Secrets, Secrets are VERY Fun

Today E is cooking dinner.

In 2021 when I quit food media, I had begun to feel like nothing belonged to me. My dinner was certainly not mine; I shared it nearly every night with my Instagram followers. I ate it cold so they could see it first, while it was hot or glossy or before it wilted. My kitchen was not mine; my garden was not mine; my cooking process was not mine. They belonged in part to strangers. Even my meals out were not exclusively mine— many restaurants expected me to be snapping photos as soon as I sat down. After four years chronically online, I wondered if I could still take pleasure in food offline at all.

Those first few months were uncomfortable, as though I was perpetually keeping a secret. Eventually I realized keeping secrets (yes, as small as what you ate for dinner) is the pleasure of being offline because 1) that’s literally the only way to spend time living your actual life (seems obvious now, doesn’t it?) and 2) it gives you genuine mystique, how thrilling! And so, with a giddy little heart I tell you: less than five people in my life know where I go on Tuesdays! I come home happy and tired in equal measure, and E needs get dinner on a plate before tired morphs into hangry.

This week I’ve given him a head start by boiling yellow potatoes until fork tender. Later he’ll turn them into a GBD hash with red onion, poblano peppers from the freezer, hatch chile salsa, and lots of shredded Mexican cheese. He’ll also slow scramble a few eggs in butter. We’ll sprinkle Cholula chili lime on the eggs and chopped yard cilantro on the hash, then I’ll probably fall asleep at 8pm.