Optimising in the kitchen | Bucket list

Greetings from the fledgling newsletter writer,

The first edition of Laila’s Newsletter was sent out 20 October 2021 to ten subscribers. Thank you for those of you who are still here one year on. I appreciate hearing from you. I look at that first edition and cringe… which should be a good sign. It means I’ve evolved. Thank you :)

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Optimising in the kitchen

My kitchen is my happy space. I enjoy trying new recipes and use new ingredients. I love browsing the kitchen appliances aisle in homeware shops. But I have a small kitchen. There’s only so much I can fit in the cupboards and my hallway pantry. Space requires me to be a mindful. 

I would get an appliance that I believe will increase joy in the kitchen. They need to meet at least one of two criteria: 

1. have more than one function (even if it’s not one intended) 

2. have a small storage footprint

It’s about optimal use.

Take a waffle maker. It doesn’t do anything else. It fails the first criteria, but it only takes a small space in the cupboard when it is stored upright. It earns a space in my cupboard.

I don’t have a microwave, and for a lot of people this is weird. They ask me with a smirk ‘Are you one of those worried about radiation on your food?’

Nope! It just takes too much kitchen real-estate. And all it does is heat food. I can do that on the stovetop.

Now let’s look at a crêpe maker. It takes a lot of space for storage so it fails at number 2, but it passes number 1 by far.

I use it to make so much more than just crêpes. I make its American cousin: pancakes. I can plug it in at the dining table, and cook at the table when friends are around so we can all have freshly made crêpes or pancakes together; instead of me cooking a stack in the kitchen and then taking them to the table, with the bottom of the stack turned cold. I also use it to make English Muffins, Roti Canai and Martabak Telor. In this week’s video, I show how this all looks like.

While I made this crêpe maker video, I had footage to make a shorts video for buttermilk pancakes. I made it as a looping video. It plays seamlessly. I’m learning from the food TikToks that I consume.

Bucket list

In the last three editions of Afterimage, Ako asks questions around what you would do if you knew you only had five days to live. She noticed that in the group of people she shared her answer with most of them said that they’d go and tick things off their bucket list.

It made me think about what a bucket list is. Usually it’s the things you want to do before you die. For most people it’s places they want to visit, experiences they want to have.

I have been thinking often about mortality, with Martin passing away in August and I’ll be reflecting on it for years to come. At the hospice, Martin had requested assisted dying (euthanasia). The notion of his limited time with us was real. It was ten days after that meeting with the end of life doctor from SCENZ (Support and Consultation for End of Life in New Zealand).

It occurred to me that just as you can’t take physical belongings with you when you die, you can’t take experiences with you either. Your experiences only matter to you when you are living. When you don’t know when you are going to die, it’s nice to have a list of things you’d like to experience. But if you know you are going to die in five (or ten) days, why focus on experiences for you? It’s not going to make a difference for you on the other side.

It would be different if the experience was shared. Because after you’re gone the other person would still have the memory of that shared experience with you.

In his book Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman writes

… the core challenge of managing our limited time isn't about how to get everything done - that's never going to happen - but how to decide most wisely what not to do, and how to feel at peace about not doing it.

So for a bucket list, I feel the need to be at peace with what I decide not to do, instead of chasing what I should do.

Corey Wilks PsyD framed it reflectively:

If this was the last week that I was alive, am I satisfied with how I spent my time?

I imagine if you are at peace with how you have spent your time, then for the remaining five days you would be at peace, and wouldn’t change anything.

Ako’s public answer to her own question is:

What I see when I imagine the last five days: I am spending time with my family and the people I love, resting, relaxing, and laughing over good meals.

My version is similar. I’d spend my waking hours with Jaime. And when she’s asleep, I’d be getting rid of my worldly belongings so that she doesn’t have to deal with it when I’m gone, a lesson I learnt after Martin’s passing.

What are your thoughts on bucket lists?

Your thoughts fuel mine.

Tell me what you're thinking about. Dreaming about. And what exactly you're doing about the thing you've been dreaming about.

Afterimage - Akiko Mega

See you next week!