A Friendly Humiliation / Nutella & Pretzel Donuts

“There has been much tragedy in my life; at least half of it actually happened.” Mark Twain

My feelings recently took a tumble from a relatively new person in my life, who I thought was becoming a friend. They weren’t responding to texts and our earlier agreement to meet up had come and gone with a lonely whimper.

My self esteem promptly gives me a hard time

you’re such a loser 

you were a total idiot that time over coffee 

you pushed too hard

My ego jumps into resentment

they should have texted, even to decline 

how dare they not realise I’m lovely

I would never do that

Except I do. I do it all the time to people I like. I get caught up in my life, my cares and concerns and I let people down regularly. Most of the time I don’t even realise I’ve done it until I get a vague sense of guilt when I scroll past their name on my phone. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s that I have so little time to do all the things in my life, I forget that others are looking forward to seeing me. That I matter to more than the necessary activities of my day.

This realisation wasn’t enough to move through the uncomfortable feelings though, so I spent some contemplation time on where my thinking had fallen in a ditch.

My first thought was that I don’t know them well. I don’t know if they’re struggling with too many things on their plate, have a vague sense of depression, they’ve needed a new pair of shoes for months and really hate shopping, or that they have a ferocious amount of people in their life already and I’m just one of a thousand new acquaintances clamouring for their affection.

The second thought (which really could have been my first, if my thinking wasn’t so self absorbed) and most likely, is that they’re not thinking about me at all. I’m sitting here wondering if them not responding to texts means something, and the whole time they’re thinking, “I’d bloody love England to win the World Cup this year”.

But there is another awful possibility… 

I may be a slight stalker of someone who doesn’t really like me.

My entire torso curls in on itself as I type those words. There’s a muttering at the edge of my consciousness, like my ego’s about to rebel and my esteem’s ready to throw in the towel. But it’s the possibility that’s been playing over and over in the back of my mind, a phrase on repeat and I can’t find the off-switch. I’ve written before that I have a lot of people in my life and I’m lucky that I generally like people; but it’s incredibly rare I meet someone and can feel the click through my subconscious as it rears up to say, “Well, don’t you just rock enormously?”

On the few times it’s happened before, the other person seems to have felt the same click and are now lifelong friends, so it didn’t occur to me that this time I may have been the only one to feel it. I merrily swanned into this person’s life, planning our future awesomeness together, and the whole time they may have been increasingly thinking, “Umm. No, scary weird person. Just no.”

There’s no verbal way to explain how this feels. It sits somewhere between ick and gibbering humiliation. My subconscious offers up all the ways they’re clearly cooler, smarter and just better than me and then my conscious mind takes over and asks me what the hell I thought I was doing? A simpler way of describing my response to this line of thinking is a fervently whispered,  “Run. Run now. Run fast and far. Set up a new life deep in the woods where you never have to see them ever again.”

Once upon a time I would’ve done just that. Not literally, however tempting, but I would’ve immediately cut them from my life as the instinct for self-preservation became greater than my instinct to live lightly in the world. I may even have tried to show them how little they meant to me, in a misguided attempt to reassert my bruised ego. Which would, of course, merely add guilt to the hurt.

Today, I try to do things differently. I acknowledge the hurt and the particularly obsessive nature of my thinking, then I speak with someone I trust who can help me to laugh. I finally take some time to be still and focus my consciousness on the place I hurt, to allow the feelings without gripping onto them as reality. I treat the hurt as I would treat my child’s, as real but transitory. The feelings are not the story, they’re just the feelings.

Finally, I ask my better self to help me be kind, patient and tolerant of their humanity and of mine. That whatever the truth turns out to be, I can put my ego to one side and remain right sized. And finally, I back off from the friendship (quite quickly because, let’s be honest: ouch) and trust that more will be revealed in time.

Then I eat donuts. And maybe chocolate. But mostly donuts.

