crying in the condiment aisle

I’m writing this newsletter Friday morning on a flight to the Bay Area, and I’m about five hours out from a lunch reservation at Chez Panisse Café. As soon as I schedule this, I’m going to put my head down on the tray table and dream about food. (My plane-sleeping habits are questionable, I know.)

The first time I failed to make mayonnaise this week, I figured it was because I’d been playing fast and loose with measurements. Not that I hadn’t just wantonly squeezed a lemon into my bowl while mixing before. Even so, I chalked it up to some error I could easily explain. I tossed the runny mess and started over.

The second time I failed to make mayonnaise, I measured everything: the safflower oil, the Dijon, the lemon juice. I checked and double-checked that my egg yolk was at room temperature. I drizzled the oil at a glacial pace, the thinnest thread twirling down into the bowl. I thought for a moment I was starting to feel the satisfying flopflopflop of the mayo coming together, but my mind and my wrist were playing tricks on me.

I didn’t go into this week planning to write about mayonnaise, especially not the glass jar of it I ended up buying at the grocery an hour after my second mess. I was planning to write about a plum-almond pound cake, which after three tries I thought was primed to become a foolproof recipe. But on the fourth go-round my flour measurement turned out to still be off, and half the plums sunk to the bottom of the loaf pan and then stuck when I flipped the thing over. I pieced the cake back together like a losing game of sticky Tetris and snacked on it all week. It tasted a lot better than it looked.

Frankensteined cake

Another day, I marched up to the butcher counter to buy bratwurst to grill on the Fourth of July. There were no more bratwurst, not in the case and not in the back. Last weekend, I made the darkest, drunkest chocolate cake I’ve ever consumed, which I glazed with a coffee caramel. But the cake had unexpectedly puffed up in the center while I baked it, which made the caramel slide to the perimeter like a thick, saccharine moat. Oh, and I should also also mention how I left seeds to soak in the fridge overnight for whole wheat seeded loaves — and then proceeded to forget about them the next day.

I’m not very good at taking compliments. When my husband tells me I look pretty, I either grimace or point at a blackhead on my forehead. When someone compliments a story I’ve written, my instinct is to doubt their literacy. “Fine” is the best assessment I’ve ever given a single collection of words I’ve ever put in print or on the Internet. A few years ago, though, my husband pointed something out: I rave about food.

I yell up the stairs that I am about to serve the absolute best chicken ever. I slide a piece of pie across the counter and say it’s goddamn mind-blowing. I am a good cook and an even better baker, and even though I’m embarrassed about every other thing I have going for me, I will shout from the rooftops about a recipe or a successful dinner party or a new trick I learned on the smoker. I’m proud of what I make, how hard I’ve worked in the kitchen and how much joy it brings me to spend a day covered in flour and spattered with oil.

But I’m an eon away from perfect, and some weeks — this week — I’m a mess. I’m fighting back tears at the butcher counter and staring at a wall of mayonnaise jars, resisting the urge to buy an extra just to smash it on the sidewalk.

I have an irrational aversion to store-bought mayonnaise. It’s so milky white compared to the yellow of a homemade batch. Homemade mayonnaise smells like the nutty oil you’ve just dripped and drizzled into it, and mayonnaise from a jar smells like it needs a hot shower. But that day in the condiment aisle, I resisted my urge to destroy and remembered the only redeeming trait about the jarred stuff: There is absolutely nothing wrong about the way it tastes.

I went home, poached chicken and pulled it from the bone. I chopped tarragon and chives and spooned mayonnaise from a jar. I added some Dijon and lemon juice and dusted the mess with cayenne before stirring it together. I crossed my fingers that indefinite seed-soaking wouldn’t doom my forgotten bread and decided to make a giant loaf.

this bread was not a disaster

This week, I showed up for my haircut on the wrong day and have to live another week with ratty ends now. I cried after work one evening and got rained on and missed my turn to speak in a meeting with important people at the office. And for two dinners in a row, my husband and I ate the simplest, softest, herby chicken salad on crusty, homemade bread. At some point, I gave up on writing about a cake. I resolved to write about a mess and to feel proud about putting good food on the table in spite of it all.