Cooking for the broken hearted

Roughly four weeks ago, the man in my life (known henceforth as The Cinnamon Stick) confessed that he could not commit to me long-term, even after 12 months of what seemed like a pretty decent relationship.

For much of the conversation, I stabbed carrot sticks into Philadelphia Cheese adhering to my belief that vegetables can be a crutch in even the most emotionally taxing encounters.

Truth be told, my year with The Cinnamon Stick had not been kind to my waistline.  Sure, we both loved food, but neither of us were the kind to seek fine dining. My diet descended into a menu of pizza, pasta, crap vegetarian food (him not me), takeaway noodles, and amazing tubs of blood orange and dark chocolate ice-cream from Gelicious in Swan Street, Richmond.

The Cinnamon Stick did not know how to cook. In the final breaths of our liaison he acquired a $400 set of knives, a $300 pot and a one thousand-page vegetarian cookbook. But like his recent failed foray into car purchasing – which involved four months on the internet and joining the Peuguot-lovers’ club as an honorary member (some makes of car have been changed) – these props may have just been an intellectual proposition.

After the carrot sticks, I assure you there were tears, tissues and dog-like howling – even beta-Carotene does not heal all. How could he not want to be with such a sweet vanilla bean? But I resisted the vodka bottle, and started to plan how I could adjust to my new life alone on the vanilla bush.

All the time in the dairy case

Isn’t it funny that while giddy with love we rush around wishing we had more time, and that when suddenly ejected into a vacuum of endless me-minutes, we feel mortally terrified of how to fill that space?

Like the demon child of Steve Moneghetti and Martha Stewart, in that first weekend I cleaned the house, restocked my pantry, reorganized my wardrobe by item category, cooked all of my meals for the week, and went running, walking and swimming. What a perfect good-at-life-skills way to spend the hours and days when my brain didn’t function like that of a fully actualized adult.

The organising did start to creep my housemate out when I polished silver and began to make a spreadsheet listing all of my wardrobe contents. She refused to let me wash her dishes because she didn’t want to take advantage of me.

Plan your recovery

My boss gave me a slim little volume called How to get over your ex with a stab of the fork. It’s a truth universally recognized that feeding the hole in your face will temporarily ease the pain of forced separation, food = healing, etc. We Poles have known it for a thousand years.

I was a little inspired by an interview I’d fortuitously heard on Radio National a week before the break-up. It was with a woman called Penina Petersen, who has been making a motza with a book called Table Tucker, which teaches you how to cook multiple meals at once so that you can save time and spend it with your family. She has also created a system for calculating exact portions for each recipe, so that you don’t waste food and can avoid the mid-cook-up supermarket dash.

Power to Penina, but here’s a break-down of the Vanilla Bean’s much simpler break-up regimen:

• Start with an inventory of the pantry and fridge. Do you need more condiments, spices and staples like rice and pasta? Tissues?
• Hit the markets for fruit and veg (cheaper than Coles and the produce doesn’t look like a prop from Ikea). The supermarket yields all the dried-good essentials to restock the pantry, as well as meat to bung in the freezer, and an arsenal of canned tomatoes.
• Chop and freeze your herbs to add to any dishes in your repertoire at any time.
• Freeze a chicken with the words ‘BOILER’ on the bag and try to ignore the way its little legs point out of the freezer like a plea for liberation every time you reach for the ice-cream.
• Pick a day, generally Sunday or Monday night, and chop everything up, trawl your dog-eared recipe books, cook a few dishes, and then portion each meal into a separate meal container, preferably with your ready-made scoops of rice/pasta, meat and steamed veggies in place.
• Freeze a few portions for busier times.
• Now reheat and eat to your heart’s content for the rest of the week, knowing that after each afternoon cocktail hour you can return to your sparkling nest and your own TV dinner.

Snacking back to sanity

After the initial non-eating shock period, you may want to scoff anything that grows in the garden or has fur or feathers. Resist the urge to pork up. At the start of the week, chop up five carrots, an entire celery and two capsicums, and divide them into neat little freezer bags to pull out of the crisper when you pack your lunch in the morning. If this sounds like too much fibre, pack some low-fat Philly or humus to sweeten the ride.

Other great snacks include a little bag of nuts or a few tubs of natural yoghurt, which can be swirled with market-fresh mangos, strawberries and passionfruit. If you forgot to get the fruit, mix in a spoon of jam or apricot preserve for sweetness.

Feed your heart surgeons

Remember those people you used to spend lazy afternoons with drinking wine; the ones you didn’t shag; the ones who are now putting your heart back together? Cooking for others is one of the most pleasing results of break-up time at the grill. A naff as it is, doing nice things for others does give you the warm fuzzes. Bona fide heart surgeons get paid squillions of dollars per hour (approximately); your personal cardiac team should at least get a meal for their troubles.

Vanilla Bean, not has-been

Vanilla beans in the cake-making aisle of the supermarket do look a little like dried-up earthworms reposing in their plastic transparent wrappers.

I’m alone in the wrapper now; there is no cinnamon stick to share my packaging.

But whatever their external circumstances, vanilla beans are self-sufficient little gems tantalizing the nose with their soft aroma. I have a pantry full of wonderful people to cook for now. They are the other ingredients I can mix with to make the perfect dessert now that cinnamon is off the menu.