Anti-recipe Hippies & the worst Spaghetti I ever had
I used to live in a three person flat-share for years. I was close friends with a woman/house-mate for about three of those years. She was twenty six when we first met. I will call her Samantha.
She once had a Tinder first-date guy over. She was really hippie, he was even worse. He was coming over to cook for her, or actually for us three. It was her idea that I join them for food, we often all ate together in the shared kitchen. He was totally cool with us eating with the three of us, which was very nice of him.
In fact not only had the guy offered to cook for her and I, but he has also told her he was a very good cook! We were really hungry by time he showed up somewhat late, but thought, "Great, he is making spaghetti, that is always tasty and quick to make! Let's goooo! :)"
Then I sat in the kitchen chatting but also watching in mounting amazement and consternation as this guy literally took 55 minutes to cook extremely simple spaghetti with ready-made tomato sauce from a jar, and almost no other ingredients. He cooked the spaghetti for... 35 minutes. I know all this because I glanced at the clock once or twice. It looked and tasted HORRIFIC!
Samantha fully agreed on that, later. Not to his face of course. And that is saying a lot, she had pretty bad taste, or at least very low standards when it came to home-cooked meals. Come to think of it, maybe when it came to men too? Although I am fairly sure the whole night didn't work out for that guy either.
I had never seen spaghetti in that state before, and I have never seen it since. It still gives me the chills. Very thick, almost double the diameter of any other cooked spaghetti I've ever seen. Super soft and immediately-falls-apart mushy and slimy texture when chewed. Pale white, slightly transparent towards the outside. It really looked like worms and tasted about as good. Well, I am guessing,. I've never eaten worms.
https://youtu.be/0A80j2BuMaU?t=71
Tinder dude also hardly believed in salt or spices, added almost none of them to the spaghetti / boiling water nor to the sauce.
I would have literally rather have just drunk lots of water and gone to bed without dinner than finish eating that garbage meal. I really tried, I didn't want to be ungrateful nor impolite to someone that had cooked for me!
I chewed and swallowed about six mouthfuls, then I had to stop. He never noticed. The rest went in the bin later, while the guy was in the toilet. I made sure to cover it in the bin, just in case. I did thank him for cooking. I don't enjoy hurting people's feelings, especially when they are trying to do something nice for me.
He was a strange, sloooow-speaking, sluggish hippie, just really stoned on weed or else a bit weird. Not at all an asshole or bad guy as far as I could see! Looked and dressed quite a bit like the guy below from the meme, except not as many dreads:
A few weeks later, a different Tinder date came over, Samantha said to me:
"Hey, we're going to cook a meal and might take a whiiile, do you want to join us to eat after we finish cooking, or else do you need to use the kitchen...?"
I had learned from the previous time and was rather hungry already, so I right away offered to cook for everyone instead, figured it was my turn. Offered to just make more of the same pasta dish I was planning to make that day anyway, this one:
"Binging with Babish: Pasta Aglio e Olio from the movie Chef" ->
https://youtu.be/bJUiWdM__Qw?t=39
I had watched both the movie and Babish YouTube video and practised that quick, zesty and spicy pasta dish a few times. It is always delicious! Samantha had said so as well. I had made it for us both a few times before. Not difficult to make it quickly, at all. It has so few ingredients, 0 recipe is ever needed.
Samantha however replied:
"No, thank you, we have an idea, we want to cook something else and something totally new and to experiment, and we'd like to cook together, just the two of us. :)"
Okay, not a problem whatsoever! I get the romantic aspect of it. Happy to make myself scarce. But, not my zoo, not my monkeys, I didn't want to wait long nor risk a repeat of last time.
So I said:
"No, won't join you for dinner, but thank you! Could you please give me fifteen minutes? Literally fifteen, you can time me if you want, and then after that the whole kitchen is yours and I'll be out of your hair!"
Samantha was fine with that.
And that is what happened. I just boiled water in the electric water-cooker, then poured boiling water into a big pot with plenty of salt. Spaghetti will cook quickly that way since water is up to temperature faster than when only using a pot. In the meantime, one can just chop a few things, then mix it all vigorously and you're done!
I had it ready in the allotted time, since it was dinner time and I didn't want to hog the kitchen. While I cooked I also washed up the few things I used, including the big pot and skillet at the end. I knew they would need them, we had little beyond the basic IKEA three pot set. Then went to my room with my plate to watch something.
An hour and a half later, I walked into the kitchen to wash-up my plate. Samantha and her prospective paramour were just finishing their meal, which didn't look very appetising, not worm-spaghetti-bad, but not good. The kitchen was a war zone, with lots of washing up left to do, and Samantha looked down somewhat disappointed, at the leftover food she pushed around on her plate with her fork, rather than eat it. It wasn't a small amount.
She was like one of several home "cooks" (very often, but certainly not always vegans and hippies) who have told to me:
"Recipes? Ah no, I do not ever use those, it's soooo not fun, I like to be free and just experiment, hihi!"
Samantha and those three other no-recipe people (two guys, two gals) I am thinking of, even regularly tried to bake cakes, pies, bread, etc., without weighing anything or following any recipe.
