funnin' with food and wonder woman

i can't say i always heed to this, but you shouldn't be cooking food if you are taking it too seriously. there needs to be an appreciation for what you're doing. an understanding of how essential the act of eating is, and that cooking, as it has evolved, is a great reflection on the human mind. how man came to utilize heat as a means to prepare his food—and to then further manipulate the elements so as cooking became a science, and so too an art—is so tragically overlooked, despite it being so obvious a study to man's consciousness, or what fiction writers constantly seek to capture, the human condition.

so a couple weeks back, when i fired up the charcoals on the grill early in the afternoon to start charring vegetables, only to have the coals die by the time i needed to cook my fish and steaks, and so then cleaned the thing out only to build a new mound of coals, this time with my dad holding the lighter fluid, distracted and talking to alicia's stepfather, dousing the coals with ounce after ounce of the stuff in mid-conversation—which is when i bit my tongue so as not to cause a tiff between the two of us, despite knowing the label says to add only one and a half ounces per pound of coals, because he is my dad after all, and he knows best—and i slowly and carefully touched a match to the bottom of the pile like i always do, i was tested.

up until a couple years ago, i was still afraid to turn on a gas stove. the thought of the thing blowing up in my face, well, yeah. so when, before i knew what was happening, a fireball ballooned from the coals and snapped up my arm and toward my face, i thought i had it pretty bad. it's funny how trauma works, because in retrospect, i saw that fireball erupt in absolute slow motion. at first that kid in me came out and was simply awestruck, thinking something like a hushed, woah. but that didn't last long, and i snapped my arm away, shaking it over and over and over like it'd been swallowed by flames, though i wasn't on fire, and everyone else wasn't sure if they should be laughing or worried. because it was funny. and i deserved it, because up to then, i'd been bummed about having to restart my fire, and that's just not what it's about. so i singed a few dozen arm hairs? at least i snapped to.

and when alicia had an interview for a teaching position a couple days later, it was through food that i went about doing what i could to ease her nerves—though it's not like she ever needs it. sometimes i think i'm dating wonder woman. what the girl pulls off is inhuman. so as often as i can, i try and let her know this.

she was in a rush that morning, printing this and editing that on her resume, and needed breakfast. so i went to olivia's and picked up a couple wallaby yogurts, which she loves, and a pluot, which is a hybrid of an apricot and a plum, and some granola. in the bowl above, the granola sits at the bottom, sliced pluots fanned on top of that, which are hidden, and then the yogurt, which i had fun with and dotted with blueberries and a drizzle of honey and a small mound of more granola. you can see that plainly. it was easy, but a different way of making fruit and granola than the usual mix and match and pile it on that we eat every other day. my point is, i had fun with it. and it was the perfect way to send her off. the thing took thought, and she was touched that i'd taken that extra effort, which by nature calmed her nerves and i think helped set her up for an interview that was, despite her modesty, a cakewalk.

sure, take food seriously if that's your thing. but my whole point is when you have fun with the food, there's something different going on than what you get with the whole pretense of progressive, nouveau cuisine. and considering how far we've come since living in caves and hunting with spears, i'll take that any day.