I started having friends over to eat again and I learned this: perfect is the enemy of good.

Email newsletters aren't really my thing. I'm pretty overwhelmed with the thought of everything I desperately want, and need to read - I was going to say before I die, but let's not get too melodramatic - without adding to the pile. But I love seeing Oliver Burkeman's The Imperfectionist land in my inbox every month, a missive that's known to work on me like a cool palm might work on a fevered brow. And it's to him, the self-help guru of the thinking person, that I owe the idea for this column, which has to do with perfection in the kitchen, and how we might best release from its tense grip.< /p>

Like most people, on the entertainment side, I struggled to get back into the groove after the lockdowns. Having lost the habit of having friends, even the thought of doing so is now exhausting: the planning, the shopping, the cooking. Sometimes I manage to make a list of names and look for a date in my diary. But like icing that refuses to set, things never get… concrete. Thoughts swirl, like in a food processor. Will everyone be disappointed if I serve pasta? Will they consider my tomato sauce infra dig? And what about the pudding? Are the memories long enough for people to think, "Oh my God, no pavlova yet?" I imagine the oven and wonder if it should be deep cleaned. I examine the kitchen light and consider how quickly it could be fixed. It goes on and on, and another weekend passes.

What to do about it? In a recent edition of The Imperfectionist, Burkeman alerted his readers to "sloppy hospitality": a term coined in 2014 by, of all people, an Anglican priest named Jack King. What is slovenly hospitality? For a moment, I imagined Pig Pen in Peanuts, trailing a cloud of dust. But no. Scruffy hospitality is, in essence, no-fuss hospitality.

It prioritizes people and jokes, warmth and connection, performance and to whatever you usually serve with drinks (salt and vinegar crisps now!). It's impulsive, reflective and generous, and in the end it will make everyone very happy, and no one more than you, the host. In summary: don't worry if things aren't perfect. The best is the enemy of good. You don't play MasterChef, and Gregg Wallace is (thank goodness) not among your friends.

Something about this board struck me, and in the past few days I have acted more than once. I came for supper, I gave her pasta and she liked it. G stayed happy after the Women's Euro final and ate two servings of chickpeas from the night before (she's a vegetarian; we had roast chicken). S came for a drink that turned into a long, slightly tipsy dinner, dishes I had cooked for two while feeding three with perfect ease. Spontaneity! It makes life so much better: richer, fuller, less expensive and less crowded. King and, by extension, Burkeman are absolutely right: no one is looking for crumbs under your fridge; a meal cooked by another hand is (with a few dishonorable exceptions) almost always delicious; Tunnock's ice cream or caramel wafer will do just fine for the pudding.

Now that I've started, I can't stop. Or at least, I don't want to stop. I'm dying to see people - 'And tonight? Is tonight good?' - and I'm determined to make sure that when I do, things get pared down. Yesterday, for example, I was browsing through a new favorite cookbook, NotesFrom a Small Kitchen Island by Debora Robertson, looking for ideas for something chic to offer people with drinks (OK, I admit it: I'm not scruffy enough for chips yet). A recipe for gruyere and anchovy puffs popped into my head that sounded good in my strasse, until I realized it was about making bechamel. Sigh. I turned a few more pages. Oh, that was it. Anchovy butter. Child's play ! I imagined a wooden tray. On it was a bowl of that wonderful umami butter, another of radishes, and one of my grandmother's bone-handled knives. Perfect, but not – if you know what I mean – too perfect.