Restorative Meal

Menu Twenty-One from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Mushroom Flan with Pumpkin-Rice Crust: cooked brown rice, salt, sesame seeds, pumpkin, tasty cheese, oil, onion, garlic, capsicum, mushroom, sour cream, prepared mustard, worcester sauce, mint, pepper, chilli sauce, tomato 

Honey Glazed Carrots: carrot, water, butter, honey, salt, lemon juice, pepper

Green Bean Salad with Mustard and Caper Vinaigrette: green beans, capers, lemon juice, dijon mustard, oil

Week Thirty, I was finally riveted and proud to have reached a milestone again. Thirty weeks had gone by since the very first week. The self-mastery, self-awareness, and self-discovery I had been searching for seemed out of my grasp. Comfortable with that fact, it now appeared that it was not the journey that was so tangible, but the end. As the weeks dwindle I feel the hold of the cookbook letting me go. Going by order felt less important to me, there were things in my life more important than following the numbers Bishop and Carruthers had set out for me. For Week Thirty, I would prepare Menu Twenty-One, consecutive to the menu of the week before. It was early April and Autumn weather was materialising.

On Monday morning, I awoke to a dead iPhone. It had been plugged in all night. I felt analogue in ways I hadn’t since January 19th, when my iPhone ran out of credit. Ecstatic to be entirely unreachable, I wrote Menu Twenty-One’s shopping list in a notebook. It was a testament to my comfortability that I felt so secure without my iPhone. Late Monday night I held my thumb and forefinger on the power and volume button of the phone and it turned on. When you are deprived of something for so long it feels amazing to get it back.

Mushroom Flan thought and thought over.

When we gathered around the table I attempted to think about the fact I had cooked the thirtieth menu. It was also the last ever menu for a loyal friend, present for the very first week. First she left the flat, then her job, and now the country. Menu Thirty needed to farewell the friend that I was instructed to “not let slip away” when I was seventeen, but also celebrate the fact that I had reached the thirty week mark of a task I had inflicted on myself. Dinner table conversation was balanced, but I felt that neither of the aforementioned topics received the limelight they needed. The Honey Glazed Carrots received great praise and I looked over photos to see which I could post to commemorate the thirtieth week on my Instagram Story. None could give it the grace it deserved.

Flan and sides.

Week Thirty, Menu Twenty-One and I was on the precipice of big changes I hadn’t foreseen when I cooked Menu One. The violent change that I pondered in the early weeks starting to take shape in ways that I realised were less violent and more gentle because they weren’t so jarring when they actually happened. The air in the city was thick from a storm somewhere south from where I was but I felt solid in the sense it couldn’t blow me away but Week Thirty was less colossal than I had anticipated.

Menu Twenty from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Cream of Tomato Soup: butter, onion, celery, tomatoes, brown sugar, parsley, italian herbs, bay leaf, salt and pepper, vegetable stock, marmite, flour, yoghurt, sour cream

Magical Courgette Bake: courgette, egg, milk, cottage cheese, wholemeal flour, baking powder, salt and pepper, cheese, pumpkin seeds

Jacket Potatoes: potatoes, salt, butter, sour cream

Sweet Baked Parsnips: parsnips, salt and pepper, margarine, brown sugar

Red Capsicum Salad with Snow Peas: capsicums, peas, olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, garlic, basil, mustard powder, salt and pepper

Despite the feelings of positivity I had found in Week Twenty-Eight, it was now Week Twenty-Nine and those feelings were gone. To me, though it was now April, the new year had only just rolled over. There was a newness that typically comes with January 1st. Nothing from January, February, or March was coming with me into April. I had nothing to show for myself and nothing going my way. Now returning to the soup section of the cookbook to complete Menu Twenty, a four page spread whose presence I had feared since discovering it months ago. I couldn’t draw similarity to the previous soup weeks because of the overarching theme of newness. 

April began with Easter, granting a day off of the structured labour in my life. Then the sound of screeching tyres and an all encompassing smash, tin colliding with tin. Doors opening and closing, voices, and a car with a crushed behind over the driveway. There was a car accident on the street on Monday morning. Neighbours banded together, and I sent my flatmate outside with the frozen mint peas purchased a week earlier. I was first aid trained but didn’t want to crowd the scene. It felt symbolic, the correlation between a young man stepping too hard on his accelerator, and the feeling that my life was speeding up also. I was still certain from the week before that the universe mapped every event that prevailed down on Earth. The cars were written off, neither one insured, and the fate of both parties troubled me and I became concerned with how self-indulgent I had become through this process. 

Early preparations.

Early fears of Menu Twenty were quelled by the experience and familiarity I had of my kitchen.  The quiet of the kitchen on a Wednesday evening was my break from an otherwise chaotic and unfruitful existence. I cooked diligently, grating, chopping, portioning, blending and cooking down. Guests came in, just three who didn’t reside at the flat. I blended again and tended the oven, before I knew it, there was a Cream of Tomato Soup, Magical Courgette Bake, plate of Jacket Potatoes, Sweet Baked Parsnips, and a Red Capsicum Salad with Snow Peas on the bench in my silent kitchen.

Trivial moments.

We sat at the table and I became anti-social. My hair had grown to a point that I no longer recognised myself and I felt stifled, unable to relate to anyone as if I were meeting them for the first time. With five different meals, we were spoilt for choice. Perhaps the decision of where to begin was overwhelming to all, or just me. The Red Capsicum Salad with Snow Peas, had been made with green capsicum rather than red, and the frozen mint peas rather than snow. “I’ll never amount to anything,” I exclaimed, before swallowing a glass of white wine. Still the least intelligent at the table as my guests played with their food. Jacket Potato into a small man. I considered my future and put my foot in my mouth. Three times sitting at the corner of the table. Discussion turned to silent retreats and the good things we had heard about them. One guest turned to me and said, “you couldn’t do it.” I looked down at my plate and noticed I had spoken too much over dinner because everyone else had finished their plates except me, I still had half of my own Jacket Potato.

The dinner table.

