Life's Little Pleasures

As someone I don't know anymore wisely once said, "Life is made up of little pleasures." I used to add, "Small victories", and it became my nickname for a time, and I liked it.

I'd conjured it out of irony. Small victories. They are small, no? Une petit peu. Little. Tiny. Miniscule. Nearly insignificant.

But then steps in the word victories. It is a claim, no matter how small, of a battle won. It is something to be proud of. No matter how tiny? Or does it not matter no matter how victorious, because it is so small?

How someone came to view the nickname became a measure of his optimism. It was like a litmus test of faith almost - a glass, half empty? Half full?

I'd like to think I was being ironic. An optimist embarassed to admit to hope. But some people I'd met had flat out gone for small victories like this. And I'd honestly like to say that I thank them, and admire them for their honesty in living.

At the end of the day, when the sun sets and you lock the door and throw away the key - the sum of life is truly made up of little pleasures. We'd hardly remember anything else anyway.

My little pleasures of the day:

1. I rediscovered my oven. Ironically, I'd always prepped myself up with the mindset that my oven had too many bells and whistles. I'd somehow thought there were 4 timer settings (there are only 2) and 4 dials with 4 cooking types (and I could only think of 2: grill and oven - what else is there?!).
   
   It wasn't until today when I studiously read the manual (for the first time, I might add) and approached the oven with a get-to-know-you-bow usually reserved only for hippogriffs, that I realised it wasn't quite as unapproachable as I'd thought it was. It takes approx. 10 minutes top to pre-heat the oven (no setting) and there are only two main oven settings - the grill and the oven - to worry about. The rest were bells and whistles.
   
   One dial was for the light (imagine that! Were the makers of the oven thinking that I'd wanted mood lighting for my chicken?!) and another was for defrosting (probably a good idea in freezer to oven emergencies).
   
   I'd also found out that there were actually only two timers relevant to the course of baking. One, the useful one, which turns off the oven after the stated time, and the other which simply beeps and does nothing except act as a useful reminder to come to the oven and gape at the hopefully not burning dish.
   
   This is helpful. After some time of respectful silence at the oven's glowing door, I think I might actually come to be able to use this thing with some measure of ability. I'd better. I've been scouring baking recipes online already.
   
2. Heston Blumenthal was in search of perfection on TV today. He made what was probably the truly most perfect but more tedious and time consuming bangers and mash and treacle tart with ice cream. Honestly, one thinks, how much effort could possibly go into bangers and mash?
   
   But no! The god of cooking himself blew my mind away by making his own bangers - including, and not limited to, soaking well toasted bread in water before using the water for the bangers, just so that a nice, roasty smell would get into the sausages, and using a gas thingymajig found at the University of Reading to deconstruct golden syrup for treacle tart.
   
   I have to say this, the ice cream took it a step further in the pursuit of gastronomic happiness. He went to Guernsey, milked a cow, and using liquid nitrogen, made ice cream (straight from cow to ice cream) in under 4 minutes. "I never leave home without it. Not picnics, not barbeques, not holidays." says he of his liquid nitro kit. I'd say, if I weren't Heston blooming Blumenthal, I may get stopped by customs for carrying dangerous, potentially pressurized materials to my next Grecian holiday.
   
   That said though, the ice cream made fresh from cow squeezed did look gorgeously delicious. He'd taken a swipe with a finger off the whisk and there was 0.38 seconds there where I contemplated the possibility of licking the television.
   
3. I made a gorgeous dinner and it didn't take any effort at all. I'm going to do more of this in future. The discovery of returned time while dinner is effortlessly baking in the oven is bliss, truly bliss.
   
   So this is life. It starts with a struggle, there is the fall of the proud, and the rise of the humble, good triumphes over evil, there's some decadence involves, and finally, the laurels of success.
   
   The parables of life, summarized in the kitchen.

Small victories, eh? It was an enormous achievement for me (Pope-tongue-in-cheek) to have conquered my oven, battled my fears and now be able to stare confidently at the box of gold that looms before me.

Victories, however small, are victories anyway. In my present time and space, I'd take whatever I can get.