As you might already know, I share a lot about my family. And if it happens that you only see the good, easy and positive aspects, it might be the timing of my posts in your stream or that you're just an overwhelmingly positive person. But I really do try to present my life and relationships in a balanced way.
And I hope it comes across that while I am absolutely grateful that we are a mostly happy and blessed family, our relationships are not without their ups and downs, conflicts, struggles, plateaus and frustrations.
I also hope that people understand that this life you see in my posts and pictures, while genuine, was not always this way for me - not as a mother, not as a wife, and not as a daughter - or for us as a family. It took years, decades in some cases, for the people involved to live with, create, perpetuate, suffer from, deny, then finally recognize and work through lots of difficult and complicated issues, sometimes in textbook "healthy" ways, many times not, to get to this place. Sometimes it's too much *me*, not enough *them*. Other times too much them, not enough me. And finally juggling and rebalancing, we hit a healthy combination of *us*.
And the issues, while fewer, still exist, and we still have to keep cycling through them the same way, but hopefully more efficiently and less painfully with each turn.
But what's resulted is pretty much what you see - many moments of happiness, gratitude, warmth, fulfillment and contentment peppered with fewer and fewer - but still very real - moments of unhappiness, ingratitude, frustation, confusion and general unpeacefulness within ourselves and with one another.
How we got to this mostly happy point in our lives is that at some point we each and together determined that it's not an option not to keep trying, even through those moments when we're convinced we don't want to.
And since I find myself so rarely blogging here about food anymore, I'm going to stretch this noodle a bit to say that in this way, and in so many ways, cooking is a lot like family.
It's a basic reality, necessity, and obligation of life, even if our modern way of living has progressively led us to believe it's not. We start out thinking it should be easy and intuitive to nourish ourselves in a balanced and enjoyable way, but we hit some snags - burn a pancake, oversalt a stew, overhandle our dough, or neglect our risotto - and taste the acrid, salty, chewy, gummy mess we've made and decide it's just easier to walk away from the mess in the kitchen and let a bunch of disinterested others - restaurants, fast food places, frozen dinners, protein shakes, power bars, junk food - be the primary caretaker of our bodily nutrition.
And every once in a while - maybe Valentine's Day or Hot Date Night - we figure we'll conveniently saunter back into that neglected kitchen and whip us up something perfect and delicious only to find we end up creating the same nasty mess we made that LAST time we were in the kitchen forever ago. Because we didn't put in the practice, patience, diligence, dedication and heart it requires to get to that point where we'll know with a fair amount of certainty that we can walk into that kitchen and whip up something perfectly delicious and fortifying without destroying things.
But that means doing
- a lot of mundane things (boiling water),
- a lot of boring and repetitive things (peeling tons of potatoes),
- a lot of things that will make you cry (chopping garlic and onions),
- a lot of things that are a little tricky (poaching eggs)
- a lot of things that are really disappointing (deflating a souffle)
- a lot of things that are extremely painful (hacking a finger, sticking said finger into a pot of melted sugar because you are a fucking idiot, you really are), and
- a lot of things that are downright maddening (mistaking salt for sugar, stuff like that...)
And then one day you look up to find that you've put in enough practice, patience, diligence, dedication and heart to know that 8 or 9 times out of 10, you can reliably produce for yourself and your family - as we all should - something delicious, nutritious, nourishing and fulfilling.
And just like family, there will be lots of expletives along the way...
¡Shit! ¡Fuckfuckingfuckety! and ¡Goddammit!-ly yours,
shinae :)
P.S. We're doing an African Food Cookalong this month, if you care to join us. Because what is a blog for if not shameless self promotion??? :D
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