By the end of Week Twenty-Nine, I was all negativity. Seeking guidance through forms of nonviolent silencing and willful ignorance, socialising with groups I wasn’t so familiar with.  I considered whether it was inhumane to refer to such good friends as mere guests. Was I downplaying the roles they played in the cookbook? At the very least it was April and my faith in the universe remained unshaken.

Menu Thirty-Seven from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Cookbook".

Potato and Green Pea Curry: oil, poppy seeds, mustard seeds, onion, garlic, cumin, tumeric, coriander, pepper, dried chilli, frozen mint peas, potato, tomatoes, salt, tamarind paste, water

Nutty Carrot Loaf: wholemeal breadcrumbs, carrot, basil, margarine, water, vegetable stock, lemon, parsley, orange juice 

Celery and Apple Sambal: celery, apple, lemon Plum or Prune Raita: coconut yoghurt, red plums, cinnamon

Eternal slog, another week, by now so resigned from the process I don’t even invite my own guests. On the Friday night of the preceding week, my close and personal friend, very often a guest at my dinners, invited somebody new. In the events leading up to the invitation, my close personal friend and I had bickered over the lyrics to George Michael’s “Faith”, which had been performed at the bar by the worst cover band I ever saw. I had been pushed aside by the guitarist as he made his way on stage, this action was clouding any real judgement I could make on the band. There remains a blurry mugshot that I took of him in my iPhone’s camera roll. “‘Faith’ is one of George’s best songs,” I had said to my friend as we rested in the back courtyard of the bar. She had responded, “no, it isn’t.” 

I persisted, “you have to really listen to the lyrics.” and she paused. 

“You gotta have faith- faith- faith.” I pestered. 

Those weren’t the lyrics I meant at the time, what I wanted to get across was that I had found it heartfelt when he referred to his foolish notion of waiting for something more.

In any case, I had a new guest arriving for Week Twenty-Eight, a vegan one that I considered to also have a nut allergy by association with her boyfriend, who had not received an invitation to my dinner. Monday of Week Twenty-Eight was spent rifling through the only fresh pages of the cookbook, uncharted territory. The pages of the Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook were sticking together, tainted by dishes past. I looked ahead for remaining menus that suited the dietary requirements, landing on Menu Thirty-Seven. It was the only vegan menu in the cookbook, if you take the margarine option over butter, and I could make it allergen free by taking the walnuts out of the Nutty Carrot Loaf, to render the “Nutty” in its title redundant. To cook Menu Thirty-Seven in Week Twenty-Eight was a glimpse into the future and a taste of the end.

Tangibly, it really was, at long last, the end of March. March seemed to have brought along an onslaught of poor treatment unto me by others and to accept they weren’t part of my life anymore opened up space to rethink. I was in the middle of two self-help books trying to rectify the textbook issues that I now knew I had, the first of which dealt with facing reality, and the second with comfortably sharing this reality once I learnt to face it. I was learning about making responsible choices that served my best interest in a reality that might not necessarily be the one that I had wanted. At the supermarket I was again confronted by the car I had done something to at the beginning of March, I was beginning to feel personally victimised by its owner and I struggled to pinpoint any meaning or symbolism from its continual presence in my peripheral vision. Was it even there? Distracted with thoughts of the carpark I mistakenly picked up frozen mint peas from the freezer in the supermarket, Bishop and Carruthers had listed “frozen green peas” in their ingredient list for the Potato and Green Pea Curry. 

Wednesday of Week Twenty-Eight arrived, I was in the kitchen and it was unseasonably warm for the time of year. To make a Nutty Carrot Loaf the wholemeal breadcrumbs were placed into a bowl, along with grated carrot, seasoning, a crumbled vegetable stock cube and three tablespoons of orange juice. This was well mixed and then reconstituted with a portion of water. It went into the oven and I moved onto the Potato and Green Pea Curry. The curry came together like a standard curry, Bishop and Carruthers’ curry however, came together with a certain warmth and understanding that I had picked up from the second book I was reading, I knew intimacy and compromise and I understood fear both at a conscious and subconscious level. I was aware of mistakes I’d made in the past, including the mint peas rather than green peas. My guests arrived one by one and on this night I had eight. While they chattered in the living room I put together the remaining dishes, the Celery and Apple Sambal, and the Plum Raita. Each of these dishes contained just three ingredients respectively, and I had swapped out plain yoghurt for coconut. I finished the Nutty Carrot Loaf/carrot loaf with a twist of lemon and dash of parsley and pulled a large serving of rice out of the microwave.

Into the dining room, we sat crowded around the table. Over dinner we discussed the geriatric ward and the admin that goes into discharging a patient that has stayed for 65 days, ill-health, and lonely dinners. Meny Thirty-Seven went down with compliments, though confusion arose around the Nutty Carrot Loaf, what it was, why it was there. The Plum Raita seemed to be taken like a dessert and eaten on a side plate to cool palates after the Potato and Green Pea Curry. By the end of dinner, I broached the subject of those conscious and subconscious fears, how often we think we fear one thing, when in reality our fear is something quite different. For instance the Love Addict consciously fears abandonment, while subconsciously fearing a commitment built upon shared reality. The Love Avoidant consciously fears taking on the reality and needs of someone else, while subconsciously fearing that they’ll be abandoned (Mellody, 1992). The Love Avoidant and the Love Addict are the most riveting of all zodiac couples. When the last guest left, the newest guest, we talked about Higher Powers and what it felt like to know someone who felt like religion.

Menu twenty-five from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Gazpacho Soup: tinned whole tomatoes, tinned tomato juice, garlic, cucumber, capsicum, onion, olive oil, whole meal bread, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, italian herbs, tabasco sauce, worcester sauce, fresh parsley. 

Carrot Tabouleh: bulghur wheat, carrots, spring onion, parsley, walnuts, salt, pepper, lemon juice, tabasco sauce, mayonnaise, black olives. 

Farmhouse Pie: wholemeal flour, rolled oats, salt, butter, kumara, onion, pumpkin, leek, butter beans, plain flour, milk, vegetable stock, horseradish sauce, cheese. 

