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01. how to make pineapple cookies (with or without friends)
pineapple juice
powdered sugar
baking soda
all purpose flour
crushed pineapple
butter
mom
classmates
Move to a new city with your mother at the age of six because you both need a fresh start. You don’t know anyone here, but nobody knows you either, so you can be anything you wish– but you’ve only ever wanted to be one thing.
Stay up the night before your first day at a new school. Worry, a lot and often, but put on a brave face for mom. Ask to make your favorite soft pineapple cookies to share with the class, but also just because you haven’t had them in a while and you always love cooking with mom.
Add extra crushed pineapple into the mixture because the tart sweetness fills you with joy and mom says they’re your cookies, you can make them however you want to as long as the foundation for a basic cookie is there.
Listen to mom as she sings under her breath while you both work in the kitchen, then join in thirty seconds later at the top of your lungs. You’ll know you’ve done things right if she laughs and pats your head, though sometimes she’ll also say “Oh, Meguru,” so fondly it feels like the sweetest fruit ripening in your chest.
Take your pineapple cookies to school the next day while wearing your favorite shirt and the new shoes mom bought you; they light up with every step and you love them dearly. They make you feel like mom is with you.
Introduce yourself to the class in the clearest, most crisp voice you can muster. Offer your new classmates the cookies you worked so hard on and hope they love them as much as you do, but most of them don’t even try them. The ones who do are hesitant and they spit them out, say they’re too mushy, or that they have too much pineapple in them, and how fruit doesn’t taste good in cookies.
You disagree and they don’t want to be friends with the weird new kid and his pineapple cookies. It’s not the first time you’ve been called weird, but for some reason it stings more today.
Take nearly all the cookies back home with you. Over dinner, ask mom if she actually likes your pineapple cookies. She’ll say she does and you both have cookies for dessert, and she doesn’t ask why there are still so many leftovers.
02. how to make hamburg steak
ground beef
salt & pepper
panko breadcrumbs
three bullies
mom
a walk to the conbini
“There’s nothing more fun than playing soccer!”
You say it and you believe it with your whole heart. There’s a pull you can never quite explain when your feet touch the ball, other than simply saying that it feels like an extension of your body, and it takes you further than you can ever hope to go by yourself yet.
The other kids at the park don’t understand. They want to play video games and they give up too easily, too quickly. You want to run as free as a bird and score goals, to live in that neverending canvas of bright colors that pop into your field of vision whenever the ball touches the net. It’s so beautiful, just like mom’s paintings, and this is your own version of creating art.
“This guy only has soccer in his head… let’s leave this weirdo!”
You know you shouldn’t fight, but something inside you snaps. Your art isn’t weird and neither are you, and you tell them as such– but it’s three against one, and they don’t care how many times you tell them you’re not weird, they still kick you until they exhaust themselves.
Mom gives you a band-aid for your nose and it eases the pain, even though you were kicked in other places too. You think mom sprinkles her bandages with a little extra magic, just for you.
Her studio smells like acrylic paint and balsa wood and she confirms that you’re not weird; mom is just like you, and she’s the best person you know.
When you both go inside to get cleaned up for dinner, she asks what you want and you proudly announce hamburg steak, because you saw it on TV this morning. But there’s no ground beef in the house, or breadcrumbs, so you end up with your hand in mom’s as you walk together to the conbini down the block.
Mom lets you pick out just one treat and you choose a packet of gummy hamburgers just to stay on theme. She opts for frozen instead of fresh today, and you know that mom must be tired, so you don’t really mind. Not when it gives you a chance to bring out your kitchen stool so you can reach the microwave and heat dinner up for both of you, making you feel like you’re the one taking care of mom for a change.
You never actually learn how to make hamburg steak, but you learn that it takes 2 minutes to cook in your 500W microwave.
03. how to make a monster
you
just you
Believe. Believe so hard your eyes sting, head pounds, knees shake. Believe, every hour of every day. There is nothing more real than your monster.
