Contour Lines | 008
Flour on the Counter
So many lessons being learned simultaneously
Is it possible to process them all at once?
Should I focus in on one?
Will the others fly away if I do?
Maybe I should focus on the ones I can learn in a day.
Versus the ones that take a week to process.
Or maybe create an operational framework from lessons past?
Here is a question for the day. What do cooking, operational planning, and leadership development have in common? See if you can guess before the end.
If you are a foodie, the thing they don’t tell you before you have a kid is that if you plan on both working, going to school, or building a business , good luck on taking your time to cook something epic each night.
It's Sunday evening, and entire muscle groups are reminding me that just because I was able to hike 3 miles the day before, it wasn’t a good idea. Stomach growling as I struggle to get the cap off an applesauce pouch while holding my 18 month old in the crook of my arm, I'm realizing he's hungrier than I am. Since dinner isn’t ready, snacks it is.
Most nights whatever we can cook will suffice if we remember to get something out of the freezer. If I do get a chance to cook something I think is on point, it's done an hour or two in advance so the family can eat as soon as they get home, just needs reheating.
That didn't happen Sunday afternoon.
Yet 14 years of practice alongside watching every episode of MasterChef makes your average easy meal pretty on par with what you can get eating out.
But ignoring convenience, who has the money for that in this economy? The event horizon ratio of groceries to takeout approaches. It’s funny what each of us thinks is easy though. Take my wife for instance:
“I can get tortilla dough together, it technically only takes an hour to rest.”
Tacos are easy to put together, money is tight, and we had everything to make them.
I’m glad she is that confident on tortilla dough. I’m already hungry, so anything that takes that long has me skeptical. But hey - if she can do that part, I can do the rest.
“I’ll get the veggies sautéed and the meat as well - we’ve got some ground pork defrosted. Oh, and I’ll put rice on”
We take turns watching our son, I go first so the dough has plenty of time to rest. The kid insists on going outside to run around and pick up rocks, much more adorable when you are that small. Grass and gravel interplay under our feet, making every step a conscious one. When we go back inside, it’s my turn to cooko and in our efforts to entertain the kid and the conversation goes quiet.
I pull the Instant Pot out of the pantry for the rice - we got rid of our Zojirushi cooker years ago - seemed redundant. But I still miss it.
I’ve always loved food and cooking, but even more so since my wreck. Each day I get to use my hand is a special one. After rinsing and pressing the cilantro for the rice, I take my chef's knife I spent too much money on because of the look and start chopping.
An uneasy pain and shakiness is there, which is terrifying. I can chop the herb no problem, but is this indicative of something I need to deal with? I’ll ignore it for now, and keep it to myself. I can be a hypochondriac at times, so it’s likely nothing.
With the rice together, I set to work on the taco filling. Sautéing garlic, jalapenos, and onions come together, wafting through the air alongside chipotle, lime, and other seasonings. The pork and squash are added in, and when it's done I take it all out and put some other veggies in the same pan.
My stomach is churning like a rock tumbler. So I pop open a bag of tortilla chips and pop one in my mouth. By now the dough has rested, so we switch off again, but the kid has caught on. And he wants to help cook. But we don’t have time for that today.
An hour and a half after starting, dinner is ready to go. But the tortillas are a bit thick since it's hard to roll them out, and we forgot to put our glass bottle cokes (no high fructose corn syrup) in the fridge. So even though they taste delicious, it’s not the vibe we were hoping for.
But neither of us complain, just acknowledge it didn’t play out in the way we thought it would.
Tuesday was a busy day again. And since we had leftover tortilla dough and filling, we had tacos again. Not glamorous, but hey, I guess it's taco two-sday this week.
But today the vibes were immaculate. What made the difference?
The tortilla dough had time to rest for a few days, and so they rolled out thinner.
The flavor in the filling had permeated throughout everything.
The cokes were nice and cold.
And of course there is the flour on the counter.
As my wife scatters flour across the counter and begins to roll out the dough into a circle, our son sits next to her watching intently - a new experience! By the third one, he is involved, smacking the dough and pushing on the rolling pin. He makes the most top-tier tortillas.
We often have great ideas, plans, or frameworks we are used to working with and emergency plans or new ideas often get based on these routines. And for that reason, technically, they don’t need much rest time, especially if you know what you are doing. But here’s the flip side:
Timing and introspection are everything. Because we let the dough sit overnight, because the already cooked filling had more time to let flavor sit in - everything aligned to make our original vision for dinner a few nights earlier come together.
If you have an idea or process, let it sit for a minute, or a few days. Or at least an hour. In the words of one of my former sergeants regarding operational planning, “let that shit marinate before you throw it on the grill.”
Always keep communication up. Things can always be improved if your team can talk while on autopilot. Maybe someone will help a little bit to make that idea that much better.
Sometimes you’ll get help from someone when you don’t need it. And in that moment you realize - it’s not about them helping you. It’s about you teaching them.
Contour Lines: Much like the depiction of elevation on a topographical map, these short segments come at regular intervals, 3-5 times per week. They are more personal in nature, looking at philosophy, food, and whatever other intersections of my life I want to talk about that week. If you want to see where I'm at in navigating the terrain of my life's ecosystem, subscribe!