The Muddy Kitchen: Subject to Change

Just who do you think you are, anyway?

Are you a lady, or a kid, or a cat who wandered in front of a laptop?

Does thinking about your identity trigger a cascade of memories in .jpg form, all seen through your eyes only?

Or would you answer differently? Would you say, I'm a pastry chef.  I'm a competitive jump rope jumper. I'm a manager of many underlings. I'm a student and a big sister? I'm an iguana handler? Aristotle said, "We are what we do repeatedly." Are we?

The fact that you alone can answer that question about yourself is kind of huge. That means there's one unique story that nobody but you can tell. It's your story, and you don't have tell it in written, oral, or pantomime form, but you put it out there everyday. Just by being you.

Mr. Rogers was right!

If you know who that dude is, you've probably heard all of this before. Just be yourself and make the world a more magical place! Right? But what about....everybody else?

They seem to be convinced that they should just be themselves too. Oh boy. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. How to be me while letting you be you? This is at the heart of  my experience, raising young humans, but it's also the constant challenge for anyone dealing regularly with, well, everyone.

In this house of growing creatures, change is the order of the day. In order to govern lovingly and logically, there must be freedom to be, but there must also be freedom to be something else; to change. To say that that mental potential, to be a princess one moment, and a frog the next, is necessary to our survival, is no overstatement. In the big biogamble that is life on this side of the carbon cycle, flexibility is a highly valuable strategy. Freedom to determine for yourself just who you think you are on a moment by moment basis is crucial; so it stands to reason, allowing those around you the same liberty is only fair.

And it is with that that I make a major, earth-shattering confession. We have changed. Remember? Way back when we first met? And I said I was a vegetarian? Raising li'l vegetarians, with my vegetarian man? Yeah, about that.

We all eat fish now. And crabs. Weekly. We even hope to begin snatching these creatures from their nearby watery homes soon too. That's right, nearly vegan to stone-cold killers in a matter of months!

I don't want be a bore and list all of our reasons for this change, just like I never felt like lecturing the world on why I was a vegetarian for nearly ten years. All of our dietary decisions are based on a complex amalgam of responsibility, convenience, and self-interest. Even though I eat according to ever-changing self-imposed rules, I firmly believe in my tendency to screw up, so I can't assume that others should adopt my way.

You should, however, adopt the following recipe. As a novice, I'm not about to give out advice on how to prepare fish. It's what I add to it that makes it special: a very simple salad that makes undressed fish flesh and cold quinoa taste like a party in your face. I learned to make it many years ago in Ecuador, on a little adventure there. Ecuadorian people from one border to the other, up high in the mountains, or down in the jungle, ate one dish regularly, and fed it to me often. It was a cold chunk of tuna fish, right out of the can, next to a scoop of rice, with a side of what I'm about to share with you. Feeling sorry for Ecuador yet? Well don't. Just:

Slice equal parts tomatoes and peppers very finely.
Add half that quantity thinly sliced red onion.
Drizzle with lime juice, vegetable oil, and salt, to taste, and that's it! Stir and let sit in the refrigerator for an afternoon, and enjoy getting blasted in the mouth every time you use it. Oh, and you will use it. Not just on fish, but on whatever animals and plants you are at peace with eating.

Here's what it all looks like, minus the fried egg. Because, as everyone knows in Ecuador: you want to make sure someone likes their dinner, you slap a fried egg on it.  Plop it right on the quinoa in this case. Just puncture the egg yolk and enjoy the muy rico sabor.


Or don't. It's up to you.