Too much cooking

(I didn't make the brownies)

I’m making brownies. This might be the first instance of baking I’ve done in about a decade and I fear something is wrong. A packed weekend of plans have changed and my inflexible Taurus soul feels like a lonely loser even though I spend most of the time waiting to be alone. Sometimes I worry that even though I love being alone, I’m secretly just waiting to be swept off my feet and if it doesn’t happen I’m going to be in a perpetual stage of waiting, never fully satisfied. I’m whole but I wouldn’t mind being more whole and I’m tired of cooking for myself. I’m even sometimes a little tired of cooking for others, even though I always offer, even though it always feels good; but I wouldn’t mind someone else offering me a plate of food, even if it’s just a piece of toast and a little stubby beer. People say they’re afraid to cook for me which seems crazy because I really will eat anything, and I’m not that good of a cook anyway.

I’m not actually making the brownies. Not yet. I’ve been thinking about it. I bought the ingredients the other day intending to make them as dessert but I bumped into Sarah and Adam and their baby and it was happy hour so we drank two margaritas in the sun outside the place where everyone goes on a Friday and walked home together early enough to cook the chicken but too late to bake the brownies. The chicken was good and laced with honey and gochujang and miso paste and I cooked down the courgettes until they fell apart when dropped in a creamy cloud of yoghurt. We didn’t need the brownies because we had chocolate anyway. I drank half a bottle of white wine and needed to switch beds half way through the night, restless and interrupted, and I think I might not drink wine for a while now.

I’m thinking about the brownies less for the outcome but as an activity to occupy my slightly hormone-fuelled brain. I don’t not like cakes but I never think about them – like, never – and I know if I make them I’ll need to eat one, but I’d rather have the leftover chicken so why would I bake the brownies anyway? Sometimes I wonder if I offer to cook because I don’t think the rest of me is enough to offer up; I think I believe that to endure my company you need the food to make it taste sweeter.

Since removing that tiny plastic implant from my arm I have these moments of self-annihilation every month for about five days, which means out of a year, I’m like this for 60 days, which seems long.

This week I’ve cooked four herb-infused chicken legs over thick rounds of potatoes, and six skin-on, bone-out chicken thighs marinated in Korean spices in the oven; made three batches of lime miso vinaigrette and three crispy rice salads; consumed multiple spreads of butter, eight eggs in different guises and about four slices of Cloudy White; bit into three flat nectarines and ate five slices of aged cheddar whilst standing in front of the fridge. I’ve gone through two jars of beans and sliced through the final tomato from the farm and whipped up an aioli whilst watching Gilmore Girls, the bowl held steady between my knees.

There is something different about a lover cooking for you. When I go home, my mother is in control of the kitchen. I’m grateful, it’s delicious but it doesn’t hold the same level of intimacy as a partner who loves you making sure you get the best piece of lasagne or running to the shops to get ingredients for grilled cheese and chicken soup because you’re bleeding. A man once made me tacos from scratch and I remember watching him press the dough whilst I sat on the counter with a glass of wine in my hand and nothing to do but watch the lever being pulled, the flattening of the maize, and remember the way it smelt when it kissed the pan.

I can make myself all of the things I love and I can share that love with others by cooking for them – laying everything out for people to reach inwards and fill their stomachs and their hearts. But I’m hungry for someone who might bring me my coffee or cook me dinner after I’ve been for a swim, or who might stir the pot whilst holding our kid as the dog looks up at us hungrily, and all the other mundane things that people in love say are boring and routine, but actually sound really quite excellent.

I give up on the brownies and trying so hard to fall in love and I wonder if they’re right when they say it’ll happen eventually.