This ‘fix feelings with food’ recipe is a homage to an excellent local bakery, Candied, who offer this donut combination on a regular basis. For those not lucky enough to have their own Candied around the corner, the recipe is as close as I can get to their version.

Enjoy.

Donuts (adapted from www.taste.com.au) – makes 12

• 250ml milk
• 500g plain (all purpose) flour
• 60g caster (superfine) sugar
• 3 teaspoons dried yeast
• ¼ tsp salt
• 100g shortening, softened (known as Crisco in USA, Trex in UK and Copha in Australia. Failing those, replace with unsalted butter)
• 3 egg yolks
• Canola oil, for frying

Nutella & Pretzel Glaze

• 80g Nutella
• 30g thick (heavy) cream
• 25g pretzels, roughly crushed + 12 for decoration

Heat the milk until it starts to boil, then switch off the heat and leave it to cool

Combine flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a bowl

Make a well in the mix and stir in the cooled milk, shortening and egg until a sticky dough starts to come together

Knead on a well-floured surface until smooth

Place in a greased bowl, cover and leave to rise for about 90 minutes (the dough needs to at least double in size)

Punch down the dough to take out the air

Knead on a lightly floured surface again until smooth

Roll out dough until 1cm thick (flour your rolling pin, much easier!)

Either use a donut cutter or an 8cm round cutter to cut out discs and a 3.5cm round cutter to cut out the centres. Re-roll the dough to be able to make all 12 donuts

Place the donuts on a lined tray and set aside for another 30 minutes to rise again

Heat your oil to 180°C/350˚F (use a thermometer, the temperature matters) in a large, deep frying pan – I test the oil temperature using scraps left over from the dough

Fry each doughnut for 30-40 seconds each side or until puffed and golden and leave on a wire rack to cool

Very gently heat the Nutella and cream in a small pan, stirring constantly, until combined

Take off the heat and carefully stir in the crushed pretzels

Dip each donut in the Nutella glaze and place back on the wire rack

Complete your Nutella and Pretzel Donut look by adding a single, whole pretzel to each one

Eat all twelve. Go on. I dare you.

Unnecessary Humble Pie / Chicken & Leek Pie

A few weeks ago, I wrote a recipe for roasted garlic and pumpkin pie. In the comments, a woman whose blog I really enjoy wrote that she would like to make the pie, once she’d converted the ingredients from grams to cups.

I’m not sure what happened to me then. I definitely felt excitement that a blogger I admired was commenting, I’m aware that my ego’s been feeling a little fragile recently with some meditative work I’ve been doing, and my attention had wandered that day from keeping me mindfully right sized. But whatever the reason, I responded with a lengthy and unasked for piece of advice about why she should never use cups in her baking because grams were so clearly superior.

I had evidence (I’m pretty practised at backing up inappropriate behaviour with all sorts of good scientific proof — just read my piece on fundamentalism), and was wily enough to riff off a small joke at my own expense at the end. Like that would somehow undo the damage I was causing with my words.

Even before I hit the ‘respond’ button I had a feeling that this action wasn’t okay, that I should pause in my doubt and take some time. But, in my distracted state, the voice that usually stays my hand wasn’t there and I clicked my potential for humility away.

I initially wrote this piece humorously, and invented a conversation with a friend to try to make me seem more amused by the whole scenario than I actually am. But the reality, if I’m not mindfully careful, is that I stew over situations like these, where I could have chosen to step on the side of good living but instead I tumble into who I don’t want to be. My thinking can rapidly transgress far beyond the story that’s actually happening and tell me I’m no good, unloveable, idiotic. Everything becomes additional evidence of my ineptitude to survive in contact with others, and therefore proof that I should avoid everyone forever.

Once upon a time, I would have welcomed these thoughts as some sort of therapeutic exercise. This one small, foolish act could have been the beginning of a self-absorbed self-loathing enterprise designed purely to think about myself more, while deludedly telling myself that it wasn’t self obsession if I was thinking about being in the wrong. That I was figuring it out so I can be perfectly behaved next time, and that it was necessary, even essential.

