in food and agriculture.

Squelch is a book you can read on the bus to the farmers market and then pass along to any or all of the lovelorn queers, aspiring farmers, and potluck organizers in your life. You will thank me and they will thank you. Nina also writes Bread Apples Milk, a totally delightful newsletter of found grocery lists and food writing 🍅