Back-seat cooking

I realised recently that I’m doing a lot more cooking than I was a year ago. It must have increased gradually, because at one point I was finding it too hard to prepare a few vegetables for our tea. It was incredibly frustrating, not only because I love it, but also because it’s one of the things I’ve always been able to contribute to my parents’ home. They have, after all, allowed me to colonise the nicest guest-room in the Greater Wellington Region, and hardly ever complain when I leave scraps of paper all over the house. My mum also knows how to stock a good pantry, and not being able to cook from it just seemed downright wasteful.

I’m oh-so-grateful to be able to cook something most days now. I attribute this to: a) an aqua-exercise routine that keeps me fitter b) a better understanding of (and patience for) pacing myself c) coping better with pain, and d) the beautiful shiny grunty noisy food processor Emmie bought me for my birthday last year. Most things I cook these days involve plenty of loud pulsing and grinding, particularly since I’ve been experimenting with eliminating “inflammatory” foods (gluten, dairy, sugar, soy…). The jury is still out on whether it makes a different to my pain levels, but the resulting foods have been highly delicious.

I still have to be careful to cook in small doses, but most of the time there are natural breaks in recipes. I should write a cook-book for fatigue sufferers: “Combine dry ingredients. Lie down and watch one episode of 30 Rock. In a separate bowl, beat eggs together with milk and oil…”.

My favourite, though, is back-seat cooking. At Days Bay, if I’m not feeling up to cooking dinner, I can ask Rick to lend some muscle to the meal. He’s not at all a chef (though he whips up beautiful cut-fruit arrangements), so he doesn’t mind if I tell him what to do and exactly how to do it. Emmie, on the other hand, is a great chef. Luckily, she’s not phased if I sit in the kitchen and issue instructions from my head or my browser. We’ve had some great cooking marathons that way. I get to do the easy bits, like picking thyme leaves off their stalks. And tasting. Lots of tasting.

Here are some of our recent favourites. You should try them.

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