MARTHA AVENUE- Day 105

NEWSFLASH! We made the papers!
http://sfbaytimes.com/meals-on-heels-where-dinner-is.../...
Thank you, David Landis, for such a nice write up!
We started this endeavor on a bit of a whim…Two weeks into the Shelter-in-Place, having lost my job (the show I was doing was closed down due to Covid), I went to Costco to buy ribs to celebrate my youngest son’s 17th birthday. Caught up in the crazy buying frenzy that everyone seemed to be in, somehow I came home with $300 worth of “rations” to get us through what we thought was going to be a month of staying at home. I didn’t buy toilet paper that day (Costco didn’t have any anyway) but I came home with enough to sustain us for a long long time. Especially hot dogs. Which I personally don’t even like, but Willi likes them and somehow I ended up with three different brands of hot dogs. As we unloaded all the stuff I had bought, Willi just kept laughing. I started to laugh too, until I was laughing so hard that I was crying. Laughing at myself, laughing at how anxiety manifests itself and crying for all the unknowns we were facing. Calum, my son, came downstairs and we all ended up laughing and crying (me) on the couch looking at the pile of food I had bought.
That night, we sat around and contemplated what it might look like if we started a little food business out of our kitchen. To have some way to feel useful and productive, to help others who may be facing cooking for themselves day after day with some trepidation, to offer an alternative to those who wouldn’t want to (or couldn’t) cook. To have some purpose. After two weeks of rattling around the house anxious for the loss of work and income and the life I have built, it felt like a really hopeful thing.
Now, four months in, MARTHA AVENUE has become all of that. Our days are full, we spend time together working and laughing (and still sometimes crying, because hey, it's an unprecedented time we are living through) and figuring out how to love both the business and each other. We have fed countless friends, family and former strangers. We have delivered food as far North as Petaluma, as far West as Bolinas and Inverness, as far East as Martinez and as far South as San Jose. And none of this would be possible without the love, support and enthusiastic eating of all of you!