A walk down memory lane

Strangely enough, when confronted with some soul searching and heart ache, one of the people I want to talk to first is someone who gave me my first broken heart. When I don't know what to do with crushed emotions and a failed relationships I get back to the roots of my love life......my very first love. The boy that swept me off my feet at the very young age of thirteen. This week I received a call from my very first boyfriend, someone who has known me all of my dating life and watched as I have dived head first in and out of love. "But he broke my heart" I whimpered into the phone as he said soothing and reassuring words. "I really loved him" I choked. These are words he has heard before........... several times. Despite the fact that we no longer have anything in common and no desire whatsoever to rekindle any loving emotions from the past, he still lingers somewhere in the back of my life waiting for times such as these to say a few kind words, help brush off my knees and put me back on the journey that is love.

Its reassuring to know that someone who's heart was broken (by me) so many years ago, can still find it in there heart to be a good friend when I really really need it. It made me think too that maybe life isn't so cruel, in that I will always have a friend in this person who years ago I broke my heart over, thinking I had lost forever. So for now I'm putting up with a bit of pain (and at times a lot), and hoping 'life' has some sort of plan in all of this. My first love assures me that there is. I'm so sceptical of meeting that perfect someone anymore. I think fate is a joke, and destiny a scam to stop me from freaking out about life. This old flame however assured me that such a thing does exist, and when I'm ready I'll meet the perfect person............and for the first time in years, I believed him.

Apart from my emotional life being a little bit hectic at the moment school is going well. We have finally finished studying seafood and have moved on to meat. I know this sounds very macabre, but when you are feeling really angry and hurt by love, there is nothing more satisfying than hacking up a big chunk of meat. Yes yes it does sound weird, but when you can french some ribs, or scale a fish properly, its amazing. I think I like it because its simple. You have something that needs doing, you do it well, and you see instant results.

I once read a book about a girl who was going through a really hard patch in her marriage and as a break from her husband she took up a job as an apprentice butcher. The whole story was a parallel between her emotions and the cuts of meat she was breaking down. As weird as the book was........it just made so much sense. This is where my fascination with cooking meat began.

So much food can be used as another language to express emotion. Someone commented to me today that they were surprised at how much work went into my course as it was "just cooking." This to me was a tragic way to look at food. How can anything be "just cooking" when it is one of the main things that keeps us alive. Not only is it a source of nourishment, it is a voice of self expression, a form of art, a beautiful, sometimes painful, frustrating, emotional, sensual, rewarding experience.

If only I could cook every emotion I have right now into a dish.......it would be the most tender, painful, soft, venerable, open, honest, hopeful, broken, yet beautiful thing I have ever cooked.