Recipes For When The Time Is Right

There’s some time between when I know I want to cook and when I actually start cooking. It’s in that period during which I instinctually ask myself a series of questions1. Don’t we all?

Questions like, how many people am I cooking for? How much time do I have? What do I have to work with? Then I like to get a bit more nuanced within each of those. Who am I cooking for? How much energy do I have? What would I find enjoyable to make? Could I sequence all the necessary steps into my day(s) so that the dish is ready by a certain time? You get the idea, right? It’s me sussing out all the requisites, checking which conditions are optimal, for a dish I don’t even know I’m making yet. I’m basically sketching the layout of the recipe before the content is filled in.

Recipes don’t really accommodate for this time. They aren’t keen on quizzing the cook with, are you ready? Yeah, you sure? How do you know? Maybe you’re ready for some form of creation, just not this one. So what will you create instead? They don’t put the cook on the stand and demand to know, how would you account for the karmic implications of creating this dish — or of not doing so? They don’t overtly pose the question, have you considered how your body’s constitution will handle this? If you even want whatever’s in this dish to become part of you?

Why are we as humans able to doubt, to second guess? The fruit doesn’t wonder if it’s ready. It doesn’t consult anyone, doesn’t wait to be told. Nature signals when the time is right. The organism says, with its whole being, now.

When the time is right, the colour will change. When the time is right, the smell arrives. Oh, and how it will smell! When something is ripe enough, it falls. The tension releases and it loses its grip from the branch, vine or stem. Do I have to fall too, and knock my head on the way down, before I know I’m ready?

We know we’re right on time when nature simply runs its course. When we second guess, it must be because we can sense something isn’t right, right? When there’s hesitancy to make something, or friction when moving in a certain direction, it should signal something to us. It’s nature’s way of sparking a concerned interest, alerting us where to look.

That time between when you know you want to cook and when you actually start cooking? Nature keeps that time. It knows when the time is right. And it will give you the signal. You’ll smell it. Are you ready?