In my kitchen, rules don’t really apply
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- March 13, 2021
- 740
I’m pretty sure there might be something wrong with me.
Well, that’s a bit of an understatement, as faithful readers know.
Someone who spends as much time as I do remembering and reliving every single one of his failures can’t be normal.
But I’m just a prisoner of my idiosyncrasies, a guy trapped in a humorous hall of mirrors, destined to find nothing but dead ends until that eureka moment, the one that results in even more quirks.
You probably want a for-instance example. OK. Here you go:
I’d much rather prepare a meal than eat one.
In terms of pure Darwinian thought, this is the precise inverse of what the renowned evolutionist posited when he put forth his survival-of-the-fittest theory, the one that insists if you aren’t a predator, you’re prey … so say your prayers.
Of course, Darwin also spent an inordinate amount of time puddle-jumping around the Galapagos Islands, subsisting on nuts and berries, jotting down disjointed notes, grooving on the tides and drawing crude sketches of turtles that lived to be 130 years old.
In a place so far removed from anything that passed for civilization, I’m guessing Darwin didn’t plan many fancy meals.
But if he had, those turtles would have been soup by sundown.
Which reminds me of the week an adventuresome friend and I spent in Negril, at that time an unspoiled and utterly delightful Jamaican treasure that few tourists had heard of, let alone visited.
On one of our morning walks to the white-sand beach, we stopped.
“That’s some turtle,” my friend said to a dreadlocked dude as we stared at the enormous specimen roped to a stake outside one of the tin-roofed eateries that dotted the road to the sparkling sea.
“Yeah, mon,” the guy said rather proudly, his sunny smile showing off a gold tooth. “Soon come back, eh? Turtle soup tonight.”
Jamaica was like that back then, as 1978 dropped into the Caribbean and 1979 surfaced. You never knew what was going to happen next. One night an innkeeper might be offering you his best room for 10 American dollars; the next day you’d been sharing space with goats and chickens as the jitney in which you were riding made its jarring, circuitous way to a remote mountain village that promised some of the finest flora in the hemisphere.
It was a great time to be 23 years old.
I didn’t miss Northeast Ohio that January, though it was a severe jolt to my sense of well-being when, as our plane landed at Port Columbus, the pilot informed the passengers that the temperature was minus-10 F.
When we’d flown out of Montego Bay, it had been 90 F in the shade.
“You realize,” I said to my friend before we disembarked, “that we’ve lost 100 degrees in 10 hours, don’t you?”
“That’s a big loss,” my cliff-diving friend said, rather philosophically, shouldering his backpack and camera case. “How do you feel about skiing? I know a place not too far from here.”
But I was way too burned out for any more fun.
“I think I’ll just drive home,” I said. “Get back to normal.”
My first apartment had a balcony, which was its obvious selling point, but it also featured a nice, little kitchen. I’d come out of college armed with not only a bachelor’s degree in English, but also a handful of recipes I’d almost mastered after living out my senior year with five other guys in an off-campus ghetto house that included a balky furnace — not optimal for a winter in South Bend — and an almost-reliable gas stove.
At the outset of our communal living experiment in fall 1976, we did everything right: Chores were assigned on a rotating basis — shopping, cleaning, cooking, et cetera — and we mostly kept to the plan.
But then, well, life intervened, and between girlfriends and classes and parties and other distractions, we devolved into Darwinian drama and it was every man for himself.
It’s funny that now I look back on that chaotic second semester as the best interlude of my Notre Dame experience, those voluminous complications notwithstanding. There was no handbook outlining behavior, nor were there any enforceable rules. We were miles and miles removed from anyone in a position of authority, so as you might well imagine, we made it up as we went along.
When you could see graduation day on the horizon and you had a choice between a Faulkner seminar and spending an afternoon with your girlfriend preparing a spaghetti dinner for friends, it wasn’t a close contest. You put Bob Marley on the stereo and began chopping onions and peppers and mushrooms, meatballs ready.
The fun was in the anticipation.
And that’s something that’s stayed with me ever since.
I’d much rather cook than eat.
It all fits in to my overarching life design: eat when you’re hungry, drink when you’re thirsty, sleep when you’re tired and work when you must.
The rest of the time, make sure there’s music and you’ll be fine.
I used to worry about not living up to others’ expectations, probably owing to my parochial school upbringing and its forever scars. The nuns were an insistent black-robed bunch, always chittering away about sins and penance and responsibility.
“The other children look up to you,” I heard more than once, creating in me a dreadful sense of pride … or a prideful sense of dread: I was never quite sure what my response ought to have been.
Nothing makes me feel more secure than knowing if called upon, I can cook a company meal for Christmas or Thanksgiving, and be just as comfortable grilling Mikey Burgers or baking Tuna Boats.
I find it soothing to be alone in the kitchen, just me and my ingredients, a little acoustic Neil Young or electric Bob Dylan on the box, working my way through the various steps, not a recipe card in sight, easing into it, cutting and dicing and slicing and mixing, all the while knowing it’s all going to turn out well.
Now have I screwed up? Puh-lease.
Family lore is filled with my failures; in fact, I still have nightmares about ruined racks of ribs and greasy giblets.
But I maintain an optimist’s outlook when it comes to cooking, so if you’re ever in the neighborhood, feel free to stop in for a meal.
Just don’t be surprised if I don’t eat … unless I’m hungry.