The soup incident, or: how I accidentally made something good while having a breakdown

There are days when cooking feels like an act of self-care. You put on music, you chop things mindfully, you feel like a person who has their life together. This was not one of those days.

This was a day when I had been horizontal for six hours, had eaten nothing but a handful of crackers and some spite, and had just discovered that the tomatoes I'd bought with good intentions were starting to wrinkle in a way that felt personally accusatory.

I could not throw them away. This is a thing about me: I cannot throw away food that can still be saved. It feels like giving up. On the tomatoes. On myself. On the general project of being a functional adult who buys produce and then uses it.

So I halved them. I put them on a baking sheet. I found a head of garlic that was also looking a little sorry for itself. I drizzled olive oil over everything with the energy of someone who has given up caring about precision, which is to say: generously. I put it in the oven and went back to being horizontal.

An hour later my apartment smelled extraordinary. The tomatoes had collapsed and caramelized and the garlic had gone completely soft and sweet. I blended it with some stock I had in the freezer (future-me had been more functional than present-me, bless her), added cream because I found some, and ate it standing at the counter at 9pm.

It was the best soup I have ever made. I have made it approximately twenty times since. It is now my standard answer to the question 'what do you make when you have no energy?' The answer is: you roast the sad tomatoes. You let the oven do the work. You come back an hour later and something has been transformed.

I find this metaphor a little on the nose but I'm keeping it anyway.