Produce Minotaur

I walk through a labyrinth of multicolored orbs in search for—what? Purpose, perhaps. I pick up one with the smoothest flesh, my own face reflected. Whose hands have plucked this reddened beauty from the earth? From it I look at others and think of -cides: pesticides, fungicides, herbicides… My heart is beating too fast for this chore. As I follow other walls of this maze I wonder. I wonder aloud under my breath. I speak to the boxes and cans and frozen bags that I have lived my life living in, actually living in? Maybe. Just maybe. What it takes to preserve you, I speak to the meats that I have recently shunned. What does it take to keep these foodstuffs alive, to keep myself alive?

Organic and free range and -cide free and free trade and we can get lost in an echo chamber of our own fears-turned-flesh. It isn’t exactly for this reason that I made the totally “crazy” decision to cook for myself in earnest, but control over the elements does have a say. Grocery stores have always been my minotaur in the maze. Why? When it comes to cooking, I don’t have the mental dexterity of others. The creativeness when it comes to vegetables and turning them into more than raw side items. I found myself filling a basket of cereal, bread, peanut butter, jelly, Progresso soup cans. After work it would be all I wanted, something quickly made or hastily microwaved. It isn’t out of laziness dear reader, even though I would be quick to call myself so. It’s pure lack of knowledge when it comes to the kitchen. 

I am in the labyrinth again when I see it. Snarling, a maw of rage and smelling of rotted meat. It is blocking an assorted section of fungi: button, shiitake, portobello. Doesn’t it know that I have never cared for them? A hoof as large as my head protects bell peppers like a goalie, a hairy knee hiding an eggplant. But it makes me want them all the more. To defeat this ugly beast I picture it as a tiny bobblehead on the dash of my hatchback. I can promise you, the minotaur doesn’t like that one bit as it begins to growl. As it bursts into blue-black smoke.

It may be that cooking has always seemed like a pastime meant for dinner parties, not for a solitary man bent on getting sustenance quickly and efficiently. Even though I am not opposed to leftovers in the slightest, I think of how long it takes to make certain dishes and I cringe. If there is only an hour until bedtime, why would I go through the trouble? But once again—that lack of dexterity, of creativity. So, I throw out the meat. I throw bell peppers, eggplant, garlic, and shiitake mushrooms into a pan and stir fry them. I throw these simply over rice steamed in vegetable stock. Shrimp with butter and cajun spices. This is not rocket science, I tell the recent victor over the produce-guarding minotaur. And I kick myself for ever thinking otherwise.

What I also get now is a new high, like a runner at full tilt. And to my science-loving mind, there is something about measuring, even if you let instinct control your heavy hand when it comes to the salt. What also helps is finding someone you love who also loves the kitchen, who you can dance with when granules of sugar and salt and baking soda and spindles of zucchini litter the floor. You think to clean it up before the cats get to it but the smell is intoxicating and maybe there was something in those shiitake mushrooms… You’ll keep dancing. Because you’ve been stealing bits of eggplant while they have been sizzling and you are feeling something special.