smitten kitchen

I have been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about what it means to cook when you’re pressed for time. I’ve always had the luxury of time. Even when I juggled a full-time job and a site, the sum of my evening tasks were still only to make whatever I felt like making for dinner, and if dinner was done at 10 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m., we just shrugged it off.

Alas, as you other mamas out there know, the third trimester is all about waking up one day in a frenetic frenzy, as I did out of the blue yesterday morning. If we’re about to go into lockdown for a couple months, there is so much we have left to do: the upholstery needs to be steam-cleaned! The baby’s room needs a dimmer switch! The printer cartridges are, like, totally out of ink! And I haven’t yet learned to cook respectable meals in a minimum of time.

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Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes eating “healthy” or at the very least, in a manner that diametrically opposes the Thanksgiving through New Years gluttony. Some people eschew meat, for others its just read meat, some give up cheese or bread or fat or potatoes — I mean, you name it, there’s a diet out there that promises that swearing it off is the answer to Thin Thighs in Thirty Days or You in a White Bikini in the Bahamas in 56 Days. …You know, just to throw out a totally arbitrary example.

I am realizing increasingly that I belong to no dieting camp whatsoever. I mean, I consider things like portion size all of the time, and if I had meat in one meal, making sure the next one avoids it but I don’t think that there is a Magical Evil Food that when crossed off your menu will make pounds vanish from your hips.

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A small miracle happened in our apartment this week: we paid someone to clean it, and seriously, you could lick the floors [but of course, really shouldn't for a reason that rhymes with Shmatatouille, not that I really want to get into it].

I have spent too much of my adult life trapped in this faux-Buddhist state of thou shalt clean thy own messes; it’s good for you, I reasoned. Cleaning should be a Zen experience. Please, stop laughing. Quit it.

Needless to say, at some point between work and more work, errands and, I don’t know, waking up on Saturday mornings with a desire to leave the apartment and not scrub the edges of it, our little penthouse turned into a place we were not exactly proud of. And when you are as obsessive as I am, this is a very bad thing. I’d look around the apartment before I left each morning and sigh; this is not what I wanted for us, and come home too tired to do anything but sigh at it again.

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I’ve already admitted that I’ve been a bit of a slack-ass with the whole cooking dinner on a weekday night, or pretty much any night, thing lately. Since I would hate to deprive you of all of the whiny reasons I’ve been inundating my husband with for not even making half an effort, I’ve decided to translate a few into bytes for you: I’m tiiiiired. I’ve been working soooooo much lately. Traaaaveling too! If I start now, we won’t eat until tomoooooorow. Also: I’m sooooo tiiiiiiired. Charming, right? Bet you wish you were here.

But I think that the one-pot meal could be the cure for all of your kitchen ailments. Don’t feel like cooking? But look–it’s dinner in one pot! Don’t feel like creating a pile of dishes? But it’s just one pot! (And a knife and a plate and a spoon, but shh, I don’t want to scare you off.) Have a lot of people coming over? One steamed vegetable and an easy soup and you’ve got a full-blown meal! Everyone arriving at different times? It’s okay, the one-pot meal is very forgiving of tardiness.

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I cooked dinner Wednesday night for the first time in over a week. I blame the babka. Oh, and also the red velvet cake, and since we’re pointing fingers, that noodle kugel is looking a little guilty too, isn’t it? And three-hour tortillas? Busted as well.

Here’s the thing with taking on more ambitious cooking projects: when I’m done, even the though of a quick dinner of salad and couscous seems outrageous. I mean, we just worked our way through a pile of dishes that could rival that of the diner on the corner after the leather bars let out, and now you suggest I chop some green onions? Are you mad? Bring on the baigan bharta!

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