June Welcomes Wiley Canning Company
June Welcomes Wiley Canning Company
It is with head-to-toe excitement that I share…
Tickets are now available to purchase for an evening at June in celebration of The Wiley Canning Company Cookbook.
You can purchase tickets on Resy here.
On Monday, March 27, the eve of The Wiley Canning Company Cookbook’s Publication Day, Chef Sean Brock and the ever-inspiring June team will welcome us into their beautifully-designed space to celebrate.
When you arrive at June, you will be welcomed by a long, beautiful table of homemade Wiley jams and fresh breads. Every bite of jam you enjoy will have been made by me in the weeks leading up to our time together. What a gift it will be to prepare this element of the evening for you.
The incredible June team will also prepare five to seven small plates, all of which will incorporate recipes from The Wiley Canning Company Cookbook. There will be a thoughtful offering of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to enjoy alongside your small plates. The evening will have a very “reception-like” feel, so come as you are, ready to eat, drink, and experience Wiley publicly for the very first time.
To close the evening, there will be a Question and Answer session moderated by Chef Sean Brock. This is the only seated portion of the evening. Our time leading up to the Q&A is standing and free-flowing.
Every ounce of love poured into me, in this way and in countless others, has been viscerally felt and digested. I will make my mission to pour it back into you.
The Wiley Canning Company Cookbook will soon be alive in the world. I began this book when I was five months pregnant with my son, Sullivan, and it feels as though this book and my son have hearts that beat in rhythm. When I first became a mother, I tried so desperately to keep my work separate from my son. I clung onto the compartmentalization I practiced in my pre-motherhood life and felt nearly suffocated by the push and pull, the pressure and guilt, of wanting to be two places at once: with my book and with my son. It wasn’t until I surrendered the desire to separate and fully embraced the privilege to integrate that I was able to write the book that was always meant to be: a book written by a mother Sullivan James O’Leary created. This book could not have been written by a different version of me. It had to be written as I was transforming into a woman whose highest purpose was to raise a child who will know the marvel of an ordinary moment: the taste of a juicy peach, the sight of sunlight traveling through trees, and the sounds of your closest friends’ voices bouncing off of your kitchen walls as you eat and drink and laugh and cry. Looking back, every experience of “push and pull”, pressure, and guilt was simply an opportunity for my mind and heart to be stripped down to their foundations. Only then could I build a book from a new, truly humble, and loving place.
No matter how this book is received by the world, I am so deeply proud to be its author. I gave it my all with the energy and time that I had. This is my knowing. I promised myself I would treat it like I treat Sullivan: with love, forgiveness, humility, and from a position of, “What do I have to learn, or unlearn, from you today? I stand by you.”
Our art takes on a life of its own once it’s born. We cannot stop this. We suffer when we resist this. What life will The Wiley Canning Company Cookbook take on? How will it grow? What mistakes will it make? Who will it love?
It is the gift of my life to write. It is the gift of my life to mother. It is the gift of my life to share each with you. Thank you so very much for being here.
You can purchase tickets on Resy here.