Crisp Green Salad: Lettuce, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic.

Still the middle of March, my problems were resolved and I had started reading a book that led me to believe I may have textbook issues. A newer flame was sparking within me this week, which to a degree only highlighted the textbook issues noted in the sentence prior. It was the Twenty-Seventh week of the long journey through Bishop and Carruthers’ “The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook”. The Autumn equinox was set to occur on Wednesday, the night of the dinner party. My tendency to look inward caused me to think of it more as just the end of Summer, a time of historical personal woes, I was grateful to have made it through relatively unscathed. The weather was getting colder, the days shorter, and I was becoming thankful despite the issues I knew myself to have. 

Menu Twenty-Five was made up of a medley of dishes across a spectrum of temperatures. A cold Gazpacho Soup and Carrot Tabouleh, with a warm Farmhouse Pie and a side of Crisp Green Salad. I needed the Farmhouse Pie, envisioning a lifestyle where I spent time on a lifestyle block further north than where I was situated, or south depending on the location of something I had seen on Instagram. At the same time, I was having compulsive thoughts about bad things that would happen if my Instagram following went down by one. I discovered a glitch in the supermarket self-checkout which meant you could get two capsicums for the price of one. 

Farmhouse

I was home from work by 5 PM on Wednesday and ready to begin the equinox meal, in a meditative silence in the small kitchen. The hours I spent cooking before my guests arrived was beginning to feel like the only time I knew peace, despite the elevated mood I held steady during Week Twenty-Seven. I assembled the pastry dough in a red pot early, so that it could rest in the fridge for half an hour while I prepared the Farmhouse Pie filling. I tossed the leek stems out the kitchen window because they were too big for the food scrap bin. The Carrot Tabouleh was put together no problem then shifted to the fridge. Twenty-Seven weeks into the journey but I still don’t own a rolling pin, this proved problematic when it came time to roll out my pastry dough with a glass, some of the pie would be left exposed. Still it entered the oven, covered in tinfoil, for as long as the oven would handle. With guests arriving, I blended together the Gazpacho Soup, accidentally pouring a lot of worcester sauce into the mixture but hoping for the best in my calm space.

Autumnal changes

I sat down at the corner of the dining table with all the dishes in the middle. There were six guests around the table, they dipped spoons into the Gazpacho soup and I cut the Farmhouse Pie into equal servings and placed it on the empty plate of each guest. The dinner went down a treat, warm enough to signify the end of Summer, but cold enough to address the higher March temperatures we were facing. Conversation flowed carefully, discussing things, traveling artists, love, and I broached the subject of my textbook issues.

A casual dinner celebrating the end of another Summer

Menu Twenty-Six from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Gourmet Pumpkin and Zucchini Quiche: ground almonds, wholemeal flour, plain flour, parmesan cheese, salt, butter, egg yolk, onion, pumpkin, thyme, cinnamon, nutmeg, paprika, brown sugar, eggs, sour cream, pepper, zucchini, edam cheese, parsley. 

Adrienne’s Asparagus Casserole: tinned asparagus, tinned whole peeled tomatoes, butter, onion, wholemeal bread, salt, pepper, brown sugar, basil, parsley. 

South Seas Salad: red cabbage, spring onions, pumpkin seeds, green apple, lettuce, desiccated coconut, sour cream, wine vinegar, caster sugar, salt, pepper. 

Menu Twenty-Six fell onto the twenty-sixth week of my journey, by mere coincidence.  It was the middle of March, and I was in the middle of troubling circumstances, in a particular zone between what I expected to have already happened and what could potentially happen instead, and I lay in wait for the latter. Week Twenty-Six and Menu Twenty-Six were both culinarily, structurally and emotionally reminiscent of Week One and Menu One. Culinarily, I purchased a pumpkin, apple, and wholemeal bread and pulled the nutmeg off the spice shelf. Structurally, I was still working in the same job and emotionally, I was stewing over the very same issue, though the rejection was something implicit rather than overt. In fact, I had proposed nothing to reject, but still I didn’t need to ask because I already intuited it. I considered, over the course of Week Twenty-Six the act of remembering, what instigated it and why we bothered to do it. 

While I was enticed by the menu because of the pineapple, due to the nature of longing and heartache, I was throwing myself into my vocation. On Tuesday I saw a skink in the hallway at work, and remembered I had seen it there on Monday as well. Controversy over a dog that had arisen during Week One returned again. The dog had the same name as someone I once knew and I felt like I had a biased opinion on the matter and had written in my diary at the time “I had a dog called [redacted] once, too.” After work on Tuesday, I returned to the supermarket, nervous about being in the car park again. I had been anticipating Menu Twenty-Six for some time, only to forget this fact on its actual week. There was pineapple in the recipe. To the best of my knowledge pineapple only appears once in the “Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook,” in Bishop and Carruthers’ South Seas Salad.

Gourmet in my kitchen.

When Wednesday arrived, I had six guests. The new flatmate was home for his first Wednesday meal. I had finished work at 6 PM, the same as I had during Week One only that was on the other side of Daylight Savings. The pumpkin sat on the bench whole but this time covered in evening light. I was more confident around the pumpkin, Twenty-five weeks had passed since Menu One and I knew how to cook in my kitchen. This was one of the only positive things I know to have come from repetitive behaviour. Adrienne, a friend of Bishop and Carruthers’ had contributed the asparagus casserole to the cookbook. The asparagus came out of its tin small and deflated, saturated in its own liquids. It went down onto a generously greased baking dish to be covered in the tinned tomatoes. The croutons went on top of this, they looked better than they had for Menu One. The stove cooked the quiche and casserole together and my guests arrived, conversing in the living room as I assembled the South Seas Salad. 

Adrienne's Asparagus Casserole, and South Seas Salad in preparation.

