The only appropriate introduction to this post would be 'I am sorry but I am not not a quitter'. As most of you who follow this blog will know, circumstances became somewhat tricky since my last post. And since this is a cooking blog, I will recite my circumstances as a recipe.
INGREDIENTS:
A breakup
Pack up house
Buy a house
Gut said bought house and renovate
Manage building project
Keep clients happy
Don't take any time off to recoup, only time off to do stuff
Pack up house again so builders can reek havoc
Identify spare bedrooms to sleep in for a month (curfew essential)
Eliminate any sense of belonging and stability
Unpack house again
Lose 8kg and look like someone who wouldn't dare entertain the thought cooking, never mind blogging about it
Run on a treadmill like a lunatic
Reflect
METHOD:
Break up with someone you knew you never really should have dated in the first place, but make sure it hurts a lot anyways (not the loss) but because you are making the same mistakes you made in your early 20's but you are now 30 something. Take a long hard look at yourself and identify why warning signs were ignored. FREAK OUT.
To ensure maximum effect, time break-up with moving out of the first place you came to be happy in since moving back to South Africa. Pack up house whilst dealing with severe stress (stress manifesting in food poisoning symptoms and fatigue, for 2 weeks). Ensure you are down 4kg by this stage.
Ensure business is on the boil at all times during this process and you work from home with no internet and you are in the communications business. Add 7 builders to your private work space.
Move into flat whilst buying process is still underway. Even though flat will be renovated, unpack EVERYTHING cause you feel like a feral animal and you are desperate for a base and stability after said break-up, even though you know that everything will have to be repacked again.
Spend a fortune in a coffee shop whilst you try to work there with a number of distractions to avoid the added 7 strange men in your flat.
Camp in your bedroom with no bathroom or kitchen for 2 months.
Pack flat up AGAIN and move in with mum (ensure curfew of 11pm stands). Pack up stuff at mum AGAIN and send mum to Israel and realise you need to find someone else to stay with who you hope and pray you won't be intruding on.
Think 'fuck this' and stay at The Don with your plastic bag of clothes for 5 days.
Whilst staying at The Don, give builder an ultimatum and move back into unfinished flat with plastic bag.
For best results, run like a maniac at the gym and lose another 4kg because that is the only place that doesn't seem like a chaos pit and it levels your head.
THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART: Meet new people, (you know who you are and I can't thank you enough, I would love to throw some names out but I can't) and re-meet (JACK I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY HEART) people who are the essence of human kindness who repair your spirit and your soul and make you realise that you don't actually know everyone and that circumstances have lead you on a path to cross journeys with some very, very special individuals who give of themselves without expecting anything at all in return. CATEGORICALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON I WANT TO THANK IS MY WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL FATHER. DAD YOU AMAZE ME AND I LOVE YOU MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF. YOUR PATIENCE, INSIGHT, FORESIGHT, EMPATHY, SUPPORT, KINDNESS, GENEROSITY OF TIME, SPIRIT AND EVERYTHING ELSE. NOTHING I SAY WILL DO JUSTICE TO WHAT I FEEL FOR YOU IN TERMS OF GRATITUDE, LOVE AND ADMIRATION.
Finish flat and realise you are burnt out but live in a palace having picked up new clients along the way and not fallen apart.
Reflect, cook your first meal on YOUR stove, vowing to get yourself back to some sense of normality.
ENJOY . . .
OK, so that in a nutshell or recipe if you like has been my journey; it was the best of times and it was the worst of times and not a time I could have blogged without inciting some serious deformation of character across a few surfaces and coming across as mildly unstable / manic / psychotic / certifiable. But, I am back and I am happy, not 100% content but ok with what is. Which is what is the important part and I am a very, very, very lucky girl with wonderful friends and a wonderful family.
The above diatribe was a preamble to the first meal I cooked, today on my stove, my new stove, in my new flat. I can't begin to tell you how life-changing and how self discovering the journey to get here has been. Now, you may laugh and you may scoff at that last sentence but truthfully, I don't care. I feel as if I have grown in lifetimes since June 2010.
Enough of all that now, we are here to learn how to cook good food, engage with friends over meals and enjoy life to the maximum because it is so very short. Whilst you are enjoying your meals and your company before I impart the next recipe (the first recipe I cooked in my new flat), I want to leave you with a little something: Be honest, be truthful and live in the moment. Go get what you want without fear and with determination cause you only fucking live once and you don't know what tomorrow may bring.
Sam's Salm-on - first cooked meal on my stove. (Serves 1, I am single but double portions up for 2 people)
Serve with a simple salad of mixed leaves, spring onion and coriander. Use marinade for fish as dressing.
Ingredients:
A fillet of salmon (Norwegian is best, Scottish farmed salmon even better but not Chilean salmon as it is way endangered. Don't do it kids).
Fine chop a clove of garlic
Fine chop 3 spring onions
Fine chop a few heads of coriander
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp soya sauce
1 tsp sugar
Method:
Mix garlic, spring onion, coriander, sugar and wet ingredients to form a marinade for your salmon.
Leave salmon in marinade for an hour or two if possible, turning on the hour.
Preheat pan on a medium heat using a little olive oil, just enough to cover the pan (sesame oil's burn point is too low and you will ruin your salmon if you use sesame oil).
Fry your salmon off for 7 minutes on each side, if on a medium heat, your salmon will be moist inside and crispy on the outside if cooked to the mentioned heat and time specifications.
Mix your salad leaves, spring onion and coriander together and add the salmon marinade to your salad as a dressing.
Place salmon on the plate with the salad and you are Salm-on.
Till tomorrow . . .
