It's two days before
a sacred holiday
and I think to myself,
"Show-stopper!"
I find a gorgeous recipe;
plot my day
to prep
the dessert of a decade.
My husband deploys;
hunts through three shops
to find raw and unsalted pistachios.
Finally he comes home
with 230 grams
of the good green stuff.
Barely enough for the recipe.
Alas, my recipe dictates
a nine-inch round tart.
And my sole tin
is a 10-inch large heart.
So now I need to do math.
Like Matt Damon in The Martian.
On a Saturday.
I blow through five Post-Its,
scribbling sums and figures
and scratching many out,
before I realize:
I'm gonna need a bigger bot.
I take some photos of
the recipe ingredients
from the four sections
of the hefty cookbook
I need to reference.
I feed a prompt to Chat GPT:
"Referencing attached photos;
create a 1.25x scaled recipe.
Credit the original recipe author."
Obviously, I can't just trust AI
I need to verify before I proceed.
So I sample a few measurements
and back-of-note confirm them.
Success!
The math is mathing.
Now I'm feeling...
pretty freaking smart, NGL.
I get lulled into my print-outs.
(As an Elder Millennial I need to
Touch Paper to get through a task).
Chad-ing it up, I am flowing along
with increasing confidence. Nailed It!
Except, no not at all.
My prompt was a dud.
I had said "scaled recipe," didn't I?
A fatal flaw. My bad.
I'd really needed an ingredient list.
Now I realize
— with growing woe —
that I'm half-way through
a fully hallucinated recipe.
Directives that, I must add,
a crew of computers,
sans Le Cordon Bleu credentials
(or taste buds for that matter)
concocted from zeros and ones.
Fail sauce.
GAHHHHH!!!!
I scream with passion,
and without whimsy
or ladylike demeanor,
at full force in my lonely kitchen.
My spouse's shadow
darkens the threshold
while his earthly form
wisely hides behind the door.
"MmmBabe—do you...
Do you...possibly...need help?"
He ventures.
Gallantly risking his flesh,
he pursues chivalry
over self-preservation.
I am,
however,
not speaking English
at this time.
GREWAHSGHHH!!!!
I sputter,
with full emphasis
and negatory clarity.
I am,
as it stands,
not accepting questions
at this time.
He recedes backwards
without further prompting.
I hear him fleeing to the safety
of his home office.
I return to the travesty at hand.
I can recover.
I resurrect the robot voice
of my 2000s GPS device:
"Re-cal-cu-lati-ng!
Re-cal-cu-lat-ing!"
I manage to salvage
my shortbread dough.
I roll it into a tight ball,
wrap it in cling and send it
to the blast chiller (fridge).
Time to tackle the pistachio paste.
I weigh the green nuts and
recall, oh no!
I need one point two five times
what he had carefully procured!
I turn to the pantry,
where I find roasted, salted,
still-in-shell pistach-a-lashes.
Great.
I put an empty ramekin
on my scale.
I tare it.
Then I shell nuts
one at a time,
into the bowl on the scale.
I discard shells,
gently removing, as able,
loose papery husks.
This feels pleasant
for about four minutes.
I even have time for a
quick daydream about
becoming a TradWife.
Maybe I, too, could
make chocolate
from raw cacao pods.
Or manufacture
my own Froot Loops.
By minute 4:01, however,
I am already
tiring of shelling.
And little do I know
how many more minutes,
hours, actually,
are in front of me,
to remove every single
ripped piece of pistachio skin
from a hefty mound of nuts.
I am already doomed.
Marooned, in fact.
Stuck on the Isle of
Reckless Ambition.
Next time I look up
at the microwave clock
it is blinking 7:49 p.m.
I've spent the day
deep in minutiae
lost in the land
of the macro lens of my eyes
a mere four-inch focal length
from tiny green things.
By the time I finished
prepping the bowl
I felt I could hear colors.
Tipping the denuded nuts
that took so long to uncover
into the Cuisinart Processor
felt like a felony.
But I trusted the process
I made a fifteen-minute paste
and it tasted glorious;
my family said it was the best.
And that paste became
pistachio pastry cream.
And that cream became
the base of the tart.
And the tart had to chill
o v e r n i g h t.
(At least this was inactive time).
I blink, and now my guests are here.
It's Sunday, and I'm whirling
and dashing about the kitchen.
I retrieve scalloped potatoes
from oven racks.
I whiz homemade breadcrumbs.
I precision-split broccoli florets.
I start in on a garlic butter glaze
when I realize:
I must foist off the sauce
to my other half.
I can't avoid it any longer.
I must return to
the Tart of All Time.
(TOAT).
And I carefully sculpt
ripe strawberry halves
into heart-shaped nubbins
and line them down the middle,
of the chilled verdant tart.
Throughout this
three-day-long
unintended check-in
to a Silent Retreat, I realize:
I succumbed
to the circumstances.
I let the waves of frustration
become gentle laps.
I embraced the challenges.
I leaned into the hurdles.
I endeavored and persevered.
And I triumphed. Truly. I made it!
They say it's about the
journey, not the destination.
And perhaps so.
All the same, let's hope
that tomorrow, we all get
to fully enjoy this precision-crafted
tart of consequence and humility.
All that said, my loves:
Next time, I'll solicit help
in the kitchen trenches.
Because as I now know:
those pistachios aren't
going to de-paper themselves.