Over dinner I complained about the meal, it felt war-torn because I was projecting memories and happenings on to it. The guests ate diligently and with no complaint. I noticed while eating the salad that I had forgotten to put the crushed pineapple into the South Seas Salad and felt destroyed by my own incompetence. I was wrapped up remembering other mistakes that I made another one because I had failed to remember something else. I deserted the table then to retrieve the canned pineapple from the cupboard, to prove to the guests that it was supposed to be there. I was met with reassurance from the guests. 

Fine dining.

Menu Thirty-One from Bishop and Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Artichoke and Tofu Cannelloni: artichoke hearts, tofu, butter, onion, garlic, lemon rind, lemon juice, fresh basil, oregano, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, mozzarella, ricotta, parmesan, cream, cannelloni, capsicum, tinned tomatoes, tomato paste. 

Butter Steamed Courgettes: courgette, water, butter, salt, pepper. 

Red Cabbage Salad: red cabbage, apple, celery, raisins, walnuts, sour cream, garlic, brown sugar, wholegrain mustard, salt, malt vinegar, oil, pepper. 

It was the beginning of March, the first day of the Week Twenty-Five was already the fourth day of the new Month. Historically, March was about dropping all the pieces you had picked up in February. The case of the vicious circle came to a head on that first day when, like social media app TikTok suggested, someone returned. I had thought the window was locked but when I realised it wasn’t I didn’t try to remedy it. A newness had arrived over the prior weekend, a flatmate had moved into the empty room and I thought this might mean a new guest at the table. In terms of the cookbook, I was knocking off the thirty-first menu.

On Tuesday I was plagued by an inner morosity, spirit crushed and fearful of the fact that I knew how things ended. It hadn’t gone past me, that by recognising a vicious circle, the top of the curve no longer had the rivetting aspects that it did when life was just cyclical. I had to consider whether this is what addicts feel when they take the first step and recognise they have a problem. 

The handle on the interior of my car had been broken off by the man at the garage when he checked it for its warrant of fitness back in February. I had no replacement and nothing to control the motion of the car door. I did the shopping this day and with the above information taken into account, did something bad I can’t admit to in writing. If things had been different, I would have taken accountability, but they didn’t, so I drove home from the supermarket and went to bed for the night. I was living with the knowledge that to some people I was “like a disinterred person,” that a corpse was even more lively than me. 

Artichoke and Tofu Cannelloni filling

Wednesday arrived and the new flatmate informed me he wouldn’t be home for dinner. I had four guests and myself. Two of them, my flatmates, one the now ex-flatmate, and the fourth, a friend who believed she wasn’t meant to have flatmates. I stood in the kitchen, the weather had cooled, it was Autumn. The menu was relatively simple, with one main dish and two sides containing mere vege. All appliances worked as they should and guests arrived in a normative fashion, one after the other.

It was easier shuffling a group of four from the living to dining room, they followed as I carried out the Artichoke and Tofu Cannelloni. Comfortably seated, there was the perfect amount of cannelloni to share between us. It was a balanced meal and we discussed artichoke as we ate. Before cooking with Bishop and Carruthers I had never eaten an artichoke. I confessed that I was nervous about the full moon I had been made aware of on TikTok, it was due to fall on the last night of Week Twenty-Five. Decisions made by air signs may be misleading, uncharacteristic, or chaotic. My fears were not quelled because the guests did not believe in it. 

Menu Twenty-Nine from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook

Tagliatelle with Primavera-Yoghurt Sauce and Nuts: tagliatelle, butter, onion, garlic, capsicum, mushrooms, broccoli, zucchini, carrot, white wine, fresh basil, oregano, honey, fresh tomatoes, parsley, salt, pepper, cashews, plain yoghurt, cream, parmesan. 

Fettuccine with Spinach and Walnut Sauce: fettuccine, spinach, butter, olive oil, garlic, walnuts, ricotta, salt, pepper, pine nuts. 

It was the last week of February, one that disrupted my notion of rewriting each year because there hadn’t been a February 29 in four years. The Twenty-Fourth dinner party was to fall on the 28th, the day in February that would usually signify an end, it did last year, for two reasons but the second I won’t go into. The aim of completing the Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook was becoming unclear. Most things were becoming unclear. I was once again unsure of the menu and the week that I was heading into. At the same time, I was experiencing delusions of grandeur, declaring to friends that I had “rid myself of my defeatist attitude”. I knew it was the end of February only because I could not, in good conscience, list it above January in my iPhone’s note of month rankings. The dinner tonight would be the first held in the new dining room.

Supermarket shopping was confusing this week as the list was long and did not include only ingredients from the cookbook, as it usually did. On Wednesday afternoon I noticed I had left broccoli off of the list. I walked across to the fruit and veggie store, in tiny shorts and birkenstocks. The weather was still hot because there were still two days of summer left. When I paid for the broccoli the shopkeepers closed up around me. The fruit and veggie store could not be the only stop I made that night, when I got home I believed that I was prepared to start until finding there was no plain yoghurt in the fridge. Admitting defeat, I drove to the supermarket in the same outfit. When I walked through the entrance I hit the sensor gates and set an alarm off but didn’t look back.

Lethal preparations

Finally home, I was motivated only by the fact that I had to begin. I had said that dinner would be 8 PM but now needed to push this back to the regular 8 30 PM. I chopped vegetables and got tear gassed by onions. I took a photo of my face on SnapChat and wrote across it “ong these onions” with a spelling mistake because my eyes stung and streamed a cloudy liquid. I collapsed, frail and defeated, on the floor of the new lounge. The largest pan handled the ingredients for the Fettuccine with Spinach and Walnut Sauce, while the Baccarat cooked the vegetables for the Tagliatelle. I boiled water and salt in two different pots for two types of pasta that to me looked exactly the same. Liquids were added to the respective pots, where they simmered simultaneously.

Week Twenty-Four, the Baccarat pot, and a new dining room.

The guests came through, six of them. Four of them were privy to the information of the dining room change as two of them had partaken in the move, and three of them were in the group chat in which the change had been organised. I refuse to remove people from the chat when they move out. Two of them, had the group chat on mute, and therefore were not aware the change had taken place. The only guest who had no way of knowing was disappointed by the new lounge, as I had marketed it as a “suprise” and they thought it meant I had invited a shock guest.

