The night before Election day, I had a dream—a premonition, in hindsight—about Trump winning the election, so on election night I went to bed early, determined not to react to the incoming results until I knew for sure. I woke up at 2:30am, confirmed who had won, then lay sleepless for the rest of the night. So the next day I was a bit of a wreck. I had to do something. Some people cried, some protested, some signed petitions. I donated to the NYTimes Neediest Cases fund. Then I made soup and a cathartic “pussy grabs back” playlist on Spotify. Music and cooking are my comforts.  

The soup was very loosely based on Ash Reshteh, a Persian bean and herb soup that I’d made when I consulted at Purple Carrot. I didn’t remember the details, or even all the ingredients, and didn’t want to look up any recipes, to avoid the lure of the news coverage I’d already pored over all night. So I quick-soaked some white beans and winged it.

The short version of this story is that the soup was totally mediocre. I made typical-to-me mistakes. I added too much spinach because I hate having half a bag of anything in my fridge, so it tasted minerally and too lean. I skimped on ingredients: I skipped the lentils and the pasta, I didn’t have dried mint. And I was lazy. I went to the trouble of frying onions to top each bowl, but then just mixed it into the pot instead—instead of a crispy, savory, special topping, I had limp little onion-worms. Since it still took some effort, including photographing the steps for this old blog, I wanted it to be good, but instead I had 3 quarts of meh. As Trump’s campaign not-so-graciously alluded to in their music choice immediately following the President-elect’s acceptance speech, you can’t always get what you want. 

Like in life, sometimes results are shitty. At least in cooking, there's a good lesson here: you can’t let a flop stop you from trying out things and getting up the next day to make something else. As Picasso once said, “Creativity only comes from making mistakes.” Plus, many mistakes are still totally edible. With a few adjustments, my soup was just fine, and I was appreciative for a healthy, hot meal. When it comes to our country, I’m not sure what the overarching lesson is from the recent news, but feeling grateful—even for unremarkable things—helps me.

6 things to do when your cooking is mediocre:

• Add salt—I tend to undersalt, and that can make everything taste flat. Adding quite a bit of salt can often make it *almost* good.
• Wake it up with a squeeze of lemon or a dash of vinegar: A little brightness can go a long way.
• Top with Parmesan cheese: It’s amazing what it can do to a soup, vegetable, bean, or pasta/grain. If your oven is on, you can broil the top to get it browned and crunchy.
• Spice it up: If you add enough hot pepper flakes or hot sauce, then it might be all you taste. And maybe that isn’t a bad thing.
• Dollop in some yogurt (or sour cream, if that’s how your house rolls): This makes things taste a bit richer and more luxurious.
• Put half in the freezer (i.e., get rid of it, temporarily): In the future, there will be a time when you’ll have nothing to eat, and this mediocre thing will change from today’s shitball soup to that day's dinner- or lunchtime hero.