The coffee maker revolts in silent flames.
The pasta overreacts and dramatically burns.
The sweet potatoes sulk and scheme and outrageously explode into syrupy black lava. This is a murderous scene that covers the inferno of the oven with hideous splotches that are insanely difficult to clean.
And this striking image of erupting sweet potatoes interrupts the tranquility of my tea time, stops me mid-sip, forces me to freeze from reading Dr. Pinkola’s rallying lines on creative advocacy.
I left the sweet potatoes in the oven. The oven is still on. The oven has been on for…I calculate the slow moving time of this Saturday afternoon by tapping my fingers… at least three to four hours. And dashing to the oven for a swift rescue is not a feasible option because I am cozied up at the neighborhood Starbucks, miles away, but I swear I can now detect the doomed sweetened perfume of a seething overbaked carb cursing my name.
For a hot second, I think to text my roommate. Confess my absent-minded mistake and ask her to take responsibility and shout down the operation.
But I hesitate. I fear what she’ll see. I cringe at the kitchen mishaps tallying up in evidence effectively proving my misfit (and what may need to be outlawed) style of cooking.
I change course. I’ll leave right now. I take command of my own fate. Right this second. I pivot my plans to attempt to save the scraps of my self-respect.
I’m a caffeinated woman on a mission. I drive at the speed limit to what could be a gooey catastrophe or worse…the oven shut off and disaster spared by my talented chief and zen of a roommate who may have already discovered my pouting potatoes and saved both them and my forearms from oven scrubbing.
I hope for the first.
My roommate is exceptionally understanding (she meditates and responds to life’s frustrations and curious turns from a calmed parasympathetic state), but I’m desperate to prove minimal decency in my cooking capabilities, probably for my own wavering self-esteem in adulting.
I park in the driveway, at the top of the garden where chickens now freely roam (the leader is a checkered hen I’ve dubbed as Boss Babe, Goldie flaunts fabulous copper hued wings, and Henrietta takes tiny and timid steps, which I find most endearing).
Potatoes persist as top priority. I abandon my Starbucks and my purse in the front seat and tumble madly pass the chickens (they are accustomed to my wildish movements and keep on pecking and bopping for June bugs and other garden treats).
I scurry inside and a sickening sweet scent permeates the air. I refrain from singing my normative hello to my roommate and bee-line to the oven to survey the potential damage.
TRIUMPH.
All the stars aligned: I made it home in time.
The potatoes glare at me through the oven haze, and one fuming bubble spits and pops by the side of the burnt and bloated carb, but begrudgingly gurgles on the crunched platform of aluminum foil.
The kitchen gods have granted me curious grace – I’ve been spared a gruesome sticky mess, and my reputation as a cook has remained unscathed! I mouth a celebratory hooray and parade a happy greeting to my unassuming roommate.
She scans recipes online for a black-eyed pea dish and decides cornbread would be a comforting sidekick for dinner tonight. The frenzy flight of the almost forgotten potatoes melts away because now I have homemade cornbread that goldenly tantalizes as a bright spot in my day.
And while I think I’ve escaped clean, there’s a sinister and sly gooey stain at the bottom of the oven from those overbaked and infuriated potatoes that remains unseen. The innocent cornbread slides into an oven that is about to croak and the sugary streak ignites into flame.
After the fireworks, I appear, and to my horror, my serene roommate points to the speckled spot where the potatoes leaked their deadly juice.
I had made a rookie mistake.
In all my rejoicing, I had turned off the oven and sauntered in glee away, leaving the potatoes in the inferno and therefore, the evidence in plain sight.
My roommate catches, kindly, my mistake, and I immediately sink in shame.
I feel like a puppy, a well-meaning and total home-wrecker. Even though my roommate has made all the effort to proclaim that this bungalow is mine too I still feel like a houseguest.
She lives and shares in a generosity that amazes me. A generosity of spirit that saved my life. Within three weeks of living in Austin, I had to abruptly flee my first rental.
Traumatized and alone, I send her, my former Airbnb hostess, a text asking if she had a room to spare for a few days, and she didn’t have a room to spare, but she took me in anyways.
I am similar to the pit bull who too refers to this bungalow as her kingdom and domain – found crying in a packed parking lot in Dallas during a thunderstorm and instantly given shelter and given a home.
My cooking misadventures are comedic play stemming from my early experiments in my family’s kitchen, but I yearn to not be the characteristic clown known for crisp noodles and demolished pans. I want to demonstrate respect to this woman whose made her Austin oasis my home and yet, I continue to be half-present and reckless in my kitchen pursuits.
Gut wrenched and heart clenched, I babble an apology.
And instead of critique, she offers me actual grace:
“It was an old oven. It was gonna go any day.”
Multi-tasking while I devise ill-fated meals is a pattern I’ve developed and deflecting grace is another, and both end up in explosive little flames.
So I refrain from blocking the remedy of her understanding. I soften my internal judgment so I can digest the medicine of gentleness and in this energy of tenderness I can better learn my lesson and strength my capacity to speak in unfiltered honesty.
Next time, because patterns take time to unravel, so there will be a next time, so when I fly off on a caffeinated quest and desert my cooking, I’ll have the compassionate courage to admit I made a mistake.
I’ll send the text. I’ll dish up the truth and serve it with a sincere apology.
And I won’t have to scramble in an attempt to perfect an image that is not true – I’m human and I blow up sweet potatoes even though I intentionally don’t mean to. And maybe one day I’ll incorporate seamlessly the ingredients of mindfulness and compassion to my unruly cooking.