A Feast of Fumes
“When the wolf slips a paw in the door, cook with courage, love those you can love, tidy yourself up now and then, have a sip of sherry and keep your mind your own. Do what you need to do to feed the fire in your belly so you can growl right back.”
—Addie Broyles, “10 Lessons from M.F.K. Fisher about cooking during hard times”
This is about how we get along, get by, move on, remain happy, find relative abundance, and accept Grace, even in these challenging times.
The origin of my musings today is the digestion of two articles. One was about how a good number of startups are screwed, (“Nearly Half of All Startups Worldwide Fail within Three Months Due to Corona,” by Arnoud Corneillissen, in Innovation Origins, April 21, 2020). The other was about historic food recipes born from tough times (“Even More Historic Dishes Born From Tough Times to Make at Home,” by Luke Fater, Gastro Obscura, April 27, 2020).
In reposting the first article on the Center for Global Business (McCombs School of Business - UT Austin) blog, I provided an introduction postulating that certain startups would survive, even while running on “fumes,” because some folks just knew how to operate in that environment more effectively. My statement was “They ate fumes for breakfast.”
The wonderful article by Luke Fater offers us recipes born during hard times by people who just did not have a lot. It is ostensibly about making meals, but more about “making do.” As he states, “For every crisis, a recipe.”
The people who came up with these recipes (most likely a combination of people ) were eating something akin to “fumes,” perhaps even for breakfast. Yet they made it, and may even have found the appetite to savor their breakfast of fumes.
I launched my first business in Houston in 1976. I was asked to take on something due to the sudden death of a family member. At twenty-two years old, I was quite unfamiliar with either the business being built, or even business in general. Once I had gotten over the exhilaration of “being in business for myself” (about that same 90 days the article says startups have before they are running on fumes), I remember staring at the wall of my one-room office, furnished with one desk, one chair, one rotary phone, and for some reason, one picture of FDR on the wall, saying to myself, “I ain’t got nothing. How am I going to get through this?”
This was the first of my many fumes-breakfasts.
Every crisis has its recipes. Shall we open the pages of that cookbook born from hard times, for wisdoms about what it takes to make meals and make do? Here I will pass along my own take on four of the “recipes” provided by Luke Fater in his article, with the wisdom I see for startups in these imaginative meals.
I hope that some of you budding entrepreneurs, who have suddenly found yourselves in a kitchen with much less to work with, will find some inspiration as you whip up your fumes-omelettes over the coming months, as we endure our current medical and economic crisis.
Mock Apple Pie
This is an apple pie made with no apples. It’s all about the spice. Put enough cinnamon and all-spice on a piece of cardboard, and with just a little imagination, and perhaps even more hunger, it tastes like apple pie.
So it is with your business. What is the essence which gives your business its special “spice”? This may take a deeper dive than you have gone before. Go there. Seek to smell the aroma that is your unique proposition. If you are able to sprinkle this spice more abundantly in your marketplace, you will be serving this apple pie to delighted customers who will not care that your apples are simply cardboard.
Vinegar Cake
Discovered during WWII rationing in Canada, someone figured out vinegar, while on its own being very unsavory, could substitute for butter and other ingredients normally used in cake. It was like magic.
What is the lesson for us in business? If you do not have access to something, perhaps because you can no longer afford it, find another way to make your cake. What is that neglected ingredient in your business cupboard that might just be the missing ingredient that you had always assumed was vinegar? Sometimes the most basic, overlooked items prove to be foundational. What a challenge and a treat to discover such an ingredient and to bake your new cake from it.
Potlikker
Born of the tragedy of American slavery, the name, Potlikker, refers to the liquid that was left over after boiling kale, mustard, and collard greens. Enslaved people would cook these greens for their masters, but keep what their captors assumed was a throw-away liquid after the greens had been removed. On the best days, it could be enjoyed with a bit of cornbread.
This was about more than make-do. Often times it would be a case of survival. But more importantly, it was about taking what was there for you, even the residue of somebody else’s feast. Over time, the Potlikker byproduct would be celebrated, added to, revered as a symbol of defiant resilience, even as it was fancied up with much more expensive ingredients like pork and chicken.
Long after the horror and barbarism of slavery ended, these recipes of human dignity are not forgotten.
Nothing Soup
Prater calls this a “celebration of minimalism.” We are leaving an era when startups might receive multimillion dollar valuations, even without any real products or services to sell. This previous trend sometimes left management to believe that practicing “maximalism” was the most appropriate course. I have often heard that raising small amounts of capital was harder than large amounts. Everyone felt the need to “move the needle” and small, minimal efforts were not valued. So now we may be left with a generation of business people who are not as skilled at making something out of nothing.
The story is told of how two travelers with nothing to eat filled a pot with water and the only thing they had, a stone, and lit a fire under it. As the hours went by, other people, sensing that dinner was being prepared, began to throw in the only things they had, which alone, would never have made a dinner. Old carrots, a potato, perhaps some weeds that they called “greens,” a wrinkled clove of garlic. Something was cooked from these individual’s bits of nothing, and everyone was able to enjoy a nice soup for dinner. As a business person, this story, and the soup that is served with it, speaks to the power of community and collaboration.
As you eat your own fume soup for breakfast, consider how and with whom you may team up to get to where you want to go. You may have the pot and the rock, they may have the carrot, the guy down the road might have the greens. Throw it all in there, and slurp it up.
There is wisdom to be found in nothing. Mainly, that nothing is not nothing. Something can be found, and said, about those who root out what is needed rather than wishing for things that they do not have.
During good times, the wisdom of necessity may not invite us to its table, but in harder times like these, necessity is a regular ingredient in our kitchen. Pretty soon, we may come to appreciate the aromas of the meals cooked in that kitchen, even if they are just fumes.
Fumes for breakfast—who’s in?!