Email newsletters aren’t really my thing. I’m overwhelmed enough by the thought of all I desperately want, and need, to read - I was going to say before I die, but let us not be too melodramatic - without adding to the pile. But I do like to see Oliver Burkeman’s The Imperfectionist land in my inbox every month, a missive that has been known to work on me as a cool palm might work on a fevered brow. And it’s to him, the thinking person’s (non) self-help guru, that I owe the idea for this column, which has to do with perfection in the kitchen, and how we might best liberate ourselves from its tense-making grasp.
Like most people, entertaining-wise, I’ve struggled to get back into the groove post-lockdowns. Having lost the habit of having friends over, even the idea of doing so is exhausting now: the planning, the shopping, the cooking. Sometimes, I get as far as drawing up a list of names, and looking in my diary for a date. But like icing that refuses to set, things never get … concrete. Thoughts whirl, as if in a food processor. Will everyone be disappointed if I serve pasta? Will they consider my tomato sauce infra dig? And what about the pudding? Are memories long enough that people will think: “Oh God, not pavlova again?” I picture the oven, and wonder whether it should be deep cleaned. I examine the kitchen light, and consider how fast it might be fixed. On and on it goes, and so another weekend flips by.
