I’ve spent the past several months writing so.much.about.food, that lamentably, my actual kitchen time has been, well, limited to “shoot I have a potluck and I’m the girl who graduated culinary school so there are high expectations and I can’t just show up with a bottle of wine” and “how am I going to turn my leftovers from lunch into dinner?”
Nights have been filled with holiday dinners, catching up with old friends and internal monologues of “Well, I have this thing Thursday night anyways so what’s the point in going grocery shopping for the two meals I’ll be in this week?” Jake, wanna go to Mole for dinner? Guilty.
For sure, it’s made me really sad. And I’ve often worried that like anything that takes a lot of patience and practice (Hey, 30 days of Bikram yoga…), when I pick up a knife next, I won’t even know how to small dice my way through a carrot (Did I ever?). But happily, like returning to the gym after a few months of, say, Bikram yoga, you realize, you still know how to work the elliptical, you still know how to do lunges, and yes, you can still hold a plank for about 20 seconds longer than you want to.
Last week, when cooking dinner at Aunt Su’s, I realized there’s something really nice about not cooking for a couple of weeks. You’re flooded with a sense of relief and happiness when you realize you still, in fact, know how to make a red pepper coulis, you still remember the proper washing technique for tackling leeks, and like anything in life, you still know how to fuck a few things up and rebound from it.
It’s like taking a few months off from listening to your favorite band. The moment one of their songs pop up on shuffle, it always feels like coming home. You’re right back where you left off and suddenly remember why you fell in love in the first place. And now you get to do it all over again. And really, what could be better than that?
