Cooking with Love
Today I’m thinking of my cookbook. I have been working on it for two years now, and when my mom comes over, she says, “You’re always cooking!”
“Yeah, I cook a lot, mom!” I say.
“You have two desserts [poundcake and peach tart] right there! You bake so much! You never stop baking,” she says.
“I do never stop,” I say.
“I don’t like baking anymore! Probably because nothing ever comes out.”
Sometimes my sister Sarah teases my mom and tells her that you have to cook with love or else your dish won’t come out. My mom thinks this is nonsense, and I used to, too.
But it is true. Just like people have to be worth your time for you to fall in love with them, cooking has to be worth your time for anybody to fall in love with the results.
I don’t need to cook for a person I love. Sometimes I cook or bake, then stand outside on my porch and see if someone shows up. Sometimes our cute indie girl neighbors drive up in their white Honda Fit, and I hoist my goods off on them.” Sometimes Mary comes up from the garden apartment, and I give her muffins or bread or cakes (no Lebanese food for Mary). Sometimes we see the other Mary, the 80-plus-year-old former art teacher, who we share a yard with, and I send my husband over with ribs or a part of a roast chicken.
“Let’s admit it, he’s hot,” Mary says of my husband.
Today is one of those days where everything is synching up. I made a salad with big pickles, little pickles, pickled turnips, onions, an heirloom tomato, softboiled eggs, a crack of pepper, a squeeze of lemon. I walked outside and the weather was perfect, that kind of infinity pool weather where there’s no difference between the temperature inside and outside. I watched my dog dig a den to sit in, dirt spraying everywhere, but then it was too deep, so she splayed on the ground next to it.
I ran to St. Mary’s thrift, and I bought an off-white hefty gravy boat; an oval platter; two wire bread baskets; silk purple orchids; a painting of blue, purple, and yellow owls; a bottle painted gray with a green bird standing on a bicycle seat with musical notes above his beak, and his assumed girlfriend, a pink bird watching from a high birdhouse, hearts above her head.
Usually I don’t let myself buy many things. I think the total was 7 dollars. Still. If I can’t see myself plating it, stuffing it, or hanging it, it stays where it is.
