The Day You Know You’re Cooked

Everyone knows, and now you know as well. Today the day you can’t hide from your new reality another minute, the day when only one one word can describe it. Yes, today you can rest assured you’re retired.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” you say to your honey when she returns from a few hours at the gym. “But you’re going to have to guess.”

“What?” She says, wondering.

For years, you’ve been saying to anyone who will listen that you don’t cook, you heat and boil. This after first calling yourself a chef because one summer you worked the line in a kitchen whose name made people chuckle — The Seafood Shanty. For a hot second, you even contemplated culinary school as you chopped onions like a pro and surprised your mom with a chicken dish you’d learned to make one night when the singing waiters at The Shanty belted out Broadway hits in-between courses.

“Can you guess what’s for dinner?” you ask.

“Give me a hint,” your life partner says, looking around the kitchen for clues.

“It’s made with the hamburger you set out,” you say, quite sure she’ll never guess.

It’s been a year to the day you last clocked time at the agency you’d worked at for over thirty years, since you said goodbye to your colleagues and signed off Linked-in for good. Since then, you’ve been spending time learning a new craft. Yes, you’ve kept yourself busy, told stories at The Moth, played ultimate, travelled the Pacific Coast, and kept it all going as best you can.

“Shepherds Pie?” Comes the first guess.

“Close, and a good guess,” you respond, especially given you’d ordered shepherd’s pie for dinner just this past St. Patty’s day weekend.

“Give me a hint.”

“I’ve never made it before,” you add, though you’ve never made shepherd’s pie either.

There are many things you could point to when marking retirement. You’re not setting an alarm. You’re not wearing particularly nice clothes (though they are clean). You’re not feeling anxious in the mornings. And of course, you’re not able to remember the movie you and your honey saw at The Coolidge just last week.

“We hated it as kids,” you add, thinking about how this dish made you and your brothers cringe.

“Beef casserole?”

“Nope,” you say, shaking your head. Still confident she won’t get it.

In the last year, you’ve had time to work on the house, trade in your trusty old Volvo, even master pour-over coffee to the tune of weighing the beans you’ve pummeled in your fancy burr grinder.

“Greek plate?”

“Good guess, wrong country,” you say, thinking uh oh, she’s getting closer.

“Scraped hamburger and peas?”

“Ah, a family favorite,” you add, remembering how your mom would prepare exactly such a meal along with a few boiled potatoes that roll around on the side. The apple resting not far from the tree with that guess.

The idea for this particular dish comes out of No Recipe Cooking, which you brought home from the Booksmith a couple of days ago. A book and premise for the future—keep it simple, and add pictures.

“You like the pictures,” your honey says when she tells you we have plenty of cook books, and one just like the one your just bought.

“I like the pictures, and the lack of recipes” you say. Yes, you like the pictures, but also the looseness of the way the ingredients are presented—in a list, in big type, with no prescribed amounts. Yes, you like the basics.

“Give up?” You ask.

“Yes,” comes the answer you’ve been waiting for. And with it, you quietly celebrate having stumped the very person whose been patient with your heating and boiling everyday since you started working from home four years ago, but especially since the two of you kicked off your new lives together a year ago this week.

“It’s meat loaf!” you say, realizing that with this recipe, there will be no turning the clocks back. No returning to the way it was. “I made meat loaf for the first time.”

“You’re kidding!?!” she says, laughing. “I love meat loaf. Did you make it with ketchup?”

“Yes, and with peas and potatoes!” but also with it, retirement, no recipe.