Cooking and the grace to "get it"

It’s been fun cooking these past few weeks. Something I didn’t consider myself saying a few years ago. 

Can’t properly put my finger on why just yet. 

Maybe it’s the innate drive to provide. Currently I’m providing for myself (living alone for the Masters), but I’m quietly assured that I’m building up towards that level of being someone who effortlessly cooks for family and friends (I have previously, and it felt great). 

Maybe it’s the forced presence required. I have to be there. My mind can’t drift, I can’t distract myself. Otherwise it’s burnt food, fire alarms, and worst of all, a sorry dish. 

Maybe it’s because it’s non-competitive, with no pressure to strive or achieve. Yes, I want it to taste good, but there’s no badge or pay check or prestige associated with it. It just feels good to create something with quality.

Maybe that’s it. Creation. Me, ingredients, a recipe, some heat, some time. Put these together to create something delicious, filling, and connected. Consume it. Wash up. Something quite peaceful and certain about the whole process. 

Yes, I included washing up in the category of peaceful. Even washing up feels palatable, as a winding down ritual after making a good meal. (Side note: The dread of washing almost always outweighs the actual effort to wash up. And hot water helps a lot). 

I still notice the vestiges of my earlier impatience from many years ago. For instance, I’m not quite invested in making complicated dishes just yet. I still lean towards convenience. A clear example: I haven’t quite mastered the art of swiftly chopping up onions, and I find myself cooking dishes that don’t require onions. Because when I do, I get the old sense of frustration that I’m not doing it right. (The exceptions to wanting to cook swift, uncomplicated meals to date have come in the category of baking.)

Reflecting on how I’m cooking now versus 5 years ago, and there is a world of difference. I had grand ambitions of cooking regularly when I started working in 2019. I hadn’t the faintest clue on how to go about making the dishes I proudly claimed I would make. Almost immediately, the clash between my stated ambitions and the reality of my cooking skills made me quit in disgust. I was often frustrated by not getting things right the first time around. 

I vividly remember a Saturday morning when I wanted to make pancakes for my family. I became incredibly heated when I couldn’t smoothly flip the pancakes over. Eventually I walked out of the kitchen, leaving my very patient mom (who was supervising up till that point) to effortlessly take over. 

Fast forward to today, pancakes are a breeze, I don’t even think about the flip. Crucially, I won’t pretend my flips are always smooth, but they make do. 

And that is the key realisation, they make do. The imagined perfection I had in my head ironically got in the way of my growth. While being ambitious is good, too much ambition, borne of a vivid imagination and exposure to high-performing individuals, can clash in a very unhealthy way with your reality. Especially when you are not inclined to give yourself the grace and patience one should give a beginner. 

This is an obvious segue to some grand lesson about learning. 

It’s not always linear. Often times I had to revisit the same lessons repeatedly. I see it most clearly in cooking, running and programming. Making a pasta dish from scratch wouldn’t have crossed my mind a few years ago, but today I can make a decent meal with 4-5 ingredients. I had many stop-start attempts to run, dating back to high school. And I acutely remember struggling to break a 30 minute 5km for many years. Now I can do it without minimal prep. After many attempts, breaks, pivots to other activities, and back. I have a similar journey with programming, one that started at least 2 years ago if I can recall.  

To elaborate on the ‘grand lesson’: It’s not always linear. I have to accept that I am not someone who necessarily will “get” things the first time around [1]. Often I’ll have to revisit the same lesson repeatedly. Sometimes, I am just not ready to receive the lesson even when the teacher is perfectly capable (teacher being a person or circumstance). Knowing this lifts a weight off my shoulders; maybe sometimes it can be worth going back to the same things over and over again until it sinks in. 

But I suspect that gamifying it by forcefully revisiting the lesson doesn’t quite work. My recent cooking adventures reflect that. When I first moved to London 3 months ago, I barely cooked. An occasional pasta dish here and there, almost exclusively using store bought sauce. And I only attempted meal prepping once, when I forced myself to do it. Neither meal-prepping nor cooking held up; towards the end of term I relied on meal deals and eating out to fuel my days. 

Then somehow, over the term break, I started to take cooking as an activity in itself, rather than than something I had to get over the line. I can’t quite explain the difference, this is the best I have for now. And it felt right, it felt more sustainable. 

I think a crucial difference is that I gave myself the grace and patience to be a beginner. When I cooked recently I noticed, even when I made mistakes, that I was not being hard on myself for the outcomes. An important step in maturing and accepting my current state. Not in the sense of being stagnant, but a necessary step in accepting who I am today, to unlock the possibility of becoming more. But, and this is important, accepting me as is, rather than treating my current self as a placeholder for a ‘better’ Felix. [2]

It would be nice to say that my grace and patience towards myself has extended to all facets of my life. But we are not there yet, still a work in progress. Easier said than done in certain areas. But generally, a welcome step in the right direction. 

[1] How many attempts do we need to “get it" ("it" being a skill or correct response to a stimulus)?. Depends on how smart and adaptive you are. For me, I reckon more than 1 attempt is generally required. I see it in my cooking, I see it in my coding. I see it in my running. I think there are two responses to this reality:

1. Life is short, so why not just double down on the things we are most likely to “get” in the fewest attempts possible.
2. Life is multifaceted, how can we possible know what we are capable of unless we branch out in as many different directions as we can, until we “get” the thing that is our true calling. 

I am facing this reality now in my Masters - do I pursue the known, or do I take this opportunity to explore beyond my domain? What is frustrating about a demanding masters program, and sometimes life in general, is we don’t have the space for multiple attempts to “get” a thing, or slowly work your way through your first attempt to “get” a thing, or try to “get” multiple things. I’m writing this on the back of preparing for an exam and essay due in 3 days (This is in fact procrastination). I wonder what is the point of cramming for exams and essays, just to get a good grade? Where is the space to immerse myself in the knowledge? I had a full term and the classes were taught well, yes, but we barely had time to digest what we were learning (or maybe I could have managed my time better). When preparing for this exam, I had a sense of sadness, because I find the topic really interesting, but the reality is that there is a high chance I will not look at this topic after Thursday. Because the grind starts for the next set of modules that will be crammed into the next 3 months, one of which is a time consuming project. 

[2] One of the bigger realisations, that maybe I shouldn’t bury in the footnote, is how I’m giving myself grace. It has something to do with true versus forced appreciation of quality and preparation. As beginner, one of the most ineffective things I could have done (and in fact did), is obsess on the quality of my work and the preparation that goes into it. What is the best ingredient. What is the best workout to complete a 5km. What is the best programming language to start with. These are valid but deceptive questions, and I believe a beginner should not ask these questions. They get in the way and their importance is overstated at the start. Because you don’t have the skill to discern what is important, there is a significant risk of information overload. It can result in paralysis and not acting to build the skill, which is what happened to me.

However, it is also incorrect to suggest that these questions are forever invalid. They are barriers to getting your feet wet, but are enhancers for someone who is further along the way. For example, the more I cook, the more I appreciate the value of having a good set of knives and access to quality ingredients. But the truth is, if I obsessed over these questions before I started, they would have hampered my ability to even get going in the first place. Ditto version control in programming (Yes, it’s crucial, and something beginners should learn, but there’s nothing like losing your working version of a code for a crappier ‘update’ to really sear version control into your head).  Discernment is the meta skill that is unlocked the more I practice a skill, and I currently think it is only with discernment that I should attempt to answer anything beyond the level 1 questions that come with picking up new skills.