How a rabbit cooking experience taught me one of the greatest lessons in relationships

While exchanging Easter experiences, a warm acquaintance shared with me her Easter lunch recipe. A slow-cooked rabbit. The recipe was rather simple and doable. It made me look at the concept of expectations in relationships in a whole new light.  It came alive in a way I've never seen before and changed my perception. Here’s how. 

I went to the store to pick up my grand meat only to realise there actually weren’t any options there. Just 1 type. I’ve never bought rabbit meat and since I was really excited about making this, I decided to pick it up. 

So on Sunday morning after breakfast, I removed the meat from the fridge and kept it atop my kitchen table so it’d come to room temperature and just right for me to have this gorgeous cooking experience I was looking forward to. Keyword - experience/journey ;) Probably caps locking will highlight its emphasis. Keyword - EXPERIENCE / JOURNEY. 

Now that we’re clear on that, moving ahead. When I bought the meat I read the front of its box and it said Wolno Gotowany (slow cooking). Sure. That’s exactly what I’m looking forward to. 

Then at the time of cooking and preparing my ingredients, I turned the box over to see some instructions. I saw the red box top left and read  - “WYSTARCZY TYLKO PODGRZAC”. I quite understood what that meant but I still typed that into my translator. Hoping typing it would change the meaning. Obviously, it didn’t! No kidding!. 

Those 3 words created such disappointment. They took away the one thing I actually desired - A “culinary experience” of cooking rabbit. The whole process of step by step adding my ingredients slowly and watching it cook, feeling the flavors, increasing or decreasing the heat as needed. Tasting it every 10 minutes and seeing how it turned out. I even bought an expensive wine to see if it would change the taste compared to cheap white wine. Since white wine is one of the ingredients. 

So here’s what I did. The already cooked rabbit that needed to just be heated was on the kitchen table. It was prepared differently than my recipe indicated. Since I’d already cut the onions, I decided to continue the recipe as I had. I wondered if it would be a disaster. 

On adding butter to the onions that were sizzling, the vegetable cube, the meat and this delicious white wine I let it cook for 20 minutes instead of the original time that would have been - 1.5 hours. 

In truth, I adore slow cooking. It’s literally like I’m the queen of slow cooking. Spaghetti bolognese, stuffed turkey, shepherd’s pie to be precise. Each of these takes a long time to make. At least 2 and a half hours. Thanks to this experience, I realise now why I have always enjoyed these time-consuming recipes over others. 

Did you know that from thawing (Defrosting it in lay man’s terms. Turkeys are often sold frozen in supermarkets) the turkey, till it’s finally baked and ready to enter your mouth, takes 17 hours. 10 hours to thaw. 5 hours to bake. 2 hours to prepare the stuffing. I don’t do it often but I must say - I genuinely enjoy it. Here’s a link to the time when I stuffed a chicken some years ago. https://www.facebook.com/Belinda515/videos/10213490229471302

However, to my good fortune, the rabbit dish turned out really good. But now I don't know what it would have tasted like if it wasn’t already cooked. And that’s the takeaway I got about relationships. When I enter it already having the end in mind - the marriage - It makes the whole experience fast forward. It makes me lose on experiencing the journey of it. 

What I’ve recently realised is that relationships, however bitter some might be - each experience teaches us something if we are open to learning. Something about ourselves, our insecurities, our relationship with trust just to name a few. 

Even though this rabbit was already pre-cooked and after what I did with it, it tastes wonderful and impeccable - it still lingers in my mind - What would it taste like if I had made it from scratch?

Now that’s an experience I’m looking forward to. I am assured it will come when I choose to embark upon it. For now, I’m gonna enjoy my rabbit with the delicious German wine I picked. Bon Apetite to me and to you ;)