I did not write a post yesterday because I was busy fixing the mayonnaise I broke the day before yesterday. By the time I fixed it, I was jubilant but worn out and it seemed like accomplishment enough for one day. I didn’t have a post in me, I thought. My arm was also very very tired.

So this is yesterday’s post, today, which, had it gone out in time would be about: Yesterday’s Problems Fixed Today! It is an accurate but unfortunate slogan for my life, since what I’d really like to claim is: Tomorrow’s Problems Fixed Today! But that’s never the case, hence the sense of playing perpetual catch up especially when it’s actually The Day Before Yesterday’s Problems Fixed Today, Sort Of!

So today I’m going to finish and post yesterday’s post, start and post today’s post, and attempt to write tomorrow’s post. And then I’ll hop out of my time machine and have a sandwich with some homemade mayonnaise on it.

Like a good time machine, mayonnaise is also magical. You start with an egg yolk at room temperature and then, drop by literal drop, add a neutral oil while whisking like your life depends on it. If you are dripping the oil slowly enough, that rich yellow yolk somehow gets whiter and whiter, thicker and thicker. If you are trying to cut corners by using a food processor and have at your side an 18-month-old sous chef demanding to push the button at his leisure and also cowering in fear each time he pushes it, your mayonnaise breaks and you give up in frustration.

You don’t need to have kids or know much about them to recognize that making mayonnaise with a toddler is likely to fail. Sometimes I wonder at my choices, even in the moment. Why am I doing this? Why do I think this situation will prove me to be an exception to the rules of reality? Failure is inevitable.  But breaking a mayonnaise is ok, says Samin Nosrat, whose recipe with beautifully rendered water color illustration I am using. Samin obviously gets great joy in fixing broken things because she has entire cooking classes in which she makes sure each student breaks the emulsion in their mayonnaise just so they can experience the pleasure of fixing it.

The illustration says Step 1 is: “Stop. Take a deep breath. It happens to everyone.”

Technical instructions for repairs follow. Then half way through: “Ask yourself, ‘Is this working?’ … If NO, All Good. Deep Breath. Return to Step 1.”

I thought it was not possible that my broken mayonnaise could be fixed because the egg had gotten all thick and gooped around the food processor blade, and I hadn’t measured the oil correctly, and there were weird curdl-y bits everywhere, the really distasteful looking ones. It did not fix on the first try, but I trusted Samin. I took a deep breath. I tried it again.

Mayo magic. How? HOW? It’s clear oil, it’s a brilliant yellow yolk, those lumpy bits, your arms is beating beating beating with the whisk and slowly, you barely even realized, it’s become a white creamy spread.

So the spiritual lesson from today’s yesterday post is…don’t give up? Scale it back but keep trying even when you overreach? Fresh mayonnaise is so delicious? Best to leave it in Samin’s words: “Stop. Take a deep breath. It happens to everyone.”

 

You will learn SO MUCH from this beautiful cookbook: Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat, art by Wendy MacNaughton.

Post #9 of 40 Daze: A Lenten Writing Practice