Three meal adventures

The thing about me and cooking is that sometimes I get all creative and adventurous, but other times all I can manage is peanut butter on toast. I don’t share photos of any of the latter kind, but I also don’t share the former kind often enough, particularly because there are often stories behind them. This post shares three recent meals-with-stories, in order from the most recent.

The photo up top is my dinner on Monday, July 3, what I call “THE Beef Stew”, something my mother taught me to make when I was a young boy. When I shared the photo on my personal Facebook, I said:

Today I made “THE Beef Stew”, the dish my mother used to teach me how to cook, and so long ago I have no idea how old I was—maybe 7 or 8? I’ve made it dozens of times over the years since, but tonight was only the second time I made it in the slow cooker. I last did it some 25 years ago, but I was disappointed with the results and never tried again until today (I always made it the way my mother taught me, though sometimes I put the pot in the oven to slow cook it). Tonight’s batch was perfect, including the dumplings (I had to figure out how to make them because my mother didn’t write down the instructions, and was lucky that I found a good recipe several years ago). This is one of the few recipes I brought with me when I moved to New Zealand, and Nigel loved it. That made me feel happy because my mother would’ve loved Nigel.

There are several stories in that tale. The first is about my mother, and over the years I often talked about how my mother used this recipe to teach us kids to cook—but this time was the first time it suddenly occurred to me that that may not be true—and, in fact, at the very least, it’s not entirely true. I suppose I could’ve misunderstood what she said, or maybe the story just got embellished over time, but what’s interesting to me is that learning that it wasn’t literally true didn’t bother me. It turns out that what really mattered to me is that it was a bond I had with my mother, one I’ve been able to maintain for all the decades since. That. And the fact that Nigel loved the stew. It was one small thing connecting all the love in my life.

Next up, my Sunday Brunch on July 2:

This was a poached egg on smashed avocado (which used avocados from my recent online order), on top of one the ends of the loaf of (breadmaker) bread I made last week. The smashed avocado has a bit of freshly ground salt and a bit of garlic, and the whole thing had nothing else except a little bit more freshly ground salt and more freshly ground pepper than I’d normally use (both eggs and avocados are a bit bland, after all—and, no, chilli oil was not an option for me…). Turns out, I’m getting reasonably good at making poached eggs to my liking.

There are actually a lot of stories connected to this one. First, the poached egg: I really am getting pretty good at making them, something I never even tried until I moved to Hamilton. Nigel always made them, and made them so well that it never even occurred to me to try.

This meal also got me thinking (well, actually, anything /everything gets me thinking…) about the “young people having smashed avocado on toast is why they can’t buy their first house” trope. I was remembering that I only ever saw some grumpy commentator in New Zealand actually say that—either a column in the NZ Herald (also known was “Granny Herald”), or maybe it was from the other home of grumpy conservatives, the Newstalk ZB radio station. Anyway, they were roundly and appropriately mocked and criticised for saying something so idiotic. But the trope persists—why?

That commentator’s point was (I guess?) that NZ’s Millennials were making “stupid” spending choices, and so, that was the entire source of their problem. The severe shortage of affordable homes, crushing student loan debt, lower wages in NZ relative to other countries—none of that, the argument suggested, had anything to do with it, it was avocado on toast (literally and figuratively).

Nowadays, I still see Millennials bring it up to criticise Boomers who own a lot of houses as rental properties. But I’ve never heard any Boomer I know personally do anything as daft as blaming Millennials having avocado toast as the reason they can’t afford to buy a house. Of course, I’ve heard “certain people”, usually overseas, complain that young people are “lazy”, “unrealistic”, and “playing victim”, and when I hear them say any of that, all I can hear is “avocado toast”.

This particular meal goes to show that not every story is about me or my memories—even if most of them are.

And finally, the meal that started all this, from Thursday, June 29:

This meal was Smoked Chicken Gnocchi, a meal that Nigel made may times over the years, but I’m not certain that I ever did. I do know, however, that Nigel taught me how to cook gnocchi, and I also know that he liked things with cream sauces. I thought of him constantly while I was making the meal.

What makes this meal completely different from Nigel’s, though, is that I made the gnocchi myself (it wasn’t bought pre-made at the supermarket) using a recipe from a YouTube video that some great friends of mine shared on Facebook. I wanted to try it because it uses dried potato flakes instead of boiled potatoes, and I thought it’d be easier and quicker than the “Kūmara Gnocchi with Garlic Cream Sauce” I made back in July of last year, a recipe that had me make the gnocchi myself using fresh Kūmara that I boiled and mashed. It was so very time consuming that I vowed I’d never do it again.

Last year’s effort took me an hour and half to make, and the new version still took me around an hour. Sure, that’s a bit less time, but it wasn’t much less work. It’s settled, then: It’ll be gnocchi from the supermarket for me from now on—although, knowing me, I may well forget all the fiddly hassles and try again some day. Maybe it’ll be for what’s apparently my annual gnocchi meal (In late 2021, I made “Knockout Gnocchi” as the first meal in that meal kit experiment I tried).

I don’t know why, but I never talked about this meal on Facebook. Maybe it was because the photo was a bit flat? I don’t know, but I do know I often share my flops as well as my successes—though this one was more of an “incomplete success” than an actual flop.

Those are the stories from three recent meal adventures, meals that were, in fact, the only adventurous meals I made over that period. Sometimes I get all creative and adventurous, but other times all I can manage is peanut butter on toast. Stories, though, flow through everything.