Menu Twenty-Nine served on Week Twenty-Four, in the new dining room.

When I served dinner in the new dining room, its faults came to light. It felt like a drag, shepherding the guests from the lounge into the room. Walking the dishes past the bathroom into the new dining room. I felt the walls that I abandoned watching me as my guests piled the pasta on their plates. It felt awkward, eating in the confined space I had once slept in. I was tired of pasta. 

Vegetable Lasagne Verdi: lasagne sheets, spinach, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese. 

Mushroom Sauce: onion, garlic, oil, butter beans, salt and pepper, oregano, sugar, tinned whole tomatoes. 

Cheese Sauce: butter, flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg, cups, cheddar cheese, parmesan cheese. 

I remember almost every word ever said to me and ChatGPT once told me to be honest when I wrote retroactively. I’m writing at the tail end of Week Twenty-Four, about Week Twenty-Three. But I served my guests Menu Twenty-Eight, I was learning the same lesson as I did at the very beginning of this journey. Without alignment between weeks to menus I am left in disarray. Jung’s thesis around self-realisation was getting to me because he said it was nearly impossible for anyone but Jesus or Buddha to reach full self-realisation. I felt naive for setting out on this journey. I was nearing the end of the Primer and had learned that self-realisation could only be achieved if all parts of the self, the persona and the shadow, the ego and the anima, were fully integrated.

Essential elements

There was only one meal for Menu Twenty-Eight, a lasagne. Bishop and Carruthers broke the recipe down into three essential elements. Separate at first and then brought together at the end. The person before self-realisation. This was the third pasta dish of the journey, consecutively, because despite my previous thoughts and feelings around the non-linear nature of the journey I wanted to regain some direction.

I started on Wednesday evening with the Mushroom Sauce, mashing butter beans in a metal bowl. Garlic and onion were sauteed in my largest pan then combined with the mashed beans, tomatoes and spices. Left to simmer, but not for very long. The Cheese Sauce, was a simple roux with grated cheeses and nutmeg lightly stirred in. That was all I needed to do over the stove, under the extractor fan which I had not turned on. The lasagne was assembled in the glass dish, fresh spinach and cottage cheese thrown on instinctively between the layers. I let this sit as long as time allowed, Bishop and Carruthers had instructed for oven-ready pasta to be left to sit with the sauce for at least an hour, but I had not read the recipe prior to cooking. It went into the oven at the lowest temperature to cook for as long as the oven would function. Guests arrived during this time, my ex-flatmate the first to arrive, her first time as a guest. Change was not necessarily a theme I thought a lot about anymore, which was a change in and of itself, however change was apparent this week. The room she had once lived in was empty until the replacement moved in, and the violent change I had reported earlier in the journey came to fruition this week. I threw together a simple salad, as mentioned in the fine print down the side of the recipe. I had full creative license over the salad and went with a salad bag from the supermarket with avocado, cherry tomatoes, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

Served, to perfect guests

Spaghetti Napoli: spaghetti, onion, garlic, capsicum, olive oil, tinned tomatoes, tomato paste, fresh basil, oregano, brown sugar, salt and pepper, chilli sauce, parmesan cheese. 

Baked Rigatoni with Tomato and Mushrooms: rigatoni, mushrooms, butter, onion, garlic, capsicum, olive oil, tinned tomatoes, fresh basil, oregano, brown sugar, salt and pepper, chilli sauce, tin tomato juice, mozzarella, parmesan cheese, ricotta. 

This journey has gotten to the point where, if I didn’t check the back of my work diary I wouldn’t know what week it was. It was the Twenty-Second Week. The hold that the cookbook had over me, had slipped, or I’d let go. The end was a plausible entity. Twenty-two weeks into the journey, I finally had a crippling realisation. Life was not circular, I had only made it so. There are only 365 days in a year, and each one of them has the same title as the year before. The only circles in a life are vicious ones. Symbols exist. I was cooking Menu Twenty-Seven this week and the number 27 is a symbol of early death. On the second day of the week, we lost the neighbour’s kitten to an early death. Death, a symbol of expiration. It was also the last week that my most loyal guest was also a flatmate. The vicious circle I find myself stuck in is the one where there is safety in expiration. 

On Monday, prior to realisation I was floating on higher ground. Reading a Primer of Jungian theory at work and thinking about self-realisation. I had so far only realised that I was a frightfully honest person, but at the same time I lie a lot and I’d like to lie even more. I wanted to think about entropy and canalising energy but didn’t understand how it worked. I thought that Jung’s theory of entropy intertwined with the cookbook because both the psyche and Bishop and Carruthers sought balance in a lifestyle, as did I. Lana Del Rey has a song about the paramount sign sparkling just for her. The “paramount sign sparkling, sparkling just for me” could have been any of the signs I saw. Signs and symbols are inextricably linked. 

Valentine's Day Kitchen, Actually.

By Wednesday, I wanted to believe signs and symbolism only existed in dreams but unfortunately quite often signs and symbolism are manifested in a week and when they come to fruition you want to throw up. I cooked dinner instead. It was already 6 30 PM when I got home from work. I only needed to make the Napoli sauce, because this was going into both the Spaghetti Napoli and the Baked Rigatoni with Tomato and Mushrooms. While the sauce simmered gently, I wondered what it meant for something to simmer gently. Things usually remain at boiling point. 

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So the sauce boiled and I chopped vegetables and grated cheese for the baked rigatoni. The oven had been turned on, to let it warm only slightly before it blasted the rigatoni full force. I spooned half of the Napoli sauce on top of the rigatoni, topped it with the cheese, and relocated it into the oven, hoping for the best. Predictably, the oven shut off half an hour into the 45 minutes it had been diagnosed. I sat with my guests, all five of them.

Dinner, cooked and served.

Menu Thirty-Three from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Sichuan Eggdrop Soup: vegetable stock, cornflour, soy sauce, corn kernels, mushrooms, white pepper, chilli sauce, salt and pepper, eggs, oil, spring onion. 

