If there’s one piece of advice I’ve been given during the Quarter Life Crisis it’s ‘eat well and look after yourself’. Apparently, in an era of quinoa cravings and avocado addictions, there’s never been a better time to embrace the fun of a health food fad (that’s dairy and gluten free fun, obviously).
But behind the bright lights of Instagram filters and idealistic lifestyles, all helping us to achieve happier states of mind through culinary perfection, is – the reality of cooking; the ‘knowing it’s ready because the smoke alarm goes off’ or the ‘I put salt in the cake instead of sugar, again’.
My attempt at jumping on this bandwagon resulted in a cooking disaster that can only be described as a tomato soup saga.
My chefs (aka parents) had gone away for the week and in true Deliciously Ella style I decided to be a kitchen hero and make tomato soup in bulk. Having found a great recipe (student cookbook), I headed to the supermarket (feeling Kim Kardashian confident but definitely wearing a Dorito stained t-shirt).
“It will be so convenient, I’ll have much more time on my hands and a lovely homemade meal every day of the week” – said the voice in my head that should never be listened to, ever.
In hindsight, the 4kg of tomatoes (as the recipe stated) looked and felt like a lot of tomatoes in the basket. Even the checkout assistant said “wow that’s a lot of tomatoes”. But bulk tomato soup needs a lot of tomatoes, 4kg to be precise.
After getting home, chucking the tomato mound in a blender and sticking it on the hob, I quickly glanced over the recipe again only to discover it wasn’t 4kg of tomatoes at all – it was 1kg. Something had gone very wrong during my note taking process (the distraction of the cake tin and Deliciously Stella’s Instagram feed).
Not only had I bought four times as many tomatoes as I needed (four times!) the recipe on its own served EIGHT PEOPLE. This meant I’d made enough soup for – wait for it –
*cue dragged out dramatic pause*
32 PEOPLE!!!!!
The worst part about it was it tasted NOTHING LIKE SOUP. So, the rest of the week was spent force feeding my friends tomato based meals and wiping never ending tomato debris off the walls.
I’m all for moving to Shoreditch and opening up a yoga inspired Vegan Bistro but the health food hype suddenly feels very overrated.
Now if you don’t mind, I’m off to clean tomato juice stains off the window.
The Life Crisis 