Today I was inspired to make a fancy pants dinner of homemade pasta. Nay, homemade pasta in the shape of ravioli with fresh herb ricotta filling and crispy sage brown butter alongside shredded brussels sprouts with fried prosciutto. Sounds pretty amazing, right?

Problems with this meal:

1) I’ve never before eaten, let alone cooked, fresh pasta.
2) In my excitement for this meal, I invited people over.

That was stupid. I hate myself for that.

I get terrible stage fright when I invite people over for dinner. I immediately start to romanticize the meal and imagine it in my head as something that it will never be: I see it on pristine sparkling white plates, composed ever so delicately, in perfect balance. In my head, everyone at the table is blown away. I receive praise. People have licked their plates clean. They wish there was more. This is never reality.

I begin thinking and rethinking and over-thinking the meal. I start to second guess myself and cooking becomes a job rather than fun. I suck the fun out of cooking, am entirely too focused, and worried, and unhappy. That and I tend to invite people over when I choose to make something that is difficult to prepare or that I’ve never even eaten before or worse – both. This I did tonight and this I deeply regret. It’s a grave that I willingly dig for myself time and time again. But no longer.

Not that this meal was the absolute worst thing I’ve ever eaten or ever made {just a flop with the pasta, but hey, it was my first time!}, this meal was a stressed-out Kala-on-a-stick. Stressed cooking is simply the worst – it never yields an experience I’d like to relive and instead leaves me disappointed in myself because I know that I am capable of producing something great. AND I LOVE COOKING. What the heck, why should I be disappointed by something that I love to do? What good is doing something that I love to do when I’m not even enjoying it?

Alice Waters says, “a dinner that has left me stressed after cooking is not a dinner I want to serve to my family and friends.” Upon reading this, I realized that she is completely right. I’ve cooked in stressful environments before and it isn’t enjoyable even if the food is great. What is enjoyable is cooking with a friend, listening to some music, preparing something simple, sitting down to eat together, and being messy, enjoying our food. Rather than serving an extravagant meal that I demanded my sanity, happiness, and tranquility, I’d rather be able to enjoy a simple meal. I don’t care if it’s a bit of beans and avocado sprinkled with salt smeared inside a tortilla with, it’s got to be a meal that was made with love. Love for the food, love for the company, love for the quality kitchen time. You can always tell when someone enjoyed the act of preparing the meal, had fun with the flavors and textures, and smiled in the kitchen.

To hone in on this most recent epiphany: enjoying the cooking is absolutely essential to a superb meal. Simply reading Alice’s words and agreeing with them is one thing but to experience it, learn from it, understand it, and agree with it is something else entirely. Only can you fully understand something when you see it for what it truly is and can move forward. This isn’t something someone can tell you, it’s something you must find on your own, so I can say with confidence that I understand the importance of a happy cook. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to understand the most important ingredient when cooking: not garlic or brown butter, chocolate chips or a squeeze of lemon, but the happiness of those making it.

Soon to come, another redemption recipe. It can’t come soon enough.