I was on the phone the other day with
my daughter Maya, who lives in Los Angeles. We talk almost every day, and on this day, when I called, she was shopping at a Whole Foods store.
I love to cook, and so does Maya, and we have spent many hours in the kitchen together creating great meals. One of the meals we have made together many times is Braised Chicken With Lemon and Olives from the New York Times cooking section. It is off-the-charts sensational, especially if you plop the chicken thighs, olives, lemons, and juice over a nice bed of bucatini noodles.
We have always used Castelvetrano olives in the dish, so Maya was wandering around the store looking for Castelvetrano olives. Just to be clear, the recipe calls for "1 cup of a mixture of black and green olives."
We had abandoned this nebulous and fuzzy recommendation in favor of the Castelvetrano olives since they are so meaty and rich. Plus, they have a tremendously thick, firm texture that holds up to being baked, so when you are loading up a fork full of bucatini with a bite of chicken, a chunk of gently caramelized lemon, and a Castelvetrano olive, you are forced to slow down the juggernaut of shoveling such good food into your mouth by having to maneuver the firm green oval delight inside your oral cavity as you chew off the sides until only the pit is left (I have to admit I like this last sentenceđŸ˜„).
Once the Castelvetrano olive has been denuded, you then spit the pit out onto the plate, unless, of course, my wife Lea is watching, in which case I discreetly pop the pit out silently (here it is crucial not to make any overt oral noises) onto my fork and place it with English-like manners on the side of the plate.
Here is the thing about Maya, and frankly, all of us. She is a bundle of paradoxes. One of the paradoxical things about her is that she will wake up at 4:30, drive 45 minutes in the dark to some mountain somewhere on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and run up and down a rocky, uneven dirt trail in the dark for 1-2 hours without any hesitation.
But exert extra effort at the grocery store to find Castelvetrano olives? No way. Just too much effort. Seriously, I am not exaggerating. She is like this with all sorts of little efforts. Maybe this is a great strategy to conserve her energy for more important things to her?
But in the case of the Castelvetrano olive search, it is clearly (as I hope you realize by now) worth the effort. I would take it a step further: the effort is critical if you are going to make this dish. Compromise with some mushy pitted black olives and then bake them to death.....well, you get the picture.
So, back to the phone call.
Maya: "They don't have Castelvetrano olives.
Me: "Are you sure?"
Maya: "Yes, there are none at the olive bar."
Me: "Sometimes they have them in a cooler in a package."
Maya: silence as I hang on while listening to the clanking of her cart. I know from extensive experience with her (and all 6 of my kids) that my persistent nature has just led her to check out of the conversation.
Maya: "they're not here; I don't think they have them. They have some other green ones that would work fine."
Me: "Which Whole Foods are you at?"
Now she is on red alert - she knows what I am up to.
Maya: "I'm not telling you?"
Me: "Why?"
Maya: "Because I know you will call them."
Me: "Tell me which one you are at!"
Maya: "No."
Me: "Ok, then please, I am begging you, just go ask someone."
Maya: "Maybe, if I can find someone."
Me: "I can't handle the idea of you making this without Castelvetrano olives so I need to get off the phone now."
Maya (laughing since she knows full well she has pushed me to the brink - they all 6 of them do this to mess with me when I get all wrapped up in how I think something should be) - "Ok, love you!"
I thought I had lost the battle.
So why am I telling you all this?
The moment she realized I was going to call the store, I realized I was getting amped up and that perhaps it was time to back off.
This is because, thanks to the Waking Up app, I have developed my metacognition skill, which gives me more awareness of when I am getting amped up and in a mental trance about something that I deem important or critical. That mental awareness allows me to break the trance and then decide whether to continue to push (and risk conflict) or fold and LET IT GO. Now, I have a better sense of when I am teetering on the precipice of pushing too hard, which has been an issue for me for a long time.
As I wrote about here, it is also a good reminder to be aware of how our voice sounds and how it can impact those hearing us.
The next day, I asked Maya how the chicken turned out. "It was fantastic, thanks to the Castelvetrano olives I found at Whole Foods."