Talk to it, nurture it. When the monster reaches its hand out don’t even think about hesitating before reaching back.
You may be called selfish, but that’s because others don’t know the recipe the same way you do. They’ve stopped believing in the monster so you can’t listen to them, they don’t know any better, but you do. You know how to have fun. You know how incredible it feels to be best friends with your monster.
Believe, but have the skills and talent and passion to back up your beliefs, and you do. You’ve always had. Your monster is the only one who understands.
Play with your monster often; no one else will be able to see it, so the responsibility falls on you. It likes overpasses and open fields, and you’ll spend hours, months, years dribbling and passing the ball to your monster.
But if it starts to feel like you’re about to have an existential crisis at the ripe age of 17, you must immediately stop.
Monsters are fickle, volatile things. They’ll swallow you whole and you’ll feel like you’re drowning in the pit of their stomach, drowning in all the agony and sorrow that you’ve let your monster carry for you over the years. You’ll feel so lonely you’ll want to die, and you’ll wonder why you haven’t done so yet when you’re surrounded by black tar and stomach acid, surely you’d have been digested by now.
Instead you break down under the overpass. Take a deep breath. Go home. Receive a letter from Japan’s Football Association. Go to your room, where you begin the painstaking process of clawing your way out from your monster’s stomach, and find yourself in the shower to rinse off all the grime.
You’re too excited by the letter to eat dinner tonight and go to bed early to watch your favorite players with their monsters, while yours tucks itself comfortably under your bed, sated for the time being.
04. how to make stir-fry with leeks
flank steak
leeks
soy sauce
300 egoists
a small team
someone to believe in
You go to Blue Lock, and for the first time in your life, you’re surrounded by others who love football just as much as you do. For the first time, you’re praised for your egoism and following your instincts. It’s a foreign feeling, but you think you enjoy it. You might even get used to it.
Meet Isagi Yoichi. This step is crucial and will change the trajectory of your life forever, but you won’t realize that for a few years– it needs to marinate first, then set to a low simmer, laying dormant under the surface until the pot almost bubbles over before you are finally allowed to serve it.
For now, prepare the other ingredients.
Smile, always smile. Isagi is best seasoned generously with a sunny disposition and firm competition. Start believing in him like you believe in your monster. It’s scary at first; monsters are in your head, but Isagi is real. Start blindly listening to your monster to make more room for Isagi.
Lose, win, draw, then win again.
Apologize to your monster for letting it take all the responsibility when it’s what helped you inspire your entire team in the last game. Play with everything you have, leaving a part of yourself on the field but taking so much more with you.
Celebrate with your teammates– your friends, as you secretly call them to yourself when you’re curled up on your mat at night, but never out loud. Your monster can’t sleep under the bed here so it watches from the corner of the room, and in a sleepy stupor you smile and reach a hand out towards it.
“Thanks for everything today,” you whisper to it in the dark.
“It’s thanks to you that we won, Bachira.” From his mat beside yours, Isagi answers in its place.
05. how to make ochazuke with bream
rin
crushing defeat
While you’re still on the high of victory, lose.
Lose so spectacularly that the disappointment clings to your very core, and worry that this is the end of the road for you and Isagi.
Scratch that, start the recipe over, because this is Isagi. It can’t be the end– this is who you’ve been waiting all your life for.
Lose, but dutifully listen to your monster when it tells you that there’s a monster inside Rin, too. That’s what you’ve always wanted, right? To be around people who understand you, who flit around the field to the beat of their monster’s thrumming heart, because that’s the only way you know how to feel alive.
“You started soccer to defeat your brother, right?”
“So what of it?”
“It’s the first time… I’ve seen anyone seem lonely while playing soccer.”
It’s not a lie. You know the feeling well, like a distant relative who needs a place to crash for just a few weeks. Allow the loneliness to sit on your couch and eat your food, and it’s not all bad– sometimes, you’ll even laugh together and almost forget it’s there– but then before you’ve realized it, loneliness has made a home for itself inside you and weeks turn into years, and suddenly you can’t remember what it’s like not to have loneliness around.
