In the past, I have been pretty rubbish about writing things down. To make myself feel better about this, I’ve often made the argument that it is better to just ‘live in the moment,’ to experience life as opposed to worrying about recording it. My cooking, especially, has always fallen firmly within this ‘experience’ philosophy – I don’t like to measure anything, or follow written recipes, instead I’ve tended to just make things up on the go…
Recently though, every time I pick up the phone to my Mum to re-confirm whether she puts parsley in her artichoke stuffing mix, or when, for the umpteenth time, I am combing the web to find a feasible-sounding béarnaise recipe (when all I’d really like to know is exactly how I did it last time), this question of record-keeping reappears and niggles me. You see, I’ve begun to wonder whether not having a recipe, actually ends up leading to less creativity, not more. If you know that the way back is home is well signposted, aren’t you more likely to be more adventurous and to go just a little further afield?
My poor record keeping does not start and end with food. Hard-drives full of travel photographs gather dust in lesser frequented cupboards, while photo albums that I always intend on filling, sit blank on the high-up bookshelves. Technophobic as I am, I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to break the habits of a lifetime you have to step firmly out of your comfort zone… so, here I am, blogging (!), (that is a word, right?).
This thinking coincides for me with a very physical shift in comfort zone. Recently, I moved from London (the centre of everything) to Doha (the capital of… well, Qatar). The local food culture here shares much with its Arabian neighbours, so there are beautiful fresh spices, baked flat breads, plentiful mezze, a zillion ways with lamb and rice, and the most wonderfully fat figs and dates. However, the minutia of restrictions that you experience daily living in an extremely conservative culture do not always encourage exploration – especially if you are a woman out of doors on your own. I am hoping that carrying a camera can help this situation a little – it’s true that pictures are not always welcome, but it has been my experience that sometimes, a camera can act as an icebreaker, it lets people know that you find them interesting, and who doesn’t love this for a bit of flattery… I am also hoping that the camera can act as a kind of encouragement for me to get out and explore a little more, and to learn as much as possible about this fascinating place before the winds of change signal that it is time for another move.
Just a short flight from Qatar and you have Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Northern Africa, Turkey, India, and Sri Lanka, to name a few, and none of which I had visited prior to moving here. It is definitely my hope to get around as many of these places as possible in the near future, to eat as much as possible while doing so, and try to remember to take some photos along the way…
So, in the past, it is true that I have been pretty rubbish at writing things down – but taking inspiration from the new and getting more creative with the old, I am hoping that all that’s about change…