One goal (and the one I am most terrified of) is to make one recipe a week (at least) from one of my many Paleo cookbooks. My skills in the kitchen are abysmal and my ego would suffer if I elaborated fully on my limits, so I will leave it at that (for now). Yesterday I made Sunny Deviled Eggs from Everyday Paleo by Sarah Fragoso. In true Paleo fashion it does not call for mayonnaise (a staple from my childhood, so it is still hard for me to not use it out of habit), but instead requires olive oil, fresh basil and juilienne-cut sun-dried tomatoes. Normally I am horribly intimidated by any recipe that calls for fresh herbs (they're more expensive than gold! what happens if I buy too much and can't use all of them before they go bad and then I've wasted all that money! What if there are bugs on them? What if I eat the bug accidentally and don't know it and then get a weird illness in my lungs?). Again, as I write this I am struck by how silly that sounds, but it is the truth. I also get uncomfortable when it calls for ingredients that need more than one adjective for description and specification. Sun-dried tomatoes? No problem. I know where those are at in the grocery store and I've eaten them before. Julienne-cut? Really? Come on, did I have to pick a recipe that called for such high-maintenance vegetables? (or fruit if you are in the camp that insist tomatoes are a fruit. I cannot accept that. I like to think I'm open-minded and available for change, but I do have my limits. I will always count tomatoes as vegetables in my food pyramid).
After reading the recipe several times, panicking, and getting irritated and annoyed at myself for setting such a scary goal that takes me way out of my comfort zone, I began. The recipe said it would take 30 minutes. It took me three times as long. Mainly because I was trying to help my husband cook dinner at the same time (also another goal to be more helpful in the kitchen) and couldn't figure out how to get the kitchen timer to work, and realized I had forgotten to buy fresh basil when I bought the julienne-cut sun-dried tomatoes (maybe a Freudian slip or a subconscious accident?). After consulting Google and Pinterest I discovered I could use dried basil as a substitute and crossed my fingers that it wouldn't compromise the quality. Somehow in my first twelve readings of the recipe I didn't clue in that I would need a food processor (which we don't have) until I was at step 4 (out of only 5) in the recipe. I was trying to figure out if I could just whisk the filling briskly or chop it up in tiny pieces and smash it with a spoon in lieu of a food processor, then decided to call upon my self-taught expert chef husband. Feeling a little disappointed at what seemed like failing to become more independent (and hopefully one day successful) in the kitchen, I began to laugh ruefully when he smiled, kissed me on the forehead, and pointed at a mini food processor sitting on the counter. Apparently I only pay attention to the side of the kitchen that has the coffeemaker and hadn't noticed it. Actually I probably had noticed it, but not finding it immediately useful, ignored it.
Miraculously, I managed to complete the rest of the recipe and carefully spooned the mixture into the egg halves and sampled my creation. They're not terrible, but they also do not elicit excited utterances such as: holy cow these are so good I want another one! either. It's not that they lack taste, it's more that the flavor is hidden and you may or may not find it in each bite. It's like when you come home and it looks like the house is empty, but you're pretty sure your spouse is home because his truck is parked outside. He's not in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, "mancave", backyard, or shed. Only after texting him (slightly in a panic - where is he? alien abduction? mistaken identity kidnapping? winning at a game of hide and seek that I didn't realize we were playing?) when you hear his phone beep and realize he is next door in the neighbor's yard swapping gardening tips and playing catch with their kids. It's just like that with Recipe #1 of Summer 2014. You know the flavor is supposed to be there and you keep looking for it bite after bite and sometimes you find it right around the corner where you're not expecting it (usually thanks to the diva of this recipe - the sun-dried tomatoes) and sometimes you don't.
But maybe that's just how the cookie crumbles (or how the eggs are deviled). You set a goal, you plan your steps, you expect results and when they don't look like your pre-conceived picture of success, you change the frame of the painting. You realize that fresh items in the grocery store are not to be feared and that sometimes life isn't that cut and dried (pun intended) and sun-dried tomatoes do need more than one adjective to explain what they are and what they're capable of. After all, don't we all describe ourselves in more than one adjective? It would hardly be fair to just label myself as Valerie, unemployed, or Valerie, age 36, or Valerie, full-time college student. All of those adjectives at one point in my life scared me, but when I put them all together I realize none of them are to be feared and my life is more than just one of those things. It is all of those, plus a whole lot more. And maybe in this free time I have completing simple (to many people, not to me!) recipes like deviled eggs, I will find that sometimes you can substitute dried herbs for fresh ones. You can break out of your comfort zone and quit your job and embrace the change and the uncertainty and follow your heart and your dreams. And maybe in all of this, I'll learn to make a list before going to the store to make a recipe and next time I make this, I'll remember that I forgot to add dried dill to the filling the first time. And I'll laugh that life sometimes shows you that you need dried dill and fresh basil to slay the anxiety-fueled culinary dragons and I'll remember that the devil is in the details, but the details are what count and what makes it complete.
(Picture proof of my attempt).