Three of them are vegan as well, the other vegetarian. Which just makes it even a bit harder to bake and such if you do not know what you are doing and are always experimenting. Of course it is absolutely possible to do great vegan cooking and baking.
I have both made, and eaten plenty of great vegan pies and cakes others made. Even cheese-cakes (using blended silken tofu) or crusty pies, I truly loved all of it. I would be very surprised, if all those were made without any recipe and zero weighing. Particularly if it was the first time for the baker trying that specific combination of ingredients and type of baking.
It is no wonder those four person's zero-recipe food often turned out okay-ish to disgusting and borderline inedible. Naturally, once in a while it is just fine or even nice, "a broken clock..." Way more often particularly their baking was dry and a little bit akin to a brick or sometimes soggy, sticky and super-dense in not a good way. I do not get it. At all. Using a recipe and the exact same ingredients and tiny bit more care and time -on the order of a minute or two- would always yield good to great results.
I always thought “never, ever using a recipe” is rather dumb. Not using one for something simple or anything that almost can not go wrong, sure! Or for something that you've made before, of course! That is all obviously more than fine and I do it all the time. Absolutism in any direction is often not going to truly work out. I certainly like experimenting too at times, you can sometimes hit upon something great and unexpected that way.
I only use recipes about a third of the time I cook. Basically, I will get a recipe when I am out of my depth. And usually I will also use a recipe the first one to three times when I am making the same, somewhat complex dish that is otherwise totally new-to-me. After those few times, I generally never use the recipe again or else very minimally, because by that time I have mostly learned what works and I can recall what (not) to do with that dish or some a bit like it.
Except when baking of course, then I always very briefly look up what I need to weigh out.
I absolutely do not consider myself a good cook. I know a number of good cooks, both home-cooks and a few professional chefs. I am nowhere near their level, I am just a competent cook, nothing more and nothing special. And almost every time I get a tiny bit better, it is because I saw something on YouTube or because I tried a new recipe. I also never expect anything anywhere near perfection nor anything elaborate whenever anyone cooks for me. Happy and grateful for almost any meal anyone shares with me, cheese sandwiches and oatmeal are (also) some of my favourite meals and it makes my morning when my gf makes them for us both.
But those hippie people literally never want to use any recipes, including for any new or complex or baked dish. And then they always act so surprised or sad that their food often turned out mediocre and that the food of other people -sometimes the exact same dish- was so much better...?
I don't feel bad writing this anonymized post, I haven't spoken to Samantha in more than seven years, primarily because she borderline abandoned her two cats twice, for about five months each time. The cats, our immediate neighbours and the other flat-sharing persons, including myself, suffered quite a lot because of that. I thought it abusive. I still do. If you want to read a bit more about that story, more about similar experiences with other people:
https://anon0.bearblog.dev/never-trust-a-crystal-hippie/
The lesson I learned from all the above: people who are self-involved and are willfully careless over and over again, about silly things that are simple to solve, often are careless in other (actually important and bigger) aspects of their life as well. This is certainly not always the case, but in my experience there is a very significant amount of correlation there.
Some people have a few blind spots and it is not a big issue or a character flaw at all! I am certain I have plenty of blind spots and repeatedly do silly things I should not, things I could -and likely should- easily avoid.
All that notwithstanding, more than a few people you will run into in life will just be generally, and quite consistently, careless and self-involved and they will burn you.
I used to really like Samantha, we were good platonic friends. We had tons of fun, hung out and did things almost every day, took two great vacations together, one of them to Christiana. Yet when I realized the above, I was done. I knew I could never trust her.
It was never about tasty food or recipes etc. I could and did make my own food. Or, always had the option to order. Or pick up something great seventy five meters from our flat-share, decent Döner, very tasty Chinese place and a really affordable Italian place and more were two minutes walking away. Not a problem at all. I may not understand or want to follow their example, but it is not for me to dictate what others do with their food and cooking choices!
It was about trust. I eventually realized I could not trust her, not really and that included lacking trust in things that did matter. In the end I had figured out that she was often going to do what felt and was best for her, and other people and their needs be damned. Of course I tried a few times to talk to her about her cats and other actually important things. She never got it. Didn't want to. Didn't care.
There was also her repeated carelessness with keys, our apartment's front door and windows despite our ground floor apartment being in a known rough neighborhood... We got burgled twice. Or the time when she left incense burning without anything underneath it, just planted it into wood and almost set a wooden table (she created a big, smouldering burn mark) and potentially our home- on fire.
She never learned. But those are stories for another blog post, someday, maybe.
If I can not trust you or feel safe around you, I can not remain house-mates or really even remain friends with you. I'd rather let you go, instead of us having the same conflicts more than a few times, when I fully know the core issue will never be resolved. We both just lose. It is unkind even to the person that is being careless.
Last I heard some years ago, she had moved back home North, a few countries over. I hope she is well.
Edit: 25-02. She has a very distinctive full name, I had not searched her name online for years, but decided to last night. From all I saw online, I do not get the impression she has changed much at all in the intervening seven years. Damn. I truly had hoped and wished for more and better for her. Perhaps the online thing does not tell an accurate story! Here's hoping.