On the Sidelines

Valentine’s Day is the worst. Or so I thought, until we started a new tradition with friends two years ago. . .

At least, we tried to start a tradition. So far, the day has not yet gone as planned. But we have high hopes for February 14, 2013.

Once, I spent a summer on a 50-foot sailboat with a dozen other people. We slept on hammocks beneath the stars and cooked meals out of canned chicken and instant rice in a galley that makes my small kitchen huge by comparison. Occasionally, we would trawl a fishing line behind us as we sailed, then fry up filets or roll sushi with our catch.

Keeping the yacht in shipshape was a 12-person job, and we rotated chores. Naturally, I preferred cooking duties to clean-up responsibilities. Problem was, so did a fellow “mate.” While the rest of our crew went off to scrub the head and relinquished the chopping and sautéing to the two of us, we found we weren’t great kitchen co-pilots. A summer’s worth of tension came to a head over salad dressing emulsification methods one night, and we barely spoke the whole next day. Yep, we gave each other the silent treatment on a 50-foot yacht. (Also note: we were 15.)

The point is, while I love sharing this space with you readers and my living room with friends who come by, I don’t usually want us all to collaborate on a single bowl of salad dressing. (On the other hand, if everyone wanted to make sandwiches and grain salads and roasted potatoes and honey-drizzled cake, I bet we’d have a really lovely potluck picnic in the park together. Eating together is the best.) Am I alone in my penchant for cooking alone though?

This is a vegetarian recipe for a simple side dish. But how little that sentence does to describe the taste of a crisp-tender sugar snap pea that has marinated, after cooking, in a sweet and tangy sauce made from sesame seeds and gotten better the more of the Japanese-inspired flavor it soaks up. This is a vegetarian recipe for a a simple side dish that you will want to make again and again, for a sauce you will want to mop up with rice or bread or whatever carb’s handy, or just pour into your mouth.

Roles have reversed around here. For more than two years, I had a flexible schedule. I worked on the book and the site from home, rode the subway at length for meetings and freelance gigs around town, and always had the ability to make myself a homemade breakfast and lunch, and to cook Alex and me an awesome dinner. And then I decided to throw myself into my writing, to see where being a journalist in realms beyond food could take me, and for the summer, I’ve been working as a reporter. That means I leave home early and get home late. At the same time, a project Alex was on at work that kept him glued to his computer into the wee hours has finally subsided, and he’s finally catching his breath just as I gear up to go.

It might appear in the transcript of my BGSK life that I’ve become a bit of a dinner party delinquent. This is partially, but not entirely true. I still try to have people over for a meal once a week, which is certainly down from the 2-3 night frequency that in part gave birth to this site, but by no means qualifies me as a bore (or so I keep telling myself).

The problem is, I have become a bit of a snooze when it comes to my menu. I’ve been cooking a lot of my tried and true (and …