I'm on my ipad so this is slow going. I need one of those great keyboards. I hate the apple brand one.
So I have made some really silly mistakes lately. These are the kinds of things I haven't done in years. And it is because I am trying to do too many things at once.
-Over the weekend I broke Pyrex bc I put water in a hot pan. Duh.
- i read a recipe wrong REPEATEDLY and missed the fact that the dough needed to rise...twice. So it took way longer than I budgeted for.
-I have added too much salt or forgotten to take salt content of other foods into account
-I overcooked the poor broccoli
-I made a bad kale salad which in and of itself isn't bad because that's how you learn, but I sort of gave up instead of trying to fix it
-I tried to short-cut my roasted Brussels sprouts and they were too crowded on the pan. Further, I tried to use the oven for several things and so the temp was wrong for the Brussels so they are soggy and barely reminiscent of the wonderfulness they become when roasted.
-tonight I broke another glass container. This time it was a quart of wonderful, precious homemade vegetable stock that was still defrosting and I absently put it on the hot stove. KER-SMASH. Shattered all over stovetop, counter, under pans on the stove, glass in my chopped shallot. Kind of demoralizing.
-I have continually grabbed very hot pans.
-I cut myself on my mandolin, which if you've never done it, is awful.
-tonight I also over salted my peanut sauce which was otherwise AWESOME.
-when Fett and Punky and I sat down to eat last night, I was up and down almost every minute checking something that wasn't done, responding to my phone, or getting something I had forgotten.
-the worst part of tonight: I actually burned my pan-fried tofu. It was because I wasn't paying attention to the temperature or placement of my cast iron skillet, wasn't moving the pieces around and forgot about it because I had 4 other things going on as well as trying to clean up, put dishes away, do laundry and set the table.
I need to slow down. I need to choose fewer things to cook at any given time. I can't multitask as well as I think I can and it is starting to feel frenetic.
I have noticed lately that it is very hard for me to not move, plan, organize, schedule, balance, coordinate. If Fett and I have a quiet morning on a day without Punky, it is VERY hard for me to just chill on the couch and cozily watch TV or read or nap. I instantly want to vacuum, launder, plan menus. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't feel compulsive. I catch myself organizing papers at home and work in a very systematic but somewhat rigid and strangely superstitious way. It does not feel relaxing and satisfying usually when I do this but instead compulsive, compulsory, and sad. I want to be able to just relax and stretch out my legs. I can sometimes do that in the evening but I won't lie: it requires alcohol.
I feel pretty fractured and even frantic some days. I exercise often and that helps but it is partly because it is a useful way to discharge the anxiety and not be still. It feels deeper than anxiety. It feels like fear. I am afraid if I stop moving, if I stop shuffling papers, stop cooking, stop planning....I'm afraid I will fall apart. I don't even know what that looks like. I don't have an image or an outline even of what The Fall Apart Monster looks like. But I fear it.
Sometimes in my work, when a client is busiedly talking about something irrelevant or she is running around in session or in her life, when the concern she brought to me is conspicuously absent, when I sense frenetic distraction I just sit quietly. i stop encouraging her to talk or move. Usually the behavior increases and anxiety peaks. then i can ask:
"If we weren't talking about your shopping list/your stress/your annoyance at the car place, what would fill that space?" Usually she doesn't know but sitting with that anxiety for just a little while can quickly put into stark light what is being obscured, smoke-screened, or ignored. Ignored. Itmis so easy to just describe the trials of life, the little funny events worthy of a facebook post. So often we ignore the pure, powerful feelings of fear, sadness, anger, joy, existential pain and loss. These things deserve to be seen and to be bathed in the light of awareness and EXPERIENCING.
What the f*ck does this have to do with cooking? If I wasn't cooking 5 things--focused on the ways to use sorghum flour and millet and turbinado sugar while also using up those leeks and making lunches and snacks, if i wasn't organizing my papers chronologically and by importance....what would fill that space. What might I be obscuring or ignoring? Who inside me needs to talk and I keep suppressing that voice?
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