Unmade and Unsure

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. 
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

I really hope this isn't a midlife crisis. I mean, not in a traditional sense where in as many years as I've already lived it will be over. But it's a...something. An uneasiness. And since my mind goes straight to how food and life reflect each other I'm contemplating recipes. Or rather, how we select what we cook and likewise, how we select how we live.

~*~

Most meals I cook for myself I do so with what I call the pantry-lottery approach or the proverbial mystery basket. Open wide the cabinets and fridge, see what resides therein and make something on the fly. If I have a little extra time I might get technical, or play with balance and flavor, but really the objective is clear: fix this hunger problem. Necessity cooking tends to start in the stomach. Hunger pains driving ever quickening decisions on what to consume especially on those long hard days where you're hours past the first rumblings of need. I live therefore I eat. I eat therefore I cook (or microwave, or order take-out).

On the other hand, If I'm cooking for guests it starts in the head and heart. What do I want to make? What story do I want to tell? Do I have the necessary ingredients to make it? It's planned, methodical, often scripted out hour-by-hour on an itinerary that's taped to a kitchen cabinet door. It starts weeks ahead of time not driven by the biological need to eat but by my emotional need to provide. I'm sure if we dug deeper that nagging need to provide would reveal a need to be loved like all good social animals.

When I sat down to write this post those two types of cooking were my focus. Likening, the free-spirited, passive cooking to how we make choices in life out of necessity, when we're short on time and the activity is relatively risk free. No brainers. And then the planned and methodical cooking naturally mirrors the big choices we make. The really important ones.The things with high risk, complicated steps to complete. Things we plan in advance and, if you're like me, worry over, edit and evaluate for extended stretches of time. If I had a degree in psychology I might make the leap that these activities are the ones fulfilling those deeper desires, filling not stomachs, but emotional cravings.

And on any given day we make lots of little choices: what to put in the middle of that omelette in the morning and what movie we want to see in the evening. Constrained by what's available, what privileges we've been afforded and so on. If we're lucky, and driven, a little time each day goes to those important things. I need to source an interesting, rare spice so I need to spend the time researching grocery stores and I want to go back to France for a visit so I should research flights and accommodations.  I'm simplifying, of course, but  I've been thinking a lot about being better at prioritizing those long-term goals. Better about making sure there's time between the quick choices to actually plan for that big something. Not just day-dream about it.

And as I was contemplating this narrative, standing over the stove stirring a pot of still distinguishable ingredients that will eventually be pizza sauce, I realized there's another way we cook and choose. Think of one of those warm, lulling food memories from your childhood. One that has hazy peripheral edges from being told and retold in your inner monologue. One that, I would wager, has an unmistakable smell and a warm temperature and golden hues and larger than life happiness. Hold onto that feeling. I'll use Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, as an example. Across the States Thanksgiving meals are relatively the same with the holiday staples brimming proudly out of the 'good' bowls, carved and ready on a gigantic platter, pouring glossy and aromatic out of gravy boats (unless you're me and do an entire seafood Thanksgiving with great friends because...well that's for another time). Why? Why those foods, why those choices? "Because it's tradition!" you shout with a fist to the table scattering a few fried onions and green beans on the tablecloth. It's entrenched in our culture, in our food memories. It does something different for us. It feeds us in the way that entwines us to the past, present and future all at once. Not just because if we're lucky we're passing potatoes to an older generation or sliding extra pumpkin pie to a younger one, but because it's defining. Who we are in that moment and who we've become over time. And in a lot of undeniable ways it dictates where we're going.

The point I'm meandering towards slowly is that we also cook things, and choose things, because of all the other things we've eaten, and chosen, in our lives. I make my mother's lasagna because it connects me to her and reminds me of who I am because of her. I chose to spend my life with a man who saw who I was, with all the additions and edits over time, and wanted to see what else I can become.

In between the small, easy choices and the hard, rewarding choices I think it's important to figure out who you want to be. How are you going to take everything, all the ingredients you've been given, earned, stolen, lost and found, and create the masterpiece that is you? We'll always be in some state of unmade and unsure but if we sit for a minute and contemplate how we got here, what type of energy and value we want to put into the world and the people who have been there along the way we might find moments of clarity, like a good stock, that help us make the next choice, the next meal. And I want to share that next meal, planned or unplanned, with the past, present and future. All at once. I'll cook.