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You've got to get mad

 

 I need to create classic recipes. It is the avalanche in me that cannot be stopped. I love seafood. I make excellent mussels. Sweet vermouth, PEI mussels, cream, portabello mushrooms, shallots, garlic, cilantro, bacon. Maybe a Thai chili or two if I want to cook on the wild side.  My oh my!


But now, I NEEEEEEEED to make a lobster thermidor, a favorite back in1960s-70s entertaining. The food from those old black-tie dinner party meals is rising into view once again. I know there can be wild spins on what we can do with a meal that Julia Child championed us out of our collective trepidation. 60 years later we are tampering with the maverick. But take your rest here for a moment to cook at the station of that wonderful woman who brought the housewives out of the dark ages, showing us all that family dinner had no limits. Even more so, Julia showed us that ambition and creativity were not owned by men alone. She like my grandmother, did so in a world that said otherwise. But wow! I digress!


I make amazing grilled oysters. They are simple, but there are so many ways to make them. Time is the biggest obstacle. Like the great Warren Zevon said, Life will kill ya'. I have ideas to make one wonderful thing after another. By the time I got home from work or the grocery store, my energy and ambition had long since left me. It is a mystery where it goes.

There it is, the antagonist in this blog shows its ugly head at the beginning of paragraph four. Time and energy, are those elusive things that none of us seem to have. We don't have time and so we compromise. Even worse, we figuratively have these little people standing on our shoulders, whispering in our ears: "You can't do it." Time assaults us, commercial dictators assault us, and we feel drained. The hyper-sensory trip we undertake daily is a long, LONG way from the days back in 1977 when I was white-washing cement walls on a summer afternoon.

The fact is, we have to fight against what seems to be an invisible weight that was never there before. I would attribute it to getting older but I know for sure that is not the cause. It is something else. Young and old alike, we all seem to be suffering. This means we have to channel the great Outlaw Josey Wales: "Now remember, things  look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then  you gotta get mean. I mean  plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give  up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is."

This may not work for the average person, I don't know. What I can tell you is, I have lived by this law that it is only because of it that I am still alive today. Daily too. Exhaustion sets in and I get mad, I push and I succeed. It gets me through RA, through apathy, tiredness, anxiety and all those things that pin us down today.

I ran into a colleague who said she struggles with being an introvert. The pandemic has dealt us all a serious blow in this area. Personal interaction has an odd weight and unpleasantness these days, until you actually do it. Then we wonder what we were so worried about.


It may seem like I am jumping around a little, but it is all related. I have been doing Fight4Taste Friday since March of this year. It is where I make a simple or not so simple meal for approximately 22 people at work on Fridays. It is so simple to slip into neutral, and when I fight against that, I find my joy.

So yes... Lobster Thermidor, smoked oysters, bento boxes that take me to new places, more, more, more. It's all good. Just remember, before I get started, everything inside of me says NO. But that is when I need to get mad.


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