Extra Noodles
Written by Amira Maxwell || July 19th, 2020.
Last week, I was making a fettuccini alfredo recipe for the first time. I prepared the sauce in one pot and cooked the linguine in another. Easy, obvious. Everything looked great. When it was time to mix it all together, I read the recipe and noted that it would take 15 minutes of simmering for the sauce to thicken and for the noodles to stop appearing to “swim” in the sauce.
About 2 whole minutes into simmering, my cooking anxiety kicked in. The sauce wasn’t immediately thickening and the noodles were still swimming. I worried that I hadn’t made enough linguine (or that the sauce recipe was a scam). So I grabbed more linguine from the pantry and began cooking it on another burner. I thought, “Ah, yes. Now I’ll add these and the sauce will thicken. I probably just underestimated the amount of linguine I needed :)”
15 minutes later, I was shocked by the obvious. The pasta had thickened exactly as the recipe said it would, and I wasn’t going to need the extra linguine that was almost finished cooking.
I could’ve sat down and read a book as I waited 15 minutes, trusting that the sauce would thicken. Instead, I stood over the stove “pressed like some church pants,” as one of my friends would say.
As I laughed to myself over my cooking bullshit and stored the extra plain noodles in the fridge, I reminded myself that enduring discomfort is an amazing skill that is necessary for life in the kitchen as much as it is necessary for slow, confusing seasons in my life. I’m currently in one of those seasons. Unsure of what to make of everything going (and not going) on right now, I figured I’d start this blog to share my thoughts on the stuff that goes on in our lives.
This story, though seemingly small and meaningless, made me think of how important it can be not to not react and make “extra noodles” when I’m experiencing discomfort. Sometimes what I need to do is wait it out, think, seek wisdom, read a book, go on a walk, and appreciate life. When everything starts to make sense and come together, as it usually does, I’ll wish I didn’t have to think about what to do with what that plain, dry linguine that I added to my life when I was scared and in reactive mode. I’ll just want to relax and eat with the fam.