Life Lessons in the Kitchen: Small Victories

In an ideal world, every day would start out with a healthy, delicious, filling breakfast. This would be followed by a quick, tasty lunch; later, you’d eat a substantial, home cooked dinner that was never monotonous. I will confess I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. It doesn’t matter that I am well aware it is impossible to achieve high culinary perfection while finishing my work and trying to sleep at least a passable number of hours, I still want to strive for the impossible ideal. But we live in the real world, where we have to make peace with the fact that none of those things are possible all, or even most, of the time.

So I instead wake up each morning to a coffeemaker that needs to be filled and prepped (without waking my happily sleeping roommate) before I can even hope to move towards the most basic question of breakfast, namely, cereal or yogurt. Eggs are out; they take too long to cook and would almost certainly give my roommate an unfortunate early morning wake-up call. Oatmeal is sometimes an option, but most days, I simply stare at the fridge trying to decide if anything looks truly appetizing or if I should just pour some cereal or yogurt in a bowl to have something to eat.

Lunch is worse. Most days it consists of whatever fruit I threw in my bag as I rushed out the door and a container of baby carrots eaten at my desk or as I run to my next class.

Dinner should probably be the redeeming meal, especially given the lovely collection of cookbooks sitting on my shelves, but, I confess, it is probably my biggest failure. I have fewer time or noise constraints to dinner, yet more often than not it comes down to one of four staples: a quesadilla, an omelet, spaghetti, or macaroni and cheese.

I often enjoy thinking of what I would do if money and time were no object. One of the top things on that list was eating delicious meals everyday. While that dream is clearly out of reach, I can do a little towards that desire. I decided to aim for at least one “real” meal every week or so. Of course, sometimes this does not happen: whether because of an upcoming deadline, meetings, or general exhaustion. However, the decision to try for even a small step towards that impossible ideal has had a great benefit. I feel less shame when dinner ends up being a bowl of cereal, because I have acknowledged already that it is okay if dinner sometimes does not really happen.

On the occasions where I take the time to make an actual dinner, I have learned to feel proud of the small victory, rather than guilty that it happens so rarely. A month or so ago, I took a Sunday afternoon to make a stew that I had been wanting to try for years, but never had the chance to make. The meal took a whole afternoon and involved a most interesting exercise where I had to peel and dice a butternut squash with only a small vegetable peeler and a smaller paring knife. It wasn’t easy, but I relished the chance to relax and focus on the act of creating something nourishing to enjoy. One stew (with several portions of leftovers chilling in the freezer) can hardly be a true success, but it is a small victory.

— Chloe Kaczvinsky