Cantonese Salad: baby spinach, alfalfa, thin noodles, red onion, roasted and salted peanuts, soy sauce, orange peel, red wine vinegar, oil, sesame seeds, fresh ginger, peanut butter, sugar. 

Oriental Tofu and Vegetables in Ginger Sesame Seed Sauce: firm tofu, soy sauce, water, cornflour, sesame seeds, oil, ginger, dried chilli, carrots, courgettes, broccoli, salt and pepper, water. 

The movement of time had brought around February, it was my 24th February but only the first of this journey. I was no longer interested in following the cookbook page by page, and therefore for Week Twenty-One I was doing Menu Thirty-Three. Life is complex and so too is curating dinner parties week by week, though the issues at hand were broader than the Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook, perhaps they always had been.The menu contained rich nourishment in the form of vegetables and protein in the form of tofu. The week itself was fine, I was used to the way things were. Bishop and Carruthers’ and I led very different lives. February seems to be the month where you pick up pieces, but I had to question whether I was just comfortable with it being that way. I established a weekly to do list on my phone of all the things I needed to accomplish this week. 

Between Week Twenty-One and Menu Thirty-Three there were very little similarities except for the fact that I collected groceries one day and cooked on Wednesday. I had skipped forward three menus for no reason other than I had wanted to. Actually, I was putting off the soup section of the cookbook until the summer cooled down. I began cooking on Wednesday evening by marinating my tofu, but was alarmed to find the marinade consisted of only soy sauce. That sat in the fridge for hours while I prepped vegetables - carrot, courgette, broccoli, mushrooms. I prepared Bishop and Carruthers’ Oriental Dressing as well at this point. After this I waited around hours, sitting at the dining room table, occasionally with my flatmate, occasionally alone.  I was waiting around for time to move closer to dinner time, because the fine print of the menu said not to let the menu sit around once cooked to prevent the vegetables from going soggy. 

The time did come. I boiled the noodles for the Cantonese Salad and browned the tofu for the Oriental Tofu and Vegetables in Ginger Sesame Sauce at the same time. Things came together smoothly, the stock of the Sichuan Eggdrop Soup boiling gently in a tall metal pot. When all two guests that weren’t flatmates arrived I assembled the salad and whisked three eggs together with some oil in the red Baccarat pot before pouring over the stock. The eggs didn’t resemble drops but simply turned the stock the colour of miso soup. I may have executed poorly. 

Menu Thirty from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Spinach Fettucine with Mushroom Cream Sauce: fettucine, onion, garlic, butter, mushrooms, wholemeal flour, cream, basil, pepper, parmesan cheese, parsley, tomato, blue vein cheese. 

Macaroni Diablo: macaroni, onion, garlic, capsicum, dried chilli, oil, butter, tumeric, coriander, curry powder, tinned whole tomatoes, salt, pepper, oregano, tinned whole kernel corn, kidney beans, yoghurt, honey, ricotta, cheddar cheese, mozzarella, parmesan cheese.

The final few days of January, a month during which I’d felt out of sorts. It fell into the twentieth week. Importantly, this was the halfway mark of my journey in the Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook. I had been walking uphill for so long. Reaching halfway proved that I certainly wasn’t the fickle person I used to be. Changes often happen without you noticing. During a retreat away from home over the long weekend at the end of Week Nineteen, during the transition between then and Week Twenty I dreamed that I worked as a waitress in a busy restaurant during a busy dinner service. At the very end of the dream I figured out that I was 29 and about to turn 30. It often feels uncouth to talk about your own dreams but it is the greatest compliment to appear in someone else’s. This dream evoked such a feeling in me that I felt obligated to complete the thirtieth menu. The dream only proved to me that I needed to break away from the linearity that I had forced upon myself, especially if I wanted to be an assertive person. At the same time I just didn’t want to make Menu Twenty that week, because it was too hot for tomato soup and also I didn’t have the time nor energy to make a four page spread. My dream had nothing to do with turning thirty and everything to do with skipping Menu Twenty. I thought about all the other dreams I had misconstrued, both my own and others’. 

Menu Thirty opened to the pasta section of Bishop and Carruthers’ cookbook. A mushroom fettucine and a macaroni dish that I had never heard of before. I bought kidney beans from the bulk store on one of my lunch breaks just for something to do while on the streets. On both Tuesday and Wednesday I looked for Spinach Fettucine, the special kind Bishop and Carruthers mentioned in their list of ingredients. I came up unlucky and decided instead to throw in a bag of spinach to the sauce. The cooking process began with preparing the produce across two chopping boards. The sauces were cooked on the stove at the same time, however my time management felt off and by the time the Macaroni Diablo was ready, after having been cooked on the stove and then baked in the oven, the Mushroom Cream Sauce had been sitting on the stove for a lengthy period of time. Once dished up in my red birthday Baccarat pot it looked well constructed and fresh. Things didn’t seem to matter, I was in control of the menu and in control of my life despite the fact that people tend to come and go as they please. Guests included. 

I had only three guests on Wednesday night, the very last night of January. I was gifted a Dr Pepper by the one guest who didn’t reside at the house for making it half way. The dinner went down well amongst the crowd, though the Macaroni Diablo had strange flavour profiles with both tumeric and oregano but also curry powder. It was spicy and cheesy and I feared what I would dream about that night. 

Menu Nineteen from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Cookbook".

Creamy Swedish Cabbage Roll: wholemeal flour, plain flour, salt, baking powder, butter, milk, cabbage, silverbeet, sour cream, white vinegar, pepper, cheddar, corn kernel, chilli sauce. 

Potato Dauphinese: potatoes, salt, pepper, grated cheddar, milk, butter. 

Tomato Salad Provencal: tomatoes, onion, olives, lemon juice, olive oil, capsicum, pepper.

