Experiments and Traditions

This will be my 100th day in a row of answering the daily prompt posting to this blog. It has given me a chance to reflect on many ideas and memories even if, at times, the daily prompt has tended towards repetition. Today is a perfect example as a very similar prompt appeared on 18 July asking what you like to cook.

One of the things I enjoy most about this, perhaps paradoxically, is when I don’t like the daily prompt and I have to work around it to find a way to express my thoughts and feelings.

It’s so important in the kitchen, and in life in general, to balance your traditional approaches with the willingness to experiment. My daughter pointed out a year or so ago that I was constantly making the same meals and she was finding it boring. I realised she was right and since then I have tried to find new recipes at least twice a month to try out. This week I cooked spicy prawn linguine, adding olives to the recipe I found and it worked very well. A previous linguine recipe, lemon linguine, was described as lemon jif for its supposed resemblance to a familiar surface cleaner!! 🤣🤣 Suffice to say it won’t be cooked again, but the spicy prawns with olives will be.

What my daughter did, as well as making me dive into recipes online and from books, was to make me consider how I could incorporate this approach into my everyday life. Leaving full time work has enabled me to look at my usual approach to life and to switch things up. I have given myself permission to experiment and to fail. That’s not to say that I enjoy the process of failing. I hate it when something I try doesn’t go right, but I am slightly nearer to accepting that this is the case and to take what I can from the experience. It is human nature, with the exception of the odd thrill seeker or iconoclast perhaps, to stick with the tried and trusted so you are fighting against yourself when you step away from what you know. It’s very early days for me, but I know that my experiments with the recipes of my life are making me feel more energised and engaged. Long may I continue to leave my comfort zone.