Watership

Today a sauce was swirling inside me, flavors married by my emotions- resignation, guilt, yearning, the agony of a break up, and the utter boredom that comes with having the extra 6 hours in a day to be alone with your thoughts. It takes an all-encompassing process to overcome all-encompassing emotions. I chose to cook them. And publish the recipe.

Watership’s Beet Quinoa and Garlicky Chicken of Solitude (and Mushrooms)

Ingredients -beets -quinoa -mushroom -garlic -chicken -onions -salt, red and black pepper, lime -olive oil -coconut milk

First, chop your beets into tiny cubes. Chop, chop, chop and let the red juice dye your fingers a heated pink, the same color as her lips. You won’t know when your last chop will be, the same way you can’t remember how it felt the last time you kissed her.

Chop your garlic cloves and almost nick yourself. Muse about the delicate nature of life, the broad unknowns, the things you wish you didn’t know.

Then chop your onions- you think it surely won’t sting since you’re already crying, but you’re wrong….

Take your chicken and trim the fat off with kitchen scissors the way you’ve trimmed everything else out of your life- with care, but not without regret. The greasy, bubbly lumps of chicken fat are the parts that remind you the most of love. Slippery, bubbly, fattening, but also so, so flavorful.

Dress your chicken in lime, salt, red and black pepper. Take a spoonful of minced garlic and mix. Toss it all about in a bowl, the way life will carelessly toss you into unforeseen situations!

Sauté the onions and beets in a pot with a touch of salt and ginger until fragrant. Remember to think of inviting her over, if only to watch the delight in her eyes as plumes of steam rise from the pot. She always was such a hungry girl. Then, drown the veggies in 2 cups of water, as if extinguishing your own thoughts. Wait to boil, then pour in the quinoa, cover the pot and simmer.

As your thoughts simmer about what you’ll think about at work from now on (since it can’t be her), take a spoonful of brown sugar and heat it in a saucepan. You can scorch it, until it melts and darkens in the heat of the pan. It could have been a caramel in other scenarios. Truthfully, your wishful thinking alone cannot turn burnt sugar into caramel. It was never going to be caramel, but you told yourself ‘It’s so sweet, there’s no other possibility’. A classic mistake that you must forgive yourself for.

Sometime before the sugar turns to carbon, you should pour in your chicken. You should let it sit and brown. Let it absorb the sugar, let it form a crust. No really, let it sit there. Leave it alone! Talking to her will make it worse. Don’t stir the chicken before it’s ready, you’ll ruin a perfectly good friendship, or whatever the hell it is you’re trying to cook.

And wait.

And wait.

And move around the quinoa, it should be fluffier now.

Now you may stir the chicken. You might have left it alone for too long. It might have found someone. You’ll wonder what the chicken thinks, you’ll cook it for about five more minutes (you’re scared of salmonella). Then, as you spoon it into a bowl, you’ll think of the texts you aren’t getting, the news about her day you aren’t receiving, and feel worse. Anything feels better than nothing, but nothing feels worse than not being true to yourself.

Why did you leave her? You’ll ask yourself, suspended in a web of guilt, regret, relief, and worry. You’ll tell yourself that thoughts do not make a flaw, actions do, and you’ll shortly make your first mistake.

The mushrooms.

You’ve thought about this recipe before- you don’t usually cook with mushrooms but you’ve been trying to widen the range of experiences you have. One of your other exes really liked mushrooms, but…he was a lot better at cooking them. That was 7 years ago, and as you watch the mushrooms soften in the simmering coconut milk you’ve poured in to deglaze the pot, you’ll wonder why it all smells so much earthier than the actual root vegetables you cooked, the ones that always live in the dirt.

Maybe it’s the contrast between the earth and sky. Maybe something bad will always be bad, but something good that has turned bad will carry the taste of dirt even more obviously.

Remember to thoroughly wash and trim the mushrooms. Do it before cooking.

Now you are done. Now you can come to terms with what you’ve done, forever. Maybe you can hold yourself in your arms, like a spoon holding beet quinoa, garlic chicken, and bad mushrooms. As you take a bite, maybe you’ll find comfort in the fact that Life is a harmony of what is both painful and good.

-Watership