Three words came to mind when I flipped to this page: 

“out of season.” 

I love a good butternut squash soup, but not now. Here on the East Coast the snow has melted, gardens are being plotted, the air smells like growth, like percolation . . . like Spring itself (finally). I’ve had my fix of thick socks and heavy coats. I’m over and done with sweater weather, and if I wanted butternut squash — which I don’t, really — I don’t know that I’d even be able to find it at most of the markets out here.

It’s out of season. 

There’s nothing particularly complicated about this recipe in Sarah Thrush’s beautiful book, but there’s an interesting paradox at play with timing. Most people will tell you that a good soup is all about the simmer, about letting the magic happen in the cauldron over a long period of time.

“La cocina de olvidar” — forgetful cooking — is what my homestay family in Spain used to call it. Walk away and forget about whatever’s on the stove. Hand over that puffy chef’s hat to Time itself and Time will deepen the flavors with a slow cook. It’s all about the slow cook . . .

. . . except when you’re pressure canning.

Under pressure, time condenses and the transformation process speeds up. The complexities and the depth happen in 70 minutes instead of 700.

Inside the pot, pressurized steam holds the jars and their ingredients in a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit (or higher), which destroys the bacterial spores present in the food. Then, as the jars cool, the change in temperature creates a vacuum seal that prevents any new microorganisms from entering the space and spoiling the soup.

In a shorter amount of time you’ve rendered a soup with endurance, a soup that will stand the test of time.

But why?

To preserve is to protect or to save a thing, to make it last a long time; “to keep in existence or alive.” 

When Thrush found herself and her young family facing food scarcity, she turned to the wisdom of her mother and grandmother who had survived two World Wars and a Great Depression through maintaining their own gardens and jarring their own food. For Thrush, a reserve of soup put her in the empowered place of knowing that no matter what was going on in the world—she and her family would always have food.

My mind went the more “human” route when I page-flipped this week. I zeroed in on the “hurry up and wait” contradiction.

These hypothetical jars that got all sped up and endurance-boosted are now just getting . . . shelved? All that magic is just . . . sitting there? 

It’s a branch off the old inner-voice tree that says: I’ve done all the things, and for what? To sit here like the honey fermented “100-Year Garlic” on page 278? To watch an idea pickle on a shelf? To bloom in order to turn to seed all over again? It’s ready now. I’m ready now. Can we get on with it already? “I want what I want and I want it now.”

It can feel like this in the dating world (“I’m ready, but it’s a desert sandstorm out there with a billion particles whipping through the air and how am I ever going to see someone clearly enough through this?”). The timing of the environment can be all wrong.

Maybe in a longterm partnership, you’re the magic soup on the shelf and your partner is in a different season of life, and you’re starting to question shelf life itself (“Is there a point when all of this is just going to go bad?”) Two people can be dancing the same steps but listening to different songs in different rooms, or in the same room but dancing totally out of step.

It’s a timing thing and at times, timing can feel like an impossible thing to understand.

Sometimes things need to fall apart and completely break down before new pathways reveal themselves, or seasons need to transpire before the things you’re wanting are even fully accessible.

In the movie Back To The Future, there is a specific time when an electrical plug and electrical socket have to come together — and in order for that to happen, multiple people, multiple machines, the weather, the debris from the weather, all have to hit their beat. 

It’s easy to see the symphony of moving parts at play in a film where the director is giving you access to the whole shebang. In life, where our natural way of seeing is not through a bird’s eye perspective or through an eye that has the ability to cut to different scenes, it is not always easy to remember that there is a timing to all things — a timing for the soup in the jar, a timing for the person who’s reaching for the jar, a time when it’s all meant to come together.

The problem isn’t your timing. Sometimes it’s just the nature of living in a reality where there are always multiple timelines at play all at the same time.

So this week, I’ve got a simple hack that will help your brain navigate the debacle of feeling shelved, feeling out of season, or like the timing is all off.

It starts with a Universal Law . . .

In time, it will all come together better than you thought it ever could be.

Have a great week —

Love,

Brooke