lend me your eyes #102: on carefree cooking
plus, friendship, spreadsheets and corn 🌽
hello friends,
lately, i find myself (back?) in my carefree cooking era and i must say it feels real nice. for a while, i was on an “i will only cook recipes, and cook them exactly as they’re written” tip and, to be fair, the search for exciting-looking new-to-me recipes opened up a world of ingredients, techniques and ideas i’d never considered.
i assume (hope) these things have made me a better cook in the long run. unsurprisingly though, the longer i remained in that mode, the more i found myself thinking “i can’t make a recipe if i don’t have this particular ingredient”, which led to “i don’t know how to cook unless i’m following a recipe”. oh dear.
there was a point early in my cooking days where i was just doing whatever the heck i wanted. mini sweetcorn in a pasta sauce? sure, why not. it didn’t always produce favourable results (although the mini sweetcorn pasta sauce situ was actually fine tbh) but then again, what does have a 100% success rate, you know?
coming across something delicious-looking and treating it as inspiration – a starting point for your my journey rather than the only option – has been a fun way to reclaim some of that youthful self-assurance. i prefer to think of it as “carefree” cooking over “intuitive”; a desire to see what happens instead of knowing exactly what to do. following whims and indulging my curiosity has much more agreeable than being neurotic over measurements or substitutions. and realising that, actually, i can probably make a version of something i’ve seen or eaten elsewhere by figuring out how to use what i’ve got in my kitchen feels thrilling (and a lot kinder on my wallet than going out to get more ingredients).
i feel like every intro i write to this newsletter ends with the sentiment, “i hope this feeling stays for a while” but it’s true here too. what are we if not constant works in progress!!! this whole carefree cooking thing is repetition as confidence, and it’s nice to feel enlivened by the things i’ve made – and to feel creative, loose and playful again too. so, yes, i hope this feeling stays a while.
enjoy this month’s lmye. ✨
things i’ve enjoyed reading recently
what adults forget about friendship.
“though friendships naturally evolve as we grow up, they don’t need to lose that vitality. continuing to embrace a childlike approach to friendship into adulthood can make for connections that are essentially ageless.”
inside the gen-z operation powering kamala harris’s social media.
found this to be a fascinating peek behind the curtain of kamala marketing hq. this article is a good one on the same topic too.
“there are 27 people here to take part in this event (28 registered, but one evidently chickened out before we started), which will send its top eight finishers to tomorrow night’s finals. there, one person will be crowned the excel world champion, which comes with a trophy and a championship belt and the ability to spend the next 12 months bragging about being officially the world’s best spreadsheeter.”
“perhaps the most poignant aspect of being up and about so early is that it unmasks the lie that london is a 24-hour city. corner shops that i had assumed were open all night are locked behind graffiti-sprayed shutters. aha, what is this i see? a human. he is listing from side to side, clearly heading home after a big night.”
this weekend, make: a salad with corn.
i enjoyed using this as inspiration for a quick salad the other day. i added some cheerful yellow courgette (seared) and avocado before transferring it unceremoniously into a bowl and eating it on the sofa one lunchtime.
footnotes
i started this newsletter almost ten years ago as a weekly bulletin of things i’d enjoyed on the internet. it’s still that but, over the years, lmye has evolved into a place to share random thoughts (and gripes, ofc) in addition to things from the internet.
i’d like to start sending lmye out on a regular schedule again – perhaps not weekly, but monthly (like, actually) or even (gasp!) fortnightly, with a longer edition like this alternating with a shorter one. i can’t quite figure out whether to stick with the current regime of this newsletter not being any one thing or whether to go all in on food, given it’s what i spend most of my time thinking about and doing. could it be both: a longer miscellany broken up with a shorter dispatch that includes a recipe (or, in keeping with my carefree cooking era, suggestions towards something delicious)?
i would love to know what you, dear reader, enjoy about this newsletter and/or want to see more of. hit me up in the comments or reply to this email with anything you’d like to share.
liner notes
i have this album on repeat at the moment but this track is my favourite from it.
the carefree cooking era is so inspiring tbh—at some point a few years ago i decided to get better at cooking and started following all these recipes and now can’t seem to go back