Menu Nineteen, and the second week back, and nineteenth week over all. Nearing the end of January of the new year, I felt like I’d lost the time I spent away. I decided to be an assertive person and take control of my life. To friends I said “I think I’m going to be an assertive person” and one responded “that was a passive statement.” That was Monday. I was still socially content and at the beach in the evening after work, disconnected from the internet with a useless iPhone. Bishop and Carruthers were distant figures who I would deal with tomorrow. I was going to turn the page when I got home and discover what menu was next, the nineteenth, because this journey was linear. Life had been stable for the past eight weeks, since I turned a new age and realigned the weeks to menus.

Early Afternoon Preparation.

On Tuesday, connected to the internet, a message delivered via iMessage made it apparent that this week was different from last week, and all the weeks of the cookbook before that. Still an assertive person, I invited the people in my life to dinner for Wednesday night. Feeling disheartened by both circumstances in life and by the menu I was driven only by a straight line. I shopped for the cabbage and silverbeet roll headlining Menu Nineteen on Tuesday evening. I was having a hard time collaborating my way of life around a cookbook again. I didn’t really want to eat cabbage or silverbeet.

Starting with the Creamy Swedish Cabbage Roll and its scone pastry the sun shone through the dusty window of my kitchen on Wednesday. I left it resting in the dining room to prepare both fillings, one on the stove and another in a ceramic bowl on the bench. When it came to assemble the roll, the scone pastry lay protruding over the edge of the baking tray, I had rolled it square using a clean jar and realised I should’ve been doing that in all the weeks preceding Week Nineteen. Potato Dauphinese, was a plain dish with little colour except for pepper. It was dependable in the sense I knew it would get eaten. Boiled then thinly sliced potatoes should’ve stood tall in the baking dish but lay down instead to be blanketed by the grated cheese, milk and butter. I placed both dishes into the oven at the same time and assembled the Tomato Salad Provencal, neither myself or anything in the salad were native to France, Italy, or Monaco. 

Creamy Swedish Cabbage Roll, rolled incorrectly.

There were six guests for dinner, the Creamy Swedish Cabbage Roll cut fatefully into seven slices to feed the six of them and myself. The guests favoured the crisp outer ring of the Potato Dauphinese in the baking tray. One guest complained of acid reflux and picked around the tomatoes in the Tomato Salad Provencal, and another left her onions on her plate though made no comment. Over dinner I was consoled over the iMessage and berated for things I found to be endearing. 

Menu Eighteen from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook"

Italian Pizza (dough): warm water, sugar, yeast, wholemeal flour, white flour, salt. 

Eggplant and Walnut Topping: eggplant, oil, butter, garlic, tomatoes, capsicum, salt, pepper, gruyere cheese, mozzarella. 

Artichoke and Mushroom Topping: oil, onion, garlic, capsicum, basil, chilli sauce, salt, pepper, artichoke, gruyere cheese, mozzarella.

It was mid January, the Eighteenth Menu and the Eighteenth Week. I found myself in a similar position to the beginning of the year before, and in a similar state of mind to the one I had when I began the cookbook. That wasn’t good. I was down with a jet lag I didn’t really deserve to have. I wondered if the new year would reset the scale of time and significance that had accumulated over the previous menus of the Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook. Would I be able to better grasp any new things I learnt in the eighteenth week? I worried, did the three week break I had just taken mean I had forgotten everything I learnt. With pizza on the menu I envisioned an easy Wednesday dinner party, with immediate friends and two pizzas like the menu called for.

On Monday I had invited two extra guests and figured out there would be ten people around the table, including myself. Any freedom I had felt earlier was smothered by the pressure of the largest dinner party of the entire cookbook. At the same time, my landlord had agreed to signing a six month lease, so the freedom of disintegrating shackles once again came into sight. The prospective end to the Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook and the promised end to the lease on my house within the reach of my sight. I took it as reason to think about leaving. Tuesday came and I went to the supermarket and my parents home to take a loan of their pizza trays. My dad was making a Malaysian Fish Curry from another of Rowan Bishop’s cookbooks. I ate that for dinner and considered how all encompassing this cookbook really was and what that meant for the direction of this journey. I didn’t have a lot else going on, I was socially contented, l how long would that last? 

Italian Pizza Dough started and started again.

It soon turned Wednesday, I stood in a very hot kitchen, it was still Summer at home and I was doubling the recipe to feed ten people. I started with the dough, into a bowl of warm water I threw six tablespoons of sugar, followed by a tablespoon of yeast. I had misread tsp for tbsp. For a moment, I contemplated the idea of moving along, but then thought the better of it and poured that mixture out the window. Starting again. As I read over the menu, for the first time, I realised Bishop and Carruthers wanted me to cook the toppings, before they went on the pizza. The dough, put together with little dignity was sticky and tore apart when stretched. Nothing looked hopeful in my kitchen. The toppings cooked together fine, no issue. 

Guests arrived on time, I cooked the four pizzas in cycles of two. Served roughly on time. I sat on the corner of the table on the table my ex-flatmate and now guest had left behind, built by her grandfather. I sat back and felt grateful to be back at the table among friends. I ran out of credit at the end of the week and enjoyed being the person whose phone only worked when connected to the internet. 

Menu Seventeen from Rowan Bishop and Sue Carruthers' "The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook".

Spicy Pumpkin and Lentil Soup: brown lentils, water, cumin, tumeric, coriander, butter, onion, pumpkin, salt, vegetable stock, tomato relish, pepper. 

Celery and Orange Salad: celery, orange, lemon juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar. 

Corn Bread: plain flour, baking powder, salt, wheatgerm, semolina, egg, milk, butter. 

Spinach Frittata: spinach, onion, butter, dried basil, nutmeg, egg, sour cream, milk, salt, pepper, chilli sauce, tasty cheddar cheese. 

Menu Seventeen, Week Seventeen, I write about it now in a state of purgatory, a liminal space, during a three week break from Bishop and Carruthers and their Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook. The weather was hot, dry even, it was Summer at home. It had been two weeks of warm soup, only this time I didn’t want it. I had passed my sickness on to my flatmate and guest, a singular person. I was thinking a lot about change, as usual. Not violent change, that I’ve learnt are done to you, but the changes you make yourself. The ones that take you out of a city, a country even. This had nothing to do with the fact I was travelling to Japan at the end of Week Seventeen. 

