My comfort zone has an irregular shape. The boundary extends and shrinks back in places I can’t make sense of—even I am surprised by what jars me sometimes. I can read a first draft aloud to a writing group, but if the grocery store clerk asks what I’m making with the squash noodles, I will overthink my answer.
Dutifully, I buy carrots. They are dull and unromantic in many states, disappearing into a soup or playing second fiddle in a vegetable roast. For my purposes, they are the understudy of real produce; the kind of thing I don’t bother to want unless nothing else is around. And yet… they have their own place in my fridge (bottom right drawer).
There’s something comforting about food wrapped in other food. We love it across the world: empanadas, spring rolls, hand pies, perogies. Soup dumplings, ravioli, dolmas. Even the Hot Pocket is a version. We call for a reveal, a cutting open with knife or teeth. There’s an element of surprise, but for me it’s the element of containment that satisfies; a dish packaged neatly in its own edible boundary.
When I was planning this blog, there was a table in my imagination of the things I could cook. There’d be pastas with noodles made by hand, whole fish with one eye showing and lemon slices on top like big flat jewels. There’d be pies with butter and fruit, stacked cakes, and some kind of milky custard (there’s one of those from almost everywhere). There would be soups and stews, too many potatoes, and things to cook in a dutch oven for a late dinner.
It’s a birthday, so I start with cake.
More than anything else, I am Croatian. This much has been earned by a lifetime of correcting my mispronounced last name. Gusick. Gus, ick. Guh-sick. Not Goose Ick, not Goose Itch, and definitely not, as I once heard over an airport loudspeaker, “Goose Egg”. Even as a Sala, I am a Gusick. So this is where I begin.