But knowing is different from seeing, and you don’t look at yourself while you’re playing, so you technically don’t lie to Rin.
He sees right through you, anyway. You wonder if you could ever be the type of person to make Rin’s heart dance, or if the two of you are listening to completely different music.
06. how to make pineapple upside down cake
a realization
personal development
pineapple juice (optional)
Get what you’ve always wanted: another monster to play with you. Not one, but two. You can finally evict that lonely feeling from your heart. Your dream is so close you can taste it, but you can also taste the monster clawing at your throat, threatening to come out.
Don’t come out, don’t come out, don’t come out.
You love your monster. No one else knows you like it does, and without it– without it you wouldn’t even be here. But you have Isagi now, you have Rin, you have others to play with now–
No. It’s not about them.
You want to listen to your own voice for once, back to the days when the ball felt like an extension of yourself, and the net was but a canvas for your art. You don’t remember when you started using a color palette that only your monster liked, or why you started trying to paint safer things, things that made you become palatable to others, but it doesn’t matter.
Goodbye, monster.
You turn your heart upside down and realize you're still having fun.
07. how
to make a honey caramel cream latte
espresso
milk
honey
caramel syrup
whipped cream
friends
Call them your friends now, openly, unabashedly. You’ve never been surrounded by this many people before, so it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. It’s okay to feel insecure. You don’t let it show though, not because you don’t trust your friends, but because it’s a personal insecurity that you need to work through yourself.
Gather all together in Tokyo and stir, stir, stir. Mingle all together until fully incorporated and you laugh so much your cheeks hurt. Sing until your throat feels hoarse, bowl until your forearms are sore. Mix, mix, mix.
Stay out late wandering the streets of the city with your friends. There’s a chill in the air, but you’re surrounded by too much warmth to notice.
08. how to make traditional paella
bomba rice
chicken stock
mussels
clams
shrimp
a dancer
Meet Lavinho, let his words inspire you. Continue to be pleasantly surprised that so many people here understand you.
Dance like your heart tells you to and make it your own. Dance like everyone's watching, because you want them to, because you’ve worked hard, because you’ve never been one to shy away from who you really are.
Crawl under the bed one night where your monster has been safely tucked away and this time it’s you who reaches a hand out toward it first. You’ve proven you can fight by yourself, so your monster doesn’t feel like a threat anymore; it feels like coming home. You build it a room of its own this time and together with the loneliness, they no longer clutter your couch. This time they pay rent.
You dance until your knees feel weak and your body aches. You’ve never been happier. The outcome of the game is irrelevant when you’ve proven everything that you’ve ever needed to yourself, to the world, to your team, to Isagi. How fortuitous that your first friend would be the first to see your transformation.
Lavinho likes butterflies and you can see why; as cliché as it is, there’s something beautiful and cathartic about their metamorphosis.
09. how to make instant ramen
instant ramen
water
Two years later, after the Blue Lock program has fully finished, sign a contract with FC Barcha and move to Spain.
Rent a quaint little apartment near the heart of Madrid. You pay too much for the amount of space you have, but the natural lighting that you get makes it worth it. Worry that you won’t be able to make new friends or keep up with your old ones, but quickly find that your worries are unfounded; the language barrier doesn’t hold you back, and your friends all join the group chat that you make. Even the grumpy ones.
Make friends with the abuela that lives down the hall from you because she reminds you of mom, and it’s nice. Face-time mom often, as much as possible with the time differences, and text her plenty of pictures. You try to make the pineapple cookies you made with her when you were a kid after she texts you the recipe, but somewhere along the way you mess up.
Mom laughs when you send her the picture of you sitting on your kitchen floor holding up a tray of burnt cookies, so you send it to Isagi too.
Walk down to the corner store, grab some cheap instant ramen, and decide that tomorrow you’ll ask abuela to help teach you to cook a few things on your own. Realize you’ve been relying on others to feed you this whole time, even abuela is guilty of it.