Now, after ten years of walking a kinder, less dishonest path, I fully recognise that any extended thinking with me playing a role is not only boring self obsession, it’s also incredibly dangerous for a mind like mine that, if I’m not paying enough attention, finds deep bogs of obsessive thinking to wallow in.

So, with trusted friends, I look at the part of my thinking that’s led me back into the labyrinth of unhelpful reasoning and try to separate out the delusions of what I think I see, from the reality of the situation.

And then, once I think I’ve seen the reality – in this case that I wasn’t having my best day and was trying to stroke my own ego with total disregard for someone else – I see what I can do about mending any harm I believe I’ve caused, whether they remember, or care about the harm.

In this way, I stay free from the snatching snares of self, and have a chance at living peacefully for one more day.

On this occasion I deleted the comment, then sent my fellow blogger a private apology by email. A day later she responded, very kindly, saying that she had no idea what I was talking about as she’d never read my comment… I laughed for quite a long time at the realisation that even once I’ve done the work to get right sized, reality can still be just a distant dream in my fantasy-filled mind.

In the same vein, I spent years avoiding making pastry as it seemed too complex, too challenging and just too much hard work. Finally, I willed myself into making a pie very similar to the one I’m sharing with you today — which I’ve adapted from The River Cottage Everyday Cookbook — and was blown away by the ease at which it came together and turned into delicious, old fashioned flakiness. In this recipe it’s coupled with a classic chicken and leek filling. Freezable and easy to reheat in the microwave if, like me, you like that sort of easy cooking. You can fill these with almost anything savoury or sweet though, as long as there isn’t too much liquid.

Enjoy.

Pastry

• 300g plain (all purpose) flour
• a pinch of sea salt
• 150g chilled unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
• water and ice, in a glass

Filling

• 30g butter
• 500g leeks (about 2-3 leeks), trimmed and finely sliced
• 1 tsp roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
• 150ml double (heavy) cream
• 1 tsp seeded mustard
• 400g chicken, cut into pieces
• 1 tbl sp olive oil
• salt & pepper for seasoning
• 1 egg, beaten

For the pastry

Mix the flour and salt together in a mixing bowl before adding the butter and tossing until the pieces are covered with flour

Add enough iced water to form the mixture into a fairly firm dough (between 8 and 10 tablespoons)

Shape the dough into a rectangle with your hands, dust a surface and a rolling pin with flour, then roll the pastry away from you until the rectangle’s about 1cm thick

Imagining that your pastry is divided into three, fold the far end of the third towards you to cover the middle third before folding the third closest to you over the top

You will now have a rectangle with three layers of equal size

Quarter turn the pastry and repeat the rolling, folding and turning process 5 more times

Wrap the pastry in cling film and rest in the fridge for at least ½ hour

For the filling

Melt the butter in a frying pan before adding the leeks and parsley

Cook gently for 5-10 minutes until the leeks are very tender

Stir in the cream and continue cooking gently for about 5 minutes, until the mixture has reduced and thickened

Stir in the seeded mustard, and some salt and pepper, before leaving to cool

Turn up to medium high heat, add the olive oil to the same pan and, once warmed, add the chicken

Cook for a few minutes until the chicken is nicely golden coloured

For the pie

Lightly flour a working surface before rolling out the pastry to 3mm thick

Use a plate or tin (I use a loose-bottomed cake tin) to cut out four 20cm circles, I need to re-roll for my fourth circle

Spoon the filling on one half of the pastry circles and pile on the chicken

Brush the edges with a little water before folding over the other half of the pastry

Crimp the edges to completely seal

Place some baking paper onto a baking tray and the pies onto the paper

Brush the egg over the tops of the pasties before baking for about 25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown

Eat hot or cold