A Good Pot is a Good Start

The timeline on these events are a bit skewed in my recollection, but that is not important.

One of the most integral lessons I’ve learned is that you can do anything, but you have to want to do it well. It doesn’t matter if your family, friends or community fully understand what you’re doing. What matters is that they see you doing it with pride. With care. With some sense of self-respect, even if that self is still taking shape.

My father believes in doing things properly. And the older I get, the more I find myself expecting the same from those around me. Sometimes that expectation shows up in the kitchen. Sometimes in the classroom. Often while talking to friends, even over text. It’s not about perfection. It’s about effort. If you don’t want to do something, then don’t. Because it shows when your heart’s not in it. Whether it’s sweeping the floor, making a roux, or writing a note, if you want to do your best, you will.

I think back often to a conversation with my father. It was either a phone call or one of those car talks, the kind where you’re both facing forward so things feel easier to say. A lot of serious conversations happened that way. Talking around the table was mostly joyful. Hopeful. Eye contact and laughter.

He was asking me, directly but politely, why I suddenly had the urge to wear the tightest and most colourful jeans I could find. Emo culture had consumed my life by that point, and as a newly minted teenager still learning how to speak properly and figuring out who I was, I took every question as an attack. I understand now that he was trying to understand me. But at the time, I didn’t even have the language to explain myself to myself. Most of my choices were made for the sake of reaction. Like a puppy chewing on shoes, just to be seen.

Somewhere in that conversation, I remember asking if the colour was the problem. Or the fit. It was a deflection. A tactical response from someone who already knew they’d lost. Because there was no fight. He just said, “I don’t care if you wear the tightest pink jeans in the world. Just make sure they’re clean.”

I think about that line a lot. How simple it was. And still is.

As I moved through different stages of life, my father moved through his, and we met in restaurants, cafes, and phone calls to catch up. There was no greater expectation over a weekend than the possibility of Sunday Lunch. My brothers and I would text each other on Saturdays, asking if anyone had heard if lunch was happening. We’re a big family. Everyone is in different cities now, some in different provinces or countries. Getting together was important. My father orchestrated this. My sister eventually acting as the inside-man, she could see the signs of a family lunch before we got the text.

Sunday lunches meant long hours of conversation. At times it felt like a stage, a place to perform the changes you had made in your life. Other times it felt like being on trial, because when you’re young, being asked to account for your actions feels like being wrongfully sentenced. But mostly, it felt like the biggest exhale after a week of keeping it together, figuring it out, and, for many years, eating very poorly all week because your budget fell out of your pocket at the last social.

In my twenties, I tried to recreate those Sunday lunches as much as I could. I hosted dinners, and sometimes they bled into breakfast the next day. I made chicken, lots of lemon chicken. Curries, soups, and once, I spent 10 hours making dumplings by hand. I had a heavy-bottomed cast iron pot that I’d inherited from my father, and no steamer. All the bowls in my house were lined up for mise en place. By the time I was done, I had to wash every dish before anyone could eat, and the dumplings were overworked and under-seasoned. They didn’t taste good; but I didn’t mind. I liked the process. I learned something about effort. And today, I know that some things are better bought. Dumplings are one of them.

Years later, and life lived, I ended up enrolled in culinary school. Everyone in my life was curious about how I’d handle the strict, almost authoritarian approach to presentation. Hair length was prescribed. Clothes had to be ironed, starched, and neatly worn. A yellow napkin-like scarf was placed in different positions depending on the activity of the day. Line up. Get inspected by superiors wearing tattered jackets and missing buttons. Then get shouted at, in front of everyone, because for some people it’s not enough to know they’re in charge; they need to feel it.

But I wasn’t bothered by this. So I had to cut my hair? So what? A few years earlier, I had spent time in Rishikesh studying yoga in the mountains. For that move, I shaved my head. My attachment to my hair as a form of armour was already gone. I owned button-downs at this point. This isn’t to say that being in the ashram gave me inner peace or mental clarity. Far from it. The most tumultuous years of my life followed almost directly after that experience. But as a teenager, I had spent so long tying my worth to my appearance, and not in a valuable way. Cutting my hair was cutting that part out. Nothing spiritual or enlightened, just time to get over it. A little nudge into reality. I really needed it.

I firmly believe that cooking is about much more than hunger. It’s about needing. And when you step into a space that requires your time, your mind is allowed to fix itself. I’ve learned that needing is not inherently bad. And that asking is the quickest way to a solution. Needing is a clear sign of life, like breathing. Needing others, needing connection, and needing lunch.

My enrollment into culinary school was surely met by a combination of fear and excitement from my father. Because that is what it was for me. Food has always been a shared language between us, one I had to learn. And when I decided to drop out, I’m sure the fear returned, joined by exasperation. That’s exactly what I felt too. I had messed up. Things got bigger than me, and I couldn’t manage the consequences. I needed to leave, and I needed to figure it out by myself this time.

I remember an afternoon in the school kitchen, standing at almost shiny stations, being lectured on the ideal ratio for a mayonnaise emulsion, knowing full well that our practical classes would use different ratios because of the school’s budget. I scanned the room and made contact with the notice board. I hated seeing my name in the second block on the schedule. That block meant starting with scullery duty. I didn’t mind doing dishes, I could hear my father’s voice:: “Just make sure they are clean.” What I disliked was spending hours elbow-deep in murky water, then being expected to turn around and cook. I knew it was part of the kitchen reality, but it felt unnecessary in that setting. It felt like performance from the higher ups, like being shocked into understanding kitchen life. Being treated like so many beans, blanched for entertainment and nothing more.

When culinary school didn’t work out, and my failing (now dead) thrifting business was buried, the house was sold and the direction scattered. So I did what I’d learned to do: I leaned into it. I made the best of it. Because when you try to do your best, people notice. I spent a lot of nights replaying conversations; talks from car rides, in restaurants, on phone calls that ended in silence, and I found one thread running through it all: If you want to do well, you will. Even in failure, you’ll learn to do better. And even in those lost days, I found food. Markets, kitchens, and sometimes restaurants.

Now, in the wake of so much life having been lived, we have been blessed with a new life, literally and figuratively, new faces to see at the table, new rituals to form, and new recipes to try. Maybe we can make baby food next time we are all together.

Lately I wash my dishes as I go. I don’t have many, but I forget that and overcommit. Even so, I can’t go to bed unless the dishes are clean, the laundry’s done, and my shoes are lined up. I mostly live alone. That’s part of the job, and part of being far from family. No one really sees inside my apartment, but I keep it neat anyway, both pairs of shoes lined up, the cupboards in order. Because what if someone does see? And what if that reflection says something about me I don’t get to explain? It’s not about being the best, the richest, or the most liked. I don’t aim for those things. It’s about showing the people you care about that you want them there, by making things feel good when they are.

A good pot is a good start. But it’s not the whole recipe. I do miss that cast iron though, but it’s a good goal to work towards. Sturdy, seasoned, better with time. That’s what it’s all about I believe. That’s the lesson.

Tonight I’ll stack the mise en place bowls in their tower, hang up the tea towels and switch off the gas, knowing that I’ve done my best, for the day.