Slowly I start adding things back into my life. And yet. I think I will leave it at that, a fragment full of both frustration and hope. I grow frustrated. I grow tired. The eternal cry of "MORE" rears its ugly head. This has always been my curse, and perhaps it is the one lesson from my childhood that will be the most difficult to relinquish — the wanting to know everything, to see everything, to miss nothing. And yet, despite this struggle, I become increasingly unhurried, increasingly content to just be here, wherever, with less, worried about less. It is a good place to be, although I do not always manage to remain wrapped in its stillness and peace.
When I take the time to pause, I see that these frustrations are unfounded. Yes, I can grow tired. Who does not? Certainly I am doing so much more than I was a year ago, when, in the midst of chemotherapy, I was not doing well at all. And yet I wonder. Why this need for an accounting? I wonder if it matters, ultimately, in whether or not a life was well lived. Perhaps the pursuits of more, whatever they be — popularity, power, things, experiences – perhaps this life of pursuit is a life in pursuit of a mirage. Increasingly I think all that matters in life is that we love and find joy, our own joy, the joy that is essential to our natures, the joy that resonates and explodes our own essential selves into lights in the world. As I increasingly understand, joy is not a solitary pursuit. In order to live in joy, I must also share that joy with others. I cannot do it by myself for only myself. Self-centerdness is the opposite of joy.
Sometimes joy is quiet and calm. Sometimes it is active and riotous. Sometimes it makes a mess.
In July I started cooking again. Not "get dinner on the table" cooking, but cooking cooking. I started exploring new recipes and rediscovering old ones, playing with dishes both complicated and simple. Certainly the results were often delicious and satisfying. There was an occasional failure. But the joy came not just from the results but the very act of making, of exploration, of rekindling a kind of muscle memory. Cooking is a creative exploration, a gift to those we feed. Or it can be. We need to cook; we need to eat. There is necessity. One of our gifts as humans is the ability to elevate necessity into something beautiful, powerful, shared. The creation of food is also a gift, an act of creation and also of reverence of sorts, of honoring the things that nourish us, and in nourishing both ourselves and others in the process. Mostly I fed only myself. Occasionally I fed others. I tended to go overboard, but that was primarily because I was caught up in the act of exploration, of rekindling some previously misplaced neural networks and following them into new delights. But I have no doubt that the act of creating, of feeding myself even, not only of feeding others, percolates into every aspect of my presence in the world
A lot of this cooking came about because I would flip through my old recipe files and think about the things I have not made in a long time. I learned that my tastes have changed. Some recipes were successes. Some were failures. I am far more sensitive to tastes of preservatives in food, far less enamored of commercial processed food than I once was. Perhaps not oddly, I would have said, even then, that I did not eat that much processed food. But perception is relative. Now even less appeals. Except for Fritos perhaps. I still love Fritos. But my once-upon-a-time self could devour a bag of chips, hoarding them for myself, and now about a handful is all that I want before something shifts and the bag goes in the trash. Once I could eat a Frito plain, but no longer. It remains a great vehicle for something else, but even then the limits of my tolerance is easily reached. I would rather have a slice of turnip, or cucumber, or even a spoon with my hummus or my dip, but the spoon, of course, is not an option in a social setting. The spoon itself, the idea of eating a shared dish with a spoon, is an inward, and ultimately selfish act, a turning away from the communal. It is good we do not serve spoons with our dips. The communal table allows us to use appetite, a physical appetite, as a trigger, turning ourselves outward to others. I need to feed myself, but I cannot be whole, wholly myself, alone. "Our daily bread" is not just bread, it is the communal experience we need to survive: physically, emotionally, spiritually. We humans are selves only as part of a communal gathering. Nourishment is also communion. So also is creativity. The creative act might seem solitary, but in fact the very act of creation means that it flows beyond itself, sometimes even in ways that are not immediately evident.
Oh wait, I am writing about food, about cooking.
A significant amount of my recent cooking explorations revolved around a new to me cookbook, Mi Cocina, by Rick Martínez. I grew up eating both Mexican and Tex-Mex food. I spent a great energy in my 20s expanding my Mexican culinary horizons beyond what I learned in childhood, primarily because options for Mexican food in New York State were slim in the 1980s. We ate a lot of Mexican food, both simple and complex, exploring regional Mexican cusines, and revisiting my childhood Tex-Mex favorites. But after my husband died, I mostly stopped cooking Mexican food. Perhaps it seemed too much work for a solo diner. Perhaps it was simply too emotionally fraught of an exercise. Martínez has rekindled that love affair with both the flavors of Mexico, with the joys of flavor itself, of cooking something with attention and detail and yes, joy. He has also reminded me that although complexity in and of itself is not needed, detail is important. Nourishment, and joy also, often comes from the meetings of several simple things. I needed this.
Exploring new culinary ideas, finding new favorites, revisiting the once tried-and-true. Not all was measured and calm. I have always been a person inclined toward too-muchness, all in or all out. I repeatedly write about that here. It is another of my ongoing struggles. But our struggles and our joys shape our lives. I am not sure that this tendency, this bubbling forth and then retreating, is at all unusual. I look around me. The world is balanced, but it is rarely measured in its flow. Perhaps this too, this idea a life well-lived is a life of moderation, of calm, of evenness, is another mirage.
In some fit of energy, or was it madness, I looked at the freezer, which desperately needs cleaning out, and some detailed culinary plans started to come into focus. What after all is the point of exploring the new without also using what I already have. Accumulating more is rarely the answer in and of itself. I decided to make chili. Three big pots of chili in fact. Remember that part of my nature that tends toward excess? This is not in fact as extreme as it sounds. It does not, in fact, take three times as long to prep three pots of chili as it does one, as many of the ingredients overlap. Once the first pot of chili is bubbling away, the others fall in place. I made two long-time favorite recipes and one new one: one in the slow cooker, one braising slowly in the oven, and one on the stove top. The cooking also takes no longer for three chilis than for one.
Of course, one is left with a great deal of chili. A party perhaps? That would have been a great idea, and I will do it someday. This time I just put the chili in the fridge for 36 hours, allowed the flavors to meld and the fat to rise to the surface and solidify, then I reheated the chilis and canned the bulk of it. Does it make sense to move meat from the freezer to pantry shelves? Yes. Although it doesn't really eliminate the problem of having a backlog, pints of chili are more usable than pounds of frozen meat. There will always be days when I need to eat but really just want to reheat something simple. So yes, having chili, or beans, or spaghetti sauce makes sense. I would simply rather can, or freeze, my own than buy commercial. My pressure canner holds 14 pints. A pint is a good sized quantity for a solo household. And so I canned chili. I could have frozen sealed pouches of chili, but remember, I am cleaning out the freezer here. It needs to be defrosted, as well as reorganized. After two rough years, my priorities have evolved.
Little did I know the chili would prove useful sooner rather than later. Early last week, I went back into atrial flutter, where I have remained. Each day my energy would be lower than the day before. Rows of glistening jars of easy and nutritious chili and the pouches of colorful vegetable soups lining the shelves of my freezer, have been a godsend. Earlier this summer I mourned that I did not have the energy to grow tomatoes, to can them as I had a few years ago. I miss that, and my home-canned tomatoes were more filled with the essence of ripe tomato than anything I can buy the store. I wondered if I would ever undertake such activities again. Then chili happened, and I find myself blessed with bounty just when I need it. I am all about efforts that yield tangible rewards.
And my fluttery heart? We are addressing that also, I am in no danger, or no more than any of us are on any given day, and all is well.