Someone, Please Eat My Hasselback Potatoes

I am stupefied. I just took a tray of Hasselback potatoes out of the oven, and for what? Am I about to eat multiple baked potatoes in one sitting? I still need to finish the family-that-has-extended-family-living-with-them sized dish of bolognese that I made a week ago. It’s not my fault that it’s come to this. FoodNetwork.com told me to use six russet potatoes. What was I supposed to do, make one lonely Hasselback potato? Have you ever seen a single potato hasselbacked? Have you ever heard the phrase “Hasselback potato” in the singular? “Hasselback potato” has absolutely zero ring to it. What is one sixth of a third of a cup of chives? How would I measure such a quantity? I might as well give up on knowing how to cook now. I might as well just make one of those so-called “cuppe noodles,” or “gyeux donnes,” like all you classless swine who don’t stake their self worth on knowing their way around a Trader Joe’s. One day you will need to tell your husband you are “swinging by TJ’s to grab a red for Taylor’s dinner party,” and you will rue the day you didn’t bow down to this veritable Trader Joe’s Sommelier.

And baking is a whole other rabbit hole. I had the apparent nerve to find the ‘Great British Baking Show’ calming and imagine myself enjoying baking as a hobby. All I asked for were sweet, delicious foodstuffs that I could take simple satisfaction with having made myself. But instead, I stare into a bowl of pumpkin, butter, and egg, solemnly contemplating the fact that I only have two-thirds the sugar I need. Nobody told me baking would cause such pain. Nobody told me it would not just give me sore arms from whisking, but heartache as well. Mostly the whisking thing, though. Who invented the whisk? Just buy an electric one, stupid 19th-century bakers. Whatever, it’s done, and now I have to face the consequences. Do I think it’s a good idea to subsist on a diet of 80 percent pumpkin bread for three days? No. But a better question is: have I made enough pumpkin bread that has to be consumed by one person to deem self-control not worth it in this situation?

I keep imagining this scene of me as a 35 year-old, inviting my fellow 35 year-old friends to my home, where I live with my boyfriend of six years with whom I’ve gone to Spain and tried the most delightful croquetas at a charming tapas place there, to make some under-seasoned chicken that they have to tell me is delicious as we swirl around white wine that is the best of the Chardonnays we tasted in Napa and will lead to hangovers after two glasses. Is it asking too much to be a pompous adult who thinks he can cook and is surrounded by actual physical people to eat the food?