Food for Thought Processor

 

Autumn is considered the season for processing. Processing food, that is, as it pertains to canning and preserving all sorts of fruits and vegetables that make up harvest’s abundance. Presently we are dwelling in winter, already a notable distance into the season after autumn, so why bring up the processing topic now?  One reason, I suppose, is that there are other types of processing (besides food) to be considered. And processing thoughts can be done in any season.

 

I’ve always had this rather vague thought that processing something meant you chop things up finer, as in a wood processor cutting and splitting big logs into smaller sticks of firewood, or a meat processor grinding up chunks of pork and fat to make sausage, but the term has other nuances as well.

 

Processing can mean “to perform operations on something in order to change or preserve it” or “subjecting something to a series of actions in order to achieve a particular result.”

 

Processing thoughts, then, can be less like taking ideas and emotions and chopping them up smaller and more like taking the already small separate items and performing operations on them to bring more order, bringing the pieces to peace, as it were. We process things in our minds to bring meaning to an event or situation.

 

People process their thoughts in different ways. Some individuals have to go verbal with them. Getting together with a friend and pouring out the words as freely as the coffee does wonders for their processing mechanism. For others, tears are greatly involved. (I wonder if some people, like me, have more capacity in their God-noticed tear bottles than average.) Some people – although I’m guessing this would be a bit more rare – need to draw or sketch out their thoughts in order to process them satisfactorily. Others may pray the whole deal out, meditate it out, or write it out.

 

Being the listy and wordy person I am, I write it out.

 

Let’s say neighbor Mrs. Weeblechink up the street sends me a message telling me not to bother giving her and her family the annual jar of my homemade salsa in times to come, because this year’s batch wasn’t hot enough to suit her. Doesn’t have enough zinginess, she says, to zing her children out of bed in the mornings.

 

Well. This message stirs up all sorts of things in me. Before I know it, chopped retorts, minced phrases, chunks of misunderstanding and shreds of rejection start flying around in my mind.

 

But eventually I must get out my notebook and pen to begin processing by writing things out. Listing thoughts is the very best way for me to begin.

 

1.  No one says I have to give salsa to Neighbor Weeblechink’s family. No one says Mrs. Weeblechink’s family has to receive my salsa. But I have given the salsa; she has received it. Now she has given the feedback; I have received it (and now I must deal with it).

2.  Neighbor Weeblechink is putting expectations on salsa that are unrealistic.

3.  Since I made the salsa, I feel like the unrealistic expectations are put on me, too.

4.  I’m zinging angry! (stupid jalapenos)

5.  I love making salsa and sharing it with neighbors.

6.  Starting annual traditions and being loyal to the yearliness of them gives me energy. 

As I gather these fragments on paper, I sense that I have some choices to make for the outcome of this processing.

 

I could choose to corral bits of green pepper and chunks of tomato and herd them into something useful, not allowing them to whir around and around in the blades of my chopper until the salsa is unrecognizable puree. (I should have at least kept the lid on, I think as I scrape red sauce off the kitchen walls and ceiling.)

 

On the other hand, I could try to keep the ingredients as they are, entirely whole or in large chunks so I don’t have to go through the chopping and the stirring and the simmering it takes to process them. But that would be almost like glaring at the vegetables on the counter and commanding them to hop into the jars and be salsa – salsa with the perfect sort of zinginess, I might add.

 

What I might really feel like doing is gathering up and sending Mrs. Weeblechink a jar of my salsa-making scraps before they go out to the slop pile. I could pack up the whole mess of remnants (garlic skins, onion peelings, gougings-out of the tomatoes where they’ve gone bad, pepper membranes and seeds – especially the seeds, since they pack the heat) and let her figure it out.

 

Or, I could send her a pint of fresh jalapenos, labelled NeverFail Morning Zingers. That’s what I could do! But I’m afraid my joking about them wouldn’t keep them from looking to Mrs. Weeblechink like so many green hand grenades nestled there in the jar.

 

I could choose not to send her anything. Instead, I could invite a few trusted salsa-zinginess judges over to share my own perfect brand of salsa with. As we relish its deliciousness with tortilla chips and gooey globs of melted cheese, I could also serve up the myriad and juicy bits of the Weeblechink scenario for us to process together. Would the latter dish, though, be worth the bitter aftertaste it could leave in our mouths? 

 

Or I could make a batch of salsa with just a notch more zinginess than usual, just for me. There’d be nothing to keep me from secretly labelling those jars (in my mind only) the Weeblewink brand of salsa. Nothing hindering me from remembering what I learned from this experience every time I dip a chip into its nip of zip.

 

“Hmm,” I can picture saying to myself as I chew thoughtfully, savoring that unique and savory bite, “this may well become my favorite recipe for salsa.”

 

How do you typically process things? 

I wish you just the right amount of zinginess in the salsa of your life!