summersimmers.com

Genevieve Andersen’s Perfect Air Popper Popcorn
1 scoop of popcorn kernels
Copius amount of shredded EXTRA SHARP cheddar cheese (preferably white)
More butter than you’d think, salted, melted
Cholula to taste

Pop the popcorn in your 20-year-old air popper and add cheese, Cholula and butter in layers as bowl fills. Perfect for dinner (better than nothing) when you’re not hungry because you forgot to eat lunch until 3 p.m or because your ADHD medication lowers your appetite, or for when your stomach hurts and you need fiber, but there’s nary a fruit nor vegetable in the vicinity.

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I know what you’re thinking. Start an entry with a recipe – how Dolly Alderton of me. No, that’s fine, forget originality! Copy the format of one of the most popular books from one of the most popular authors out there right now. Go ahead! 

Which, true. I did steal the format from Alderton. In my defense, I think she’s amazing, one of my favorite authors, and the depth and variety of her published works she’s achieved is truly the dream. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

Except I saw recently that the full quote goes, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…that mediocrity can pay to greatness”.  Oscar Wilde. Which I take some offense to. I don’t think I’m mediocre just because I started my chapter with a recipe. But maybe I am, who’s to say? Dolly Alderton is really the only person whose judgment on this matter I care about, and I’m sure she’s busy. 

And honestly, my views are quite archaic and egotistical when it comes to my popcorn. Imperialist, perhaps. Even if I’m mediocre, my popcorn isn’t. I think my popcorn is the best and that everyone else could benefit from trying it. I don’t think people should impose their religious or cultural beliefs on others, and I think my country could benefit from a little restraint at the moment in those areas. BUT I am the exception, I should impose my popcorn recipe on others, and they should be legally obligated to try it. It is for the greater good. 

Anyway, popcorn is indigenous to the Americas –so I was wrong, it’s not so imperialistic– and played a role in certain indigenous tribes’ ceremonies and meals before the United States became the United States. In Aztec ceremonies, there was a popcorn dance that young women danced in with popcorn garlands atop their heads – at least, according to Spanish sources of the time. And that’s how they felt about popcorn without sharp cheddar and Cholula in it. I resonate with this.

Dolly Alderton, if you’re reading this (you’re not), don’t worry. I can’t come for your method of effortlessly integrating recipes into your novel while somehow making them relevant to your storytelling because –lucky for you– this is the only recipe I know.  So the intellectual property theft stops here. 

I’ve tried cooking recently. Like, cooking cooking. I made Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon the other day, and when I say day I mean literally, it took all day, from waking up to go get three pounds of stew meat to hand-mashing the potatoes once the stew was ready at 7 p.m. 

Skill was definitely an issue when I tackled this dish (I had to google what simmer meant), but the bigger obstacle was my feminism. I think because I was raised in a post-housewife, “femininity is anti-feminist” (bullshit, I know I know I know) world, I have avoided learning to cook. It’s almost as if I’ve thought that if I knew how to cook, a businessman with a clean-cut hairline and transatlantic accent would kidnap me, put me in a poofy dress with pantyhose, and tell me to cook a chuck roast for dinner. Simplistic, reductive, and offensive of me to think that way, but I am just being honest. Maybe I’m one or two generations too close to the housewife fate, and my matronly ancestors are whispering in my ear to avoid it at all costs. If you are a woman and your relationship with cooking, sewing, and other “female” activities is healthy and not loaded at all, you’re better than I. Don’t even get me started on doing the dishes. 

It’s a ridiculous mindset, and this is an over-exaggeration of my thought process and 70% a joke. But man, did I feel for those housewives when working on that stew. It was exhausting! Also, it was 76 dollars for all the ingredients! And unlike those housewives, I was making it for myself. On my own volition. No matter how much I want to blame it on feminist paradigms, I was in a cage of my own making, and it smelt of burgundy wine, beef stock, and garlic. The bars of the cage were made of skinned carrots and rosemary, and the cell floor was slick in bacon fat, and…okay, you get my point. Dolly Alderton is good at getting to the point and I am not so good at that. Is the secret to getting from mediocrity to greatness self-control in your sentence structures?

My Boeuf Bourguignon was fine. It wasn’t life-changing or anything, but it was edible and decent-tasting, and nobody spit it out upon first spoonful. I think my popcorn is better, but you can’t survive on popcorn, and you can’t really survive happily without knowing how to cook. Back into the beef cage I go, I guess. 

All of this to say, I think my Boeuf Bourguignon was a cry for stimulation and perhaps I’ve been missing a creative outlet. And I was inspired by this poet I know, Sydney, who I used to write with a lifetime ago (college) and I think it will be quite nice to have a place to write beyond a Google doc titled “xuhcuefnnfi”.  

I don’t expect many people to read this, and I prefer it that way because if this site is for me and me alone, I don’t have to watch my run-on sentences and passive voice as much. And even though I don’t run a magazine anymore, I have continued writing, and maybe some of it is worth reading to someone. Or not, that’s okay too. So, allons-y!