What I’m reading: Sounds Like Fun, by Bryan Moriarty. I read this in about 2 nights and loved it
What I’m listening to: a lot of CMAT, after listening to this podcast ft. CMAT
What I’m eating: a mushroom/truffle toasted sandwich at Cheese on Toast in Three Kings, Auckland (below). 10/10, I will be back
It’s been a busy week in Auckland. Hot cross bun season has commenced - we’ve been eating them at work with whipped burnt butter and homemade apricot jam (see below). I’ve also started a second job, working front of house at Forest in Auckland, which has been really fun, and an interesting change of pace; I haven’t worked FOH properly in YEARS. Most importantly, myself and my housemates are lucky enough to have pretty much a full roster of visitors for the rest of Kiwi summer.
We had a bunch of our Irish visitors over for dinner last night, and I made a cake for one of my best friends who has a lot of things to celebrate (turning 27, becoming a qualified accountant and getting ENGAGED). This cake, although it turned out alright in the end, sent me into a bit of a tailspin, so here’s a little insight into my internal dialogue at the time.
I always find that when I end up in this kind of situation, one thing tips me over the edge: in this case, a split buttercream. It was all going according to plan: I finished my shift at work, cycled home, popped out to do a food shop, decided that I had time for a quick run, re-injured a recurring calf strain because I didn’t have time to warm up properly, did some prep for dinner, sliced a hefty chunk off my index finger in a rush chopping parsley and started unpacking the dishwasher, before realising I was getting blood all over the clean dishes. Then I started making Swiss meringue buttercream which promptly split (most likely due to the heat in our kitchen, which is a sun-trap in the evenings).
This was the scenario my poor housemate Kate walked into at about 5:30pm. She offered to help, but I refused, choosing to be a martyr instead (never a good option). It was only when I was furiously whipping a split buttercream with one arm, (the other stretched up above my head to try and stop the bleeding - and for dramatic effect), on the verge of tears, that I realised that I may have slightly lost perspective on the situation.
We really are our own worst enemies when we catastrophise, and the irony is that despite being aware of it, it’s difficult to stop the downward spiral. In that moment, I questioned myself, my career, my life choices, my buttercream recipe etc. If I had managed to take a step back, I would have seen that:
a. having your friends over for dinner should be a fun, silly affair - it shouldn’t be like an episode of MasterChef (or worse still, Kitchen Nightmares)
b. Swiss buttercream ALWAYS splits before it comes back together. Always. Hold your nerve
c. nobody really cares if the buttercream splits anyway
d. if you’re stressed and somebody offers to help, DELEGATE
e. it’s okay if somebody gets a fragment of finger in their pasta (lucky??)
These are all things that I know to be true, but struggle to implement when they matter most, so I suppose this is a bit of a cautionary tale. If you, like me, are liable to over-think, catastrophise and perhaps indulge in the occasional downward spiral, I’ve decided that the only way forward is to try and embrace a more light-hearted, humorous approach. Rarely are things worth getting into an absolute frenzy over: save your frenzies for the real big-deal things (like crying when your friends do eventually leave to go back to Ireland).
recipe: pistachio raspberry cake
Here’s the base for the cake I made for my friend this week: I wanted it to be super pink and jolly and maybe just a tad camp (think Barbie), but still yummy - so I added pistachios and raspberries to the cake, and filled the centre with lemon curd. Tacky, but cute?
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