When I was younger and living on my own, I loved to feed people. It began after dating an apprentice chef for a while.
His love to cook was catching and after we stopped dating I continued to learn and cook and invite people over to test my food.
Early on in the piece I had a guy friend. We had been friends forever. I would invite him over to eat ( one of his favourite past times ).
We had never dated, I don't think we knew where we were going at that point in time and we both accepted the fact that friends are much more reliable and fun than being interested in each other.
One afternoon I invited him over to try some pasta.
It had pesto and potatoes and beautiful thick pappardelle mixed in with garlic.
Unfortunately, instead of putting the right amount of garlic in, I had doubled the garlic needed.
It was obvious that the pasta was destined to fail once I realised what had happened.
He insisted on trying it anyway, and in what others would see as gentlemanly- ate it anyway. Insisting it was good.
The only thing was, I knew it wasn't.
And right then I knew - over some extremely garlicky pasta, that I wasn't ever going to marry someone who couldn't be truly honest. It annoyed me that I couldn't trust him to be constructively critical ( he was a very honest person, I'm not saying he wasn't) I just didn't want anyone to insist I was perfect or what I made was prefect because .. well.. we all know I'm not.
Which is strange because I coin myself as a romanticist. And that is a very realist perception.
When I met Hunna. I fell in loke almost immediately, I fell in loke because of his good looks ( haha ) charm, and genuine concern for me. But I fell hard in love with him because of his honesty. But the right honest. Not the rude, condescending honest. The well balanced honest. The improving honest.
I remember cooking for him, this time the pasta dish was a spaghetti with thin lemon sauce, pine nuts, chives and other yummy light summery ingredients.
At the time I was very use to eating mainly vegetarian meals to keep the shopping bill down.
He had come from his Mothers house, where scottish traditions of meaty meat and veg with gravy and bread reign supreme.
I loved the dish, I thought it was light and zesty.. But it needed more sauce. It was a little dry.
Hunna ate his dinner up and when I asked him what he thought his reply was honest, considerate, constructive and beautifully formed.
He said he recognised the dish was yummy and that he could see other people would really enjoy it. He said it definitely needed more sauce but in the end, his personal taste meant he just didn't like it that much.
A few weeks ago, we sat in our favourite cafe in 3056 and each ordered a sandwich.
Menu: Miss Marmalade |
He had #1 ( full of meat and cheese ) and I had number #2 ( packed with delicious flavour ).
When we go out, we each order something and share half with the other.
We each ate half our sandwiches and handed the other half to each other.
I took a few bites out of my new sandwich and he took a few out of his new sandwich and without saying anything we swapped back.
Hunna said " It's a delicious sandwich I can see why you like it, it's very you"
And I said " It would be good for you because you love meat"
I love that we agree on almost everything. But I also love that when we disagree on things some times; we can both be honest. I relish our different opinions. Because we can always talk constructively about stuff and not feel offended if its not what the other person thinks.
And its good for Hunna because if he lied and told me something I made was tasty I'd probably make it for him again!
Hunna has taught me that honesty is the best policy, when delivered with tact and thoughtful consideration.
He has taught me, the way you package something is just as important and what you are trying to give.
*although I may not always get the tact right, hey Collette?
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