You want to be the kind of person who feeds others.
On your way back home, Isagi replies to your text with a picture of him and everyone in Bastard Munchen out at a restaurant.
You wonder if you can be the kind of person who feeds Isagi.
Boil the water on your stove. Pour into instant ramen up to the designated line. Wait 3 minutes.
Text Isagi often, at almost every moment of downtime. You’re already so intrinsically entwined, your phone becomes an extension of you, a lifeline connecting you to Isagi all the way out in Germany. Texts become face-time calls, face-time calls become weekend flights where you both act like tourists in each other’s cities, regardless of how many times you visit.
You don’t need to, but you want to feed Isagi.
10. how to make kintsuba
sweet potatoes
sugar
salt
sweet rice flour
cake flour
water
salt
sesame seeds
isagi
For the filling, soak the sweet potato in water for at least 10 minutes to reduce unwanted flavors. Strain the potato and heat on low; gradually increasing the heat will also increase the sweetness. Cook until it softens. Strain. Add salt and sugar while still hot, and mash.
Mash, mash, mash. Mash thoroughly. Start to realize that this recipe is a lot more complex than you thought, and despite all the practice you’ve been doing with abuela, worry that you won’t be able to pull it off.
Place the potato filling in the fridge and work on the batter for the outer layers. Move around your kitchen as quietly as you can, all while keeping an eye on the sun rising up through your window; normally your ally, today it works against you, a traitorous visitor that’s bound to wake Isagi up at any moment and spoil your surprise.
Mix the rice flour with the water and stir, stir it well. Go through all the steps on autopilot because you’ve memorized the recipe months ago, back when you and Isagi were first planning this particular visit.
While you dip one side of the potato filling into your batter and sprinkle sesame seeds on top of it, think about the first time you visited Isagi in Germany. Recall how you made him breakfast every day for a week, and how every time he said, “You really don’t have to do that, Bachira!” you would respond with “Cooking for someone is practically a love language in Spain!” until he finally understood what you were trying to say.
Place your kintsuba squares into a warm pan and press down gently, all the while thinking about your first kiss and how cold Isagi’s hands are when you hold them, almost like he’s been waiting the whole time for you to come along and warm them up.
Repeat the process with the kintsuba and the pan on all sides. Realize that this really is a lot of work, and you’d much rather be back in bed cuddled up under the blankets. The sun is barely up in the sky when you feel arms around your torso from behind and Isagi’s chin on your left shoulder.
“Wah! Sneaking up on someone in the kitchen is dangerous, Yocchan!”
Isagi laughs, and you do too, because it’s true that laughter is contagious.
“It’s not like you to be up so early,” Isagi says, his cold nose pressing into your neck in a way that makes you try and playfully wiggle out of his hold, but you don’t actually try very hard at all.
“I wanted to surprise you.” You hold up the plate with just three pieces of kintsuba on it so far, and you feel proud. Just three is a lot of work. “Open up, say aah!”
You grab one of the pieces and gently blow on it, then hold it out for Isagi to eat. You’ve fed him like this before, but it’s the first time you’re feeding him something you’ve actually made from scratch.
Your eyes are glued to his face, paying close attention to the way Isagi’s eyelids gently flutter shut as he chews around the dessert. He chews and chews, and when he’s done his tongue pokes out in the same way he teases yours does sometimes when you concentrate, until he opens his eyes and his expression melts into an effortless smile.
“It’s delicious, Meguru. Thank you.”
His face goes as red as the bricks that line the outside of your apartment, and you think yours does too, but you’re so happy that you don’t mind at all. You realize that it’s the first time you’ve cooked for someone since you were a kid, and that Isagi didn’t even think twice before trusting your cooking.
Feel a warmth in your chest and decide that even though it’s a lot of work, you’ll make kintsuba for Isagi any time he wants.
“I’m glad! I can make you my world famous pineapple cookies, if you wanna try those sometime too.” You say, and it sounds like I love you.
“Oh, please do.” And it sounds like I love you too.