I barely find any enthusiasm or energy to cook these days. If I manage to crawl out of bed and shower, I give myself 6 points and then convince some super human instinct within a nook of my grey matter to propel me to function for the rest of the day in auto mode.
Coming back home today after a 2 hour meeting over a research proposal I forced myself to enter the kitchen. In saner and happier moods I clean and cook but these days my life feels like my refrigerator on the defrost mode. Yet my survival instinct - which I discovered I do possess about a year back but highly underestimate - was pushing that auto function mode. So I chopped up a large cabbage with my large butcher knife (and discovered that chopping is good therapy when distressed but no , not in the manner you'd imagine I am venting my frustration at the hapless veggie imagining it to be someone's head :P), heated up some olive oil, threw in bay leaves, cumin and the cabbage and proceeded to cook it, standing zombie like of course while I mixed it all up. A little later impatient with the fact that the food was still hot and I couldn't eat it yet, I pulled out my emergency ziploc bag with chocolate biscuits.
Barely had I popped the first biscuit into my mouth the chocolate melted and ran through my fingers...and almost immediately
these two things came to my mind with the cabbage dish which turned out half burnt and the melted chocolate:
You proceed to spice up your life by choosing very ideal and fancy ingredients and you put in your faith (sometimes despite your concerns the 'ingredient' you have chosen is better at a 'later' stage) tossing it all in with the other mundane things that you are committed to like your career, your academic endeavours or things you JUST have to do to stand on your own feet. Your dish gets all to messy all of a sudden without any warning (You didn't expect a mess ...why?! remember the faith? and how attractive spices just never make you think twice of the hierarchy in which they should be tossed into the hot oil) and there you are standing by the stove staring into the stuff you thought would turn out fine if not fantastic.
I just couldn't help but draw the analogy here....well you put aside the messed up ladle onto a clean coaster and make the most of what you are presented with. You don't always throw away a messed up dish..it turns out edible in bits and pieces and that's how life is ...you take the unpleasant, unpredictable elements or turn of events and still hold onto the faith that all is not lost. You savour your sadness, your losses for the wisdom only those moments will teach you and not the happier ones. You eventually grow less cynical and afraid and venture to make the dish again even if takes you many days, months or in some cases a few years.
Chocolate...we all love it, don't we? It gives you a sugar high, it makes your brain smile and if you like dark chocolate like me, you always want to have it when it's nice and solid. But hey...chocolate melts and sometimes when you want it bad....VERY VERY bad. Sometimes you've been waiting for that dark chocolate to come into your hands for a while and can't resist the urge to quickly open the wrapper to sink in your teeth at the very first chance you see it.......only to find a gooey dark liquid running down your hands. Well, I say go ahead, indulge in it even if it gets you looking messy. Clean up after you've had your fill and smile because you atleast got to taste your much 'craved' for chocolate even if it decided to surprise you with a change of form
C'est la vie....non?
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