Diary of Surrender, Week 5: Hard Lessons from Bad Hotel Sex and My Hatred for Cooking
I’m confronting my old pleasure-seeking ways
I’m writing a diary about my year of giving up, although I may give up on this too. Who knows? You can read about why I’m giving up here, and the previous week of saying fuck it here. (The term “week” is used loosely).
I used to cook. I used to love it. I made marinated flank steak with roasted vegetables, ribollita, stuffed cabbage, carrot dill soup, cauliflower and gorgonzola soup, spinach and artichoke soup when I needed a cleanse, Spanish eggplant, chicken curry, curried lentils, pork tinga, Spanish tortillas.
I made roasted chicken often and chicken stock with the bones. I made vegetable stew with homemade pesto, Chicken Marbella, shrimp poached in olive oil, rosemary pork tenderloin, pressed sandwiches, roasted broccoli and quinoa salad. Don’t get me started on all the pastas I made before I lost my mind and gave up carbs: pasta with vodka sauce; pasta with shredded chicken, walnuts and blue cheese (trust me); and my favorite, spicy eggplant pasta. I even developed my own recipe for sweet and spicy cabbage soup, and published it online.
On Sundays I would roast sheet pan after sheet pan of vegetables and eat them throughout the week, with an egg…
