Last week, I found a recipe for Turkish potatoes in a gorgeous English cookbook that I'd bought at TJ Maxx (known as TK Maxx here in Germany) in the spring. I wanted to tell you about finding that English cookbook (in Kassel, incidentally, where Max works during the week, and where Hugo and I spend half of our time these days), about our weird commuting life, about this little Turkish hole-in-the-wall in our Berlin neighborhood and what it means to me and, finally, about those potatoes, too. But I didn't.
On Saturday, we had our first dinner party since long before Hugo was born (the last one we had, I didn't even know I was pregnant yet, to give you an idea) and I made a hoisin-slathered meatloaf and mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach and everything was really good and we drank wine and laughed with our friends while Hugo slept in the dark bedroom and I thought about how wonderful it was to be a parent. I wanted to write about all that, and the meatloaf, too, and yet I didn't.
The other day, I cooked millet out of a friend's new cookbook and while it was very nice, that millet dish that evening, the leftovers were transcendental the next day, especially when topped with a fried egg (which I realized two days ago I've spent my life cooking incorrectly). I wanted to tell you about those things too, but once again, I didn't.
Tonight, I bought a fancy jar of mayonnaise and ate a bit of it dabbed on cold boiled potatoes and thought about boiling an egg for oeufs mayonnaise, but then decided against it and ate a fresh green salad instead and it was the perfect meal for just me, it really was, and as much as I wanted to write about that, I didn't.
The thing is, lovelies, I've been feeling a little hemmed in lately. My trusty model of newspaper recipes inspiring a post has been feeling stale to me and so I keep thinking I have nothing to write about, when the truth is that I have plenty of things to write about, just not in the way I usually do here. So instead I go quiet. The silly thing is that it's not like I want to write about something radically different, but I just keep finding myself needing a different approach to the subject matter we all love so much. The way I've been doing things feels too predictable right now and in need of some shaking up.
(And sometimes, I can't cook at all. I just sink into the couch when the baby's asleep and eat yogurt and chocolate and stare slack-jawed at the wall. That's when I wish I could just post something like this, of my dad reading Eric Carle to Hugo on the living room floor of Max's apartment in Kassel, and it'd be enough:
But I've been afraid of straying. I really have. I've been worrying that if I don't give you what I always do, you might not like it here as much. Is that silly? Or is there some truth to it? These aren't rhetorical questions, I'd really like to know. Would you be as interested if I wrote about my life first, with the food that accompanies it, instead of the other way around? Would you mind if my posts were sometimes shorter, much shorter, but there were more of them? I'm itching to blog as much as I used to, but with Hugo eating up almost all of my available time, I am finding that I cook totally differently these days and that my blog material, as it were, is changing. Or should I just do what I want and stop overthinking all of this?
Not to overstate things, but this here blog feels like my sacred space. And yet I do think it belongs almost as much to you as it does to me. So tell me what you think, readers. I'd really love to know.
