My first post  in my Substack was based on the premise that Sicc Palette is an exploration on Taste, who has it and who gets to have it. 

What I hadn’t taken into account is Taste being something akin to a muscle that must be exercised. Neglect the cognitive experience of pursuing Taste, and like exercise, you can only notice the deterioration once you realize you are suddenly rebuilding and not sustaining. 

My troubles started a few months ago. I decided something pretty revolutionary for myself; I would become a real tangible human in my own life. I would start dating. And in our modern hellscape, (not to be confused with the past hellscapes of human history), that means downloading apps. Modestly at first with one, and then suddenly juggling four different stations that held toxic entanglements at your will. 

In the beginning, everything and everyone felt promising. I felt like I had figured out modern dating with ease, smugly wondering why people felt it was a challenge to make anything work. 

Smugness is the first sign your Taste or lack of, is about to cost you dearly. In cooking, the effect of not paying attention with confidence almost always leads to an immediate result of failure. In dating, the consequences are far more subjective. 

And perhaps it was due to this subjectivity that my unconscious being decided to become a blunt instrument of truth. And the medium for the truth telling would be in betrayal in what I held the most confidence in, my cooking. 

The first evidence of my whole being rejecting a suitor came to fruition due to a slight sleazy but incredibly suave basketball coach. We hit it off immediately, we could talk for hours on the phone, I couldn’t believe how simple and easy finding someone could be. Never mind he was a self proclaimed “60 percent fuckboi” or that when we did finally meet, he made me watch at a bar the full 7 minute and 11 second video of “We Are The World” to justify his love of Huey Lewis, (with a riveting soliloquy of his review of the documentary of the making of “We Are The World”). I was imprisoned by my own optimism that these were fun quirks, not a symptom of a deeply basic bore. I continued to hear red flag after red flag, including that “so and so comic shouldn’t have been canceled” and his penchant for having affairs with married women. I was too far into my own hubris that my first instincts were correct, that all people come with flaws. 

And so we found ourselves at my kitchen, he was hungry and I decided I could make him something extraordinary. I decided I’d make a tamarind beef noodle dish. I got busy chopping, sizzling, adding far too much spice and fish sauce for his Panhandle sensibilities and served a dish that may or may not have been slightly burnt in my cavalier methodology. I plated it proudly and he looked terrified. He coughed and panicked his way into the clean plate club. I could tell he hated it. He admitted there was something bitter, which I blamed on the fish sauce, knowing he wouldn’t know the culprit was my clumsy hand, typically deft, had erred on the side of deeply burnt instead of skillfully charred. My hands, my cooking vessels, that night protected me from furthering things along with the charming Mr. Wrong. 

It shook me the next day, not the date, but the dish. I hadn’t made anything close to bad in years. I didn’t even think about cooking with my full attention in years and chalked it up to a once in a lifetime fluke. 

A couple weeks later, I was on another date. This man was a man who would excitedly tell you exactly how much of a feminist he was. A Vermont tech transplant met me at a South Austin bar. He immediately told me all about his family, his life, his miraculous comeuppance in making “a shitload of money”, without a lot of questions about me and my lack of “a shitload of money,” (fellas, ask questions!). There were loads of red flags, including obnoxious behavior to bartenders, a general lack of self awareness for other people, but he’s a feminist and isn’t afraid to say it over and over! So I thought this could be the start of something. A few nights later, after having a terrific breakthrough and more than enough Mezcal shots with a collaborative partner, I was feeling on top of the world. The night ended with him picking me up, me excitedly telling him about my new project, and him exclaiming he was hungry. And of course, I had the simple solution of making him something extraordinary in his kitchen. Now this was equal parts the ingredients and my fault for what was to happen next. 

There were enough and altogether not enough ingredients to make a sound sandwich. But in fifteen minutes I had taken almost every ingredient I could find viable in his pantry to create something sandwich-esque. After assembling something, it was off to grill the monstrosity. And in my jubilee of self worth, and Mezcal fueled handiwork, I burnt the shit out of that sandwich. Sheepishly I  presented my disaster on a plate. And he fucking lost it. Angered by a burnt sandwich, and channeling men of the 1950’s before him, he let me know exactly what kind of woman I was. Where did the feminist go? Perhaps hanger was too forceful an emotion for him, and even though I could always make another terrible yet less burnt sandwich, he was past any pragmatic solution. I was selfish, I was unaware, and moreover, I was happy and chatty about something that had nothing to do with him. 

Needless to say, that was the end of what a Progressive Pairing that might have been. The next day, I couldn’t believe I had burnt another dish. A sandwich, no less. How was I suddenly inept at my life’s work? 

And then after a couple weeks of analyzing and over analyzing my past almost dalliances, I thought about the lack of care and humility I had with those dishes. I thought about the lack of care of myself with those men having written out the words to describe them; I realized I would laugh at the person trying to make it work with either of them. To me, it felt as if I needed to reconfigure and start fresh at the idea that Taste is something you either have or you don’t. Taste like talent can be innate, but left unattended, without care, it can be dulled and replaced by a mix of pride and desperation. 

I burnt some Dal, (bad and burnt things happen in threes), and then I just stopped. I started cooking again with care, with a conscientious thought process. The other day I cooked a perfectly roasted chicken, and the date wasn’t that bad either. 

Happy Valentine’s Day to literally everyone: single, situationshipped up, partnered, embattled and/or otherwise. I believe love finds us all, but I really believe if Taste is a daily practice, then the quality of what we love might just be worth it. 

This week:

And if you’re in Austin, TX this week, and need a Valentine’s Day one stop shop solution for wine, cheese and the next collaborative effort between myself and Austin Kuih Co.

Click here to preorder!

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