random

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hot red epic

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I started reading Rebecca May Johnson’s Small Fires: An Epic in the Kitchen while I was alone in the house for a few days, with only my own appetite and whims to cater to.

One night, I cooked the hot red epic as Johnson calls it (p.89) - the recipe she cooked a thousand times, the recipe whose origins she is determined to discern but which prove murky. The recipe that made her think about what it means to make a recipe over and over, to “put your own spin on it”, and how recipes are affected by their historical context, their ‘source text’, the material circumstances that produced them, their language, their authorship. How a recipe can be a “siren-text, an ‘I’ that also speaks as ‘we’ and ‘they’ and ‘you’.” (p.97).

I was surprised that the hot red epic was just a simple tomato pasta sauce. But, as with all simple things, deceptive.

I didn’t have enough olive oil. Once it was cooked, served and tasted, I found I needed some capers and a pinch of chilli flakes for it to go from “fine” to something more interesting. Was it my supermarket own brand tomatoes, that still said Italian on the label? Should I have gone for the posher ones? I wrote this isn’t something I could see getting obsessed with in my journal as the saucepan soaked.

But the next day, I recalled the thin slices of garlic, the tomatoes, the richness of the (barely two tablespoons, as that’s all I had left) olive oil and yes, now I could see why one would want to perfect it. The simple things often elude us.

Three nights later, I was alone for dinner again, and I saw the homegrown garlic bulbs I had dug out of the garden drying on the kitchen window sill. The jar of living basil next to them. Another can of plum tomatoes in the pantry. Suddenly, all I wanted was to cook the hot red epic again. It was a siren call.

This time, it was undoubtedly richer and more unctuous as I used the full six tablespoons of olive oil. Though it was now a little too on the oily side for me. And I still needed the punchy tang of capers.

This should be the end of it, I wrote.

But no.

I still have garlic, basil, tomatoes and I’m going to make it again, this funny thing that’s wormed its way into my brain somehow, that good cook should have decent tomato sauce in their repertoire. I will try again. I will challenge myself to eat it without capers.

Finally, I see why Johnson was so compelled to keep trying this recipe again and again, a thousand times, and then wondered about everything that lay underneath it. How it became a hot red epic.

Why do we cook? is the question Johnson seems to be asking throughout the book and I liked how she tried to answer it.

I can feel myself getting slightly obsessed

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all the lives we live

Cooking with Theo Randall in London, 2013. Photo by Soolin Cottle.

Sometimes I look back at pictures of things I’ve done, people I’ve met, experiences I’ve had, and I have to pinch myself a little. I can’t quite get my head around it. Was that me? Did that really happen?

I’m stunned by all the lives we live. And stunned that there are more, undoubtedly, to come.

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instagram vs reality

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A page from my journal.

A page from my journal.

I like to give off the impression that I’m pretty together. That I’ve got my shit worked out or at least I have enough self-awareness to know what I need to work on. That I behave consciously. That I know what makes me happy and what doesn’t, and do my best to have as much as possible of the former in my life and the bare-arsed minimum of the latter.

And yet. And yet. I still care way too much about what things look like rather than what they feel like. I still care way too much about what people think. I still feel the sting of rejection and being misunderstood to my marrow. I still try far too hard to control other people’s impressions and experience of me. Ever since I arrived home, so many Phils have been competing to take the steering wheel off the only one I trust with this vehicle - wise, street-smart, calm Phil. All these other Phils I thought were satisfied now, their insecurities and baggage dealt with long ago. But no. No.

These past couple of years, my ego has been dying a slow, painful death. As it has lay dying, it has tried to show me, over and over again, that some (well, maybe around 90 per cent) of the things that I think matter really, really don’t. And that attempting to be part of the in crowd is a complete and utter waste of my time because I don’t belong there and I never have.

This afternoon, case in point. I had just made myself a mug of chai. I was still wearing my rather cool Kemi Telford skirt and cosy Witchery sweater from this morning’s client meeting. I thought I’d take a break from my work and enjoy a cup of tea. But then I thought “you’ve got such a nice outfit on, and this is such a pretty mug, and the light is nice, why don’t you take one of those ‘hands round the mug from above’ shots for Instagram?”

As I manipulated myself into place, I swear I could laughter from somewhere.

I read somewhere that the way all the influencers take these shots is by holding the phone in their mouths.

So there I was, outside, freezing, barefoot, with a blistering hot mug in my hands (turns out the handle is there for a reason!) and a phone in my mouth.

I could barely hold the mug, and I ended up with some kind of sore on my mouth, trying to keep the phone steady so I wouldn’t drop it and have it shatter on the concrete. The only photos I succeeded in taking were of inside my own mouth.

The phrase WTF? seemed designed for that very moment.

But all of a sudden, I saw myself.

And all I knew was I didn’t want to be this person.

And now, writing this, I feel released from something.

Every time I get drawn back into that world, of followers and likes and making everything look like a magazine and having an editorial calendar for your own bloody life, I will remember this moment.

There is so much I want to do with my life and none of it, none, involves burning my hands and hurting my mouth for a picture that won’t even legally belong to me any more once I upload it to that devilish platform.

But I also know I can’t be the only person out there who, on a day when they’re feeling a bit left out or vulnerable, sees everyone else’s shiny grids and perfectly-taken photos and feels a bit wistful….and then really, really lonely, like the uncool kid at school (which I was, so it’s a familiar feeling to me) looking at a world which, for some reason, you just aren’t part of. And every time you try to be a part of it, you end up falling flat on your face.

If you feel like that too, hi! I see you. Isn’t it hard pretending not to care when actually, deep down, you do care, even if it’s just a little bit? Isn’t it hard feeling the pull to fit in, because it’s so damn seductive?

But as Brene Brown has said, fitting in is not the same as belonging.

And I don’t want to fit in. Not really.

I try my best to be a bright, shiny, only-showing-my-good-side to the world woman, but actually….I’m pretty messy. Inside and out. My hair never behaves. My nails always break. My lipstick always ends up on my teeth. Whenever I wear white, I spill something on it. Every. Damn. Time. First world problems keep me awake at night. Some days I feel like everything is coming together and feel aligned with my purpose and calling, and other days I feel like I’ve accidentally burned all the bridges I’m trying to build.

I think being back home has reminded me of the pain of all those dark, lost years of my early adulthood, where I pretended that everything was fine and I had it all together but nothing could have been further from the truth. And sometimes I fall back into that trap. It’s hard to be real and honest and vulnerable when you’ve been hurt, both online and off. It’s hard to be yourself around people who don’t always appreciate or acknowledge how much you’ve changed, and therefore don’t always respond in the way you need or hope. But that’s another part of this revelation - I can only be me. I can only control my own actions. I can only be true to myself. I can be brave and put myself out there and know that I don’t need other people to behave or react in a certain way for me to feel safe or understood or seen or whatever. It’s hard, but it’s so freeing. The armour of perfection is too heavy.

So, no more phones in the mouth. It’s not for me. Only one-handed mug shots on my Instagram feed from now on. If at all. No more filters. Imperfection all the way. I’m going to do my best not to be afraid to show it.

PS: It took me sleeping on it to get the courage to hit publish on this post - but if life has taught me one lesson repeatedly, it’s the posts I’m most afraid to hit publish on that are probably the ones that need to be released. So here you are. Thank you for reading and listening to me :)