Avoiding the Ruts

As the wheels of a great idea turn, there are inevitably ruts left in the road.  If you aren’t careful, you can back-track and easily fall into one.  At some point or another, every artist finds themselves in a rut.  Or worse, a series of ruts with no solid ground in sight.

As a photographer, you may find yourself taking pictures of poses A, B, and C in locations 1, 2, and 3.  A painter may be really good at realism and find their work turning to ducks and deer plastered in motel rooms around the country.  As cooks, we may exhaust our creativity on certain events and realize our personal menus have become taco Tuesday and stir-Friday.  (Archer, anyone?)  Ruts are steady, safe, reliable, and…. boring.  Mind-numbingly boring.

I have found myself in rut cycles, and I look at them as a challenge.  Accepting that you’ll find yourself in such positions (probably) many times throughout your life is a good thing.  As soon as you realize the comforting walls rising, you can take the opportunity to break through.

My favorite way to break the habits of a rut is to take the ingredients (because I get in cooking ruts) that I use in my rut-dish and turn them into something different.  It’s harder than making a completely new dish, but that is the fun of it.  Transforming your safe elements into daring, new things.  This helps me from crawling back into the same rut because I can look at the same item from many angles from there on out.

 The latest challenge I gave myself was to take onion, red bell pepper, black beans, rice, and left-over roasted pork and turn them into two completely different dishes.  My go-to would be to saute the onion and pepper, cook them with the black beans.  Serve that over rice with pork on the side, maybe in taco form.  While that is delicious and a great thing for a busy weeknight, it lacks pizzazz.

I gathered other ingredients from around my kitchen that fit into the Southwestern/Mexican flavor profile I was going to work with.  Tomatoes, garlic, several types of chilies, cumin, coriander and various bits of my well stocked pantry sat in disarray on my counter.  The dishes I came up with were stuffed peppers and a rice and bean soup.  I have made stuffed peppers before, but it is a recipe that slips into the back of my mind.  It remains untouched until I see bell peppers for a great price which sparks my imagination for a hundred variations of stuffed peppers.

But change doesn’t need to be so drastic.  Stir fry is one of our favorite meals and generally I make it the same way every time.  Or, as close as I get to the same because I don’t use recipes for my every day cooking.  Normally the sweetness in my sauce comes from orange juice.  Well, the other day we were out of oranges and their bottled counterpart.  I was about to grab honey when I remembered  the coconut milk in my refrigerator.  The simple substitution of coconut milk and some lime for orange juice made our old stand-by new again.

I know after the holidays the creative threads tend to wear thin.  Focus is often on resolutions that, deep down, you know you won’t keep.  It’s not too late to revise that resolution.  Make your new resolution one that will be good for life and will benefit you at every turn  in your artistic journey.  Avoid the Ruts.  And when they do sneak up on you, fill them in with new ideas.