The schedule that week was busy, I couldn’t really afford to dedicate it to the journey, but I did anyway. I left the prior week believing I wanted to move somewhere else during the next year and that I wanted to leave this Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook where it belonged, in New Zealand. Because of this, Week Seventeen and Menu Seventeen needed to be completed that week. I had most of the ingredients at home. I went to the Fruit and Vegetable store on Tuesday after a troubling Monday, it was hot and I wished people would turn off their read receipts. I returned home feeling worse, I had spent $38 on four items in a store I believed was always the cheapest option. I wondered if I had been swindled, this was my comeuppance for swindling the lady at the other fruitstore for the $3.99 watermelon back during my birthday week. It wasn’t even the same store. I said “no” when the girl at the till asked whether I wanted a receipt, was she taunting me? I’ll never have the answer to what happened, and that seems to be the way about a lot of things. I was still positive about the way that change could be something you did to yourself. I would cook the pumpkin and lentils and I would change them into a soup. Whether or not I wanted to eat it. I would leave the country one day and maybe I would never return. 

Soup and salad prep, half a pumpkin that cost $25?

It was another easy menu to make. I had all afternoon. It was hot. I wore a pair of mini shorts and a top that had “alcoholic” written across the chest then proceeded to not drink a thing. I started with the soup, first boiling the lentils, then the pumpkin. The state of the flat oven meant I needed to prepare and bake the Corn Bread and Spinach Frittata at the same time. I had a brand new guest that night, from another city even. I had quite a few guests in total that night. Before anyone arrived I sat on the floor of the kitchen listening to personal-to-me version of “Last Christmas”. There were four days till Christmas and dinner was ready. Later I would fail as a host as I served too early, forgetting the last one was coming. 

Frittata and Corn Bread

As we ate, we discussed how the Corn Bread tasted like banana cake without bananas. Really, it was corn bread without any corn, because I had substituted semolina for the cornmeal that Bishop and Carruthers had listed in the ingredients. The following night I declared at work drinks that this had been the worst year of my life. A week later, I was in Tokyo, homesick for something I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe the “Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook”. Two weeks after that, I returned home. It was a new year. The “Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook” wasn’t where I left it and I panicked that it would be another thing lost in the year before. Five minutes later I found it, hidden behind the mirror on the mantelpiece in the dining room, the last violent change of the year before.

Menu Sixteen from Bishop and Carruthers’ “The Vegetarian Adventure Cookbook”

Minestrone con Pesto: canned tomatoes, celery, onion, garlic, vegetable stock, water, salt, pepper, tomato paste, parsley, basil, olive oil, parmesan.

Yoghurt Bread: yoghurt, plain flour, wheat flour, wheat bran.

Neopolitan Salad: cos lettuce, capsicum, olives, mozzerella, tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parmesan, salt, pepper.

Week sixteen could be described as a week of psychological abundance, both within the parameters of Menu Sixteen and without. I thought back to an earlier week on this journey in which comparison was the central theme, only this week comparison was the root cause of this psychological abundance. Bishop and Carruthers’ had another soup on the menu, the second warm soup, and one that I knew had promise of being delicious. Things were looking up for the Christmas season. I was again considering change, not so much the violent kind that I longed for weeks ago but more so the way that we begin to shape things to evoke change, and the way that every year is sort of just the previous year only it’s rewritten according to changes that have happened since the last. Any shackles we might have will disintegrate eventually.

I was sick on Monday, an illness I had contracted from a friend the day before when we shared a plate of nachos at bar in the neighbourhood beside our own. Because of this, I did not do the grocery shopping that night. Still, positively, the dinner party was on the up and up, friends were reuniting. There were to be seven of us around the dinner table, a reunion episode if you will. I had read over the menu late on Monday night taking in the asterisks with the fine print, Bishop and Carruthers’ were telling me I was allowed to swap out the brown rice for pasta in the Minestrone Soup con Pesto and leave out the mung beans in the Yoghurt Bread. I believed these notes may be the key to making Menu Sixteen not just an edible meal, but a delicious one too.

On Tuesday the weather was freezing and I wore a black woolen jumper over a black dress and blue jeans. It was the second week of December and I was even sicker than Monday, the sore throat had modified itself into a cough and snotty nose. I went into work because I needed to take on the role of a waitress for the board later that evening and I was quietly riveted to do so. I also knew I wanted to go to the bulk store on my lunch break. When I did, I realised the entire store had been recast. I bought kidney beans and sunflower seeds and walked out. I wasn’t sure I’d return. When I parked at the fruit and vegetable shop later that evening I did my worst park yet, when I returned to the car after making my purchase, the woman who had pulled in beside me while I was in there was refusing to step out until I pulled out and I suspect it was because she couldn’t and not because she didn’t want to.

I still wasn’t sure if I was interested in cooking on Wednesday, the day of the dinner party. It was another cold day, I wore a turtleneck under my apron, I hadn’t worn my apron in weeks but felt inclined that night to do so. I had bought a loaf tin specially for the yoghurt bread since in a way the recipe called for one. That was where I began, the dough very sticky but came together with a wooden spoon as a lump in baking paper in my new loaf tin. I covered it in tinfoil, a special touch brought about by necessity and it went into the oven to stay there for 45 minutes. The Minestrone Soup con Pesto was put to cook and simmer, a true testament to the patient nature of cooking. That’s something I’ve had to change about myself through this journey, become a patient person. All things take time to simmer and change, myself included. I made up the Neopolitan Salad, it looked gorgeous, then let it chill out in the Fridge behind the table in the dining room. Back inside the kitchen, the oven shut down, lights out, at the Yoghurt Bread’s 40 minute mark. I remained positive and left it there in hopes it would cook anyway. My guests began to pile in around 8 PM, slowly gathering around the table congregating after separate and not-seperate days. I used the blender as the talked and felt I should start changing the process of my cooking to use the blender before anyone showed up.