Never Walked In High Heels

I never really realized how heavy an egg was until last week. As I put it to my friend yesterday when we were meeting for lunch, “I’ve always had people to crack eggs for me.”

This year, in a feeble effort to simulate Julie and Julia, my neighbor and I decided that we would start baking each Saturday. Four weeks into our challenge and we’ve thus far made Victoria sponge, carrot cake muffins, a diabetic coma inducing chocolate meringue (aka a gooey chocolate stack), Norwegian cinnamon rolls, and a much bigger mess on my kitchen table than I ever knew was possible. My neighbor will tell you otherwise but the mess is mostly due to my interactions. During our second week of baking I decided that this had to be a therapeutic activity rather than simply that of leisure. My mother tells me that this is proof that I’m adopted from a bunch of militant Germans.

Its not that my family isn’t so much of the baking type as it is my lack of life experience which make the idea of baking so novel. With being even semi dependent on other people comes a huge amount of both tactile and practical ignorance. People make you a cup of tea because it is either impossible or you’d kill yourself trying to make one. As a result, you don’t know how your kettle works, nor how long you steep your tea for, or why different people can take the same request (will you make me a cup of tea please) and have it come out totally differently. Don’t even think of asking my how my washing machine works, all I know is I can’t turn any of the knobs on it.

On Saturdays I am once transported back to my childhood. Actually, that cliché is incorrect as it suggests that I have experienced the sensations of baking before. I have never done anything remotely like baking before. When I go to sprinkle flour, I am still shocked at how cool it feels to the touch. I marvel at how easily it slips through my fingers. I get frightened every time I come within about one yard of even a butter knife, irrationally terrified of stabbing myself with it. And I still refuse to try and crack an egg. I can only see disaster coming out of any attempt of egg cracking. This is where my overly logical adult mind kicks in no matter how much I fight to be childlike. It I manage to crush an egg rather than crack it, I’ve done it wrong, ruining the whole thing. My adult mind should then logically tell me that the world will keep turning and there’s more eggs in the basket as it were, but my mind has yet to reach that level of maturity yet.

Learning how to crack an egg has become my newest goal. Each week my neighbor holds an egg out towards me, lovingly offering me an opportunity to challenge myself. And each week I shake my head, agreeing to watch her do it for another week. Watching someone else do it correctly doesn’t teach you half of what you learn by doing it badly yourself. And so I continue to be surprised by the weight of an egg, have no idea exactly what it takes to crack its shell, and always waiting for someone else to do it for me.

All of my knowledge about cooking comes from one woman. Because of her, there are  about seven men who will  make their wives very happy. I am the link in between.  

When M.K. and I first moved in together, I told her that I wanted to learn everything she knew about cooking. She was thrilled to have someone else to cook for. Menu planning began soon thereafter, and Friday trips to Borough Market became a tradition. As M.K. moved in during the month of January, little except root vegetables were in season.  We would bundle up to run past Southwark, to take refuge from the depressive London weather under the green victorian canopies, and look for cilantro and saffron. Every color imaginable was there, like a market full of flowers hidden from the grey sky. By the time M.K. was done with her Masters in the Spring, we were grabbing our baskets and visiting the market in skirts on our way home from the library. 

In between studying for finals and memorizing monologues came dinnertime, and the hour or so before that was spent preparing food.  This soon became my favorite time of day. Since I couldn’t cook, I would sit on the floor of the kitchen, crouched beside the door, and we would talk… about everything. M.K. would come up with arguments for her dissertation, and I would try to figure how to handle the intraoffice politics of my first job. While the meal cooked, I ran lines and tried to memorize recipes. We fed each other with food and conversation, making sure that both would stick to our insides. 

The following year I found myself living near a group of guys, who quickly became my loyal friends. They ranged in age from 18 to 30 and had never cooked a meal in their lives. And I needed food. So they started a rotation of cooking duties, each one cooking in my flat for a week in between our drama school classes.  On Sunday one guy moved in, not knowing how to boil a pot of water, and, by that Saturday, he could at least make chicken korma. Meanwhile, I had made a very complex and three dimensional friend.

While teaching the men how to cook, I got to know their backgrounds and families, philosophical views and failed relationships. The dinner hour would last for three or four times longer than the title dictates. There is something undeniably unique about food that brings people out of themselves and allows them to relate to each other. The fact that we all need to be fed dismantles some guard we usually hold up. The enjoyment of food, the creative act of cooking, the careful combination of considering taste and nutrition are completely life affirming in every aspect.  It forces us first to admit that we are human and weak and then admit we each have an unlimited capacity for  joy and satisfaction. We cannot help but open up when there is a good meal on the table. 

During this time of year Borough Market begins to pick up in speed. Spring means full  baskets and skirts that catch both breeze and sunlight. Greens return, and every other color in the market is vivid and electric. We have survived winter, and now there are picnics and strawberry smoothies to look forward to. M.K. is now working on an organic farm back in the U.S., and we still send recipes back and forth online. The latest one she sent will be perfect for when all the guys come over next. They love using the food processor. And although they have never met M.K., I think that if she dropped by for dinner that night, they would think they had already met her.