You Are Not Needed Now

Something shifted this year in my cooking.  I'm getting more ideas and able to adlib much more often.  And I bounce back after deviating mid prep, which is sort of nuts to do but it happens when it needs to. Like when something goes wrong or a key ingredient is bad or missing.  Saving a dish requires technique.  I don't have professional training so it's all been trial and error.  But practice does help. This new conversion is also affecting my shopping.  Less waste.  I am usually able to utilize the leftover produce into a meal and for me, this is most satisfying as I've always hated throwing food out.  I've learned to make adequate proportions, which was a growth area in previous years.

I went in search oc this black bean pasta that my sister Mary told me about but instead found this brown rice pasta in the asian aisle.  I'm so jonesing for anything that looks like white noodles that I might be willing to eat buttered worms at this point.  And really, what doesn't taste good with pasta?  Very true but you still need skills to make a balanced meal with it. I started with sauteed mushrooms garlic and sweet onions but ended up feeling like it'd be best to have some green so I added some steamed broccoli, tomatoes and chopped basil, soy and red pepper flakes.

It was so good I had it with leftover roast chicken the next night.  I love when you can get the broccoli steamed to the precise moment when it still has bite but soft enough to not feel raw at all and stays brilliant green.  Yep, these little accomplishments better be enough.  You see, when you don't produce a real live human, as in have children, procreate, you know what almost every single adult in the world did except for me?  And say your talents are limited and perhaps your time is running out to figure what the heck your dang purpose is here.  Well, that's when getting your vegetables cooked just right becomes a reachable goal.  A little something to say, hey kid, you're alright even though all of society's measurable marks say otherwise. Sometimes I even wonder if this is purgatory.   The nuns used to describe that as a sort of long ass waiting area where you bide your time while you figure how to make right for all your sins.  It's not hell or even bad, just an idle universe. That would make sense.  I've always felt I was here to learn something, that maybe I should have understood before.  This might not be my first time at the rodeo in other words.  Maybe I had kids in another lifetime and they hated me.  Or I fed them bad chicken.  Who can know these things?  Whatever the case, I'm here now dumbing it all down, living simply. Trying to get anything right.

Clinging to my small daily triumphs.  I might not have shot a baby out of my cannon in this life but at the least I want people to know I wasn't a complete moron.