The Cilantro Stories

Dear Kneaders,

I was going to tell you all about the strawberries and give you their updated saga. It’s hotter now and they’ve given their best fruits. The plants still produce but instead of pint after morning pint, there are a few random, smaller berries turning red overnight and into each morning. This is the time when the garden shifts into full gear and what was good in spring is giving way to the summer feeling. Seasons do change.

This morning I stood at the edge of the garden and was greeted by a season’s endings. Broccoli heads beamed tiny rainbows in drops of morning dew. Their decorative prisms beckoning for harvest before the stalks get too woody. Salads reached high, and lacy kale leaves put on a display with no hint of the chopping they endured just two weeks ago. The chamomile had its white and yellow flowers pointing towards the sky, after a season of cold they finally looked warm. Alongside the green tomatoes they are calling in the summer mood.

There in the corner of the garden rose the cilantro, higher than I would like but full of flowers. Those flowers will give way to seeds, and those will be their main harvest this year. It wasn’t exactly a decision as much as a realization, that the plants have their own timeline and right now it moves quickly.

As I stood there I wondered about the cilantro leaves, remembered the bunch of its greens sitting, awaiting me in the fridge. I didn’t use it all because some of the people I know and love, can not take the taste. It’s genetic they say, and anywhere from 2-20% of a population might have the genetic variant that makes the cilantro taste like soap or something else you don’t want to eat. It’s also cultural they say, because if a person has cilantro in their cuisine from a young age, they seem to get past the taste problem.

I hear a story of self-defense rising up from the sweet patch of its life; it’s a story of polarization, and of habituation and the plant it seems, is up for all of it. Coriander or cilantro as we call it here, isn’t here to live a small, unseen life. It’s here to remind us of the power of our interior lives, of our deepest truths. Seems like a lot for a plant, but that’s what I think I heard it say.

I remember when cilantro tasted like soap to me too, but I also remember how I decided that I would get used to it. I wanted to eat delicious Mexican food, and food from south Asian countries and so little by little I exposed myself to it. My genetics said one thing, and my desire to expand my food culture said another. I think this effort I had to put into learning to love the taste of cilantro is a story that the plant doesn’t mind if I tell, because it gets to the heart of 2026 in some odd, gardening way. It gets to the rich diversity of life and how time works. We can never go back, but we can go forward with a greater sense of adventure, and this can pay off.

As spring gives way to summer the garden changes and so do I, and so do you.

As one season flows away another is born, and in a way we are reborn together. The plants in the garden take their turns displaying their seasonal gifts, and for the cilantro plant this delightful spray of tiny flowers is “speaking” of the power of change even when things seem to be the same. They were showing persistence this morning, the kind which they display annually, and have for eons. Different plants, still display one strong lineage.

The cilantro seeds are speaking of that transformation that each of us undertakes for the benefit of future generations. The soft white leaves which will soon host green, chewy seeds that will eventually become hard and tiny warehouses of knowledge, are displaying the positive parts of maturation, of self development. People are generally way more accepting of the seed in their kitchen than they are of the leaf. People are also sure they understand the difference, calling the leaf cilantro while calling the seed coriander, meanwhile they are two sides of the same exact being.

On top of all of this growth and misnomers is another fun fact: cilantro leaf is an herb, while its seed is a spice. Use the green leaves and you’re using an herb. Crush the dried or even fresh seeds and that’s a spice.

So what I saw today was a maturing plant, and a transformation that takes place on every level inside the plant, but also outside of it – in how it is perceived in the world. In spring it is the green leaves of possibility that lend taste to dishes, and in the summer, it is the concentrated potential that shape shifts. Summer concentrates life into harvests, and also into next year’s seeds. Summer’s bounty looks forward as much as it satisfies the now. Cilantro has stories upon stories to tell, but the heat is now up and my time to be here with you shortens. Thus is the creative practice; a series of tiny plantings and harvests.

I plan to dry the seeds into a paper bag, and to shake that bag so all the seeds loosen from the stalks. I plan to use the greens I still have while the stalks grow. I will salvage the leaves in the fridge, putting them in stock or blending them into a sauce that I will flag as “optional” as it hits the shared table.

I will await the new baby plants that might come from these seeds before the season is up, since some of that concentrated potential will fall to the ground on their own and will happily sprout. The cilantro says, life has its way, and despite changes you will always have an essence that is you, and it will display in all that you do and become.

Each stage of you is observed by others, but do you appreciate your very self as it changes? Do you appreciate your own becoming? Or do you resist it?

There is a wildness to our lives, even if we don’t see it. There is a wildness even to gardens, and it provides both reliability and surprises. There is a change of seasons in all of our lives and the stories that cilantro tells me recall that some changes will stay, and some will fly away. All that is used and all that is rejected will still nourish the future.

The Knicks will play (Knicks in FIVE!) and the cilantro of today will go into the guacamole. The Croatians will play in the World Cup and there will be a culinary repeat because I love avocados and lime together.

This American girl with her direct bloodlines to the villages of Europe, where cilantro does not exist in the food, will celebrate with the herb and the spice of this plant. This is a sign of who I am and where I live, in a flow of cultures, in an ever-changing kitchen.

It’s this kind of novelty, of change, that makes life richer, healthier. It’s not just a metaphor, it’s an actual truth. Whatever you grow is alive until the moment you make that harvest, and then it takes on another aliveness in you.

The cilantro leaf is telling stories, of a name that changes according to its internal stages of growth, and to the literal culinary stages it finds in the world.

The harvest will happen today and it will happen again in some weeks, it will happen at times when I casually walk by, pulling some leaves with me, into my fingers and to my nose and mouth. A harvest will happen every time I walk by, absorbing the shape of the leaves, the shade of its greens.

The story of cilantro today seems to be one of embracing change while enjoying the moment. It doesn’t sound so different from the other stories in the garden or out in the world, the ones that remind us that life requires change, that change can be holy. The cilantro is also telling a story that says, not everyone is going to like you today and some might not even like you tomorrow, but as you go and as you grow, there will be those who like you a lot.

The cilantro to you message is: Find your tribe, and stay true to your growth. Not everyone will like you, and that’s OK. You don’t have to be to everyone’s taste to be loved. This season and in every day, you have a right to seed, and sprout and to flower and when you do, there will be those who love the essence of you.

Lots of Love,

Mariette