I have spent my morning slaving over a hot stove. It is not yet lunchtime and there is dinner for a dozen bubbling on the hob. I don't have mouths to feed. There's just me here. The Swede will be home at some stage and will doubtless oblige me by eating a bowl of something, but it's beyond even him to polish off a pot of chilli and another of spiced beef stew. It will make me smile to watch him try.
I have spent my morning cooking because I had doubts to quell, and time to kill.
Now that the flat is rich with the smell of garlic and paprika, I can sit down, pour some tea and breathe again. I have done something simple, I have made something good, I have taken my time with it and poured my thoughts into it - the food will taste of heart and soul.
Well, the chilli will taste as it always does. My knee-jerk reaction to bubbling thoughts, it is my most familiar of foods. It will taste better on Tuesday than it does today, it will sit in the freezer until I need warming some evening after a wet walk home from work.
My stew will taste of home.
I might leave it til tomorrow. By then it will taste of onions, garlic and sweet red peppers, paprika, salt, tabasco and beef, mushrooms, red wine, sour cream and love.
And that goes much better with mashed potatoes.
*Title inspired by my current read, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Emotional cooking inspired by an old favourite, Salman Rusdie's sprawling epic The Moor's Last Sigh.
I have spent my morning cooking because I had doubts to quell, and time to kill.
Now that the flat is rich with the smell of garlic and paprika, I can sit down, pour some tea and breathe again. I have done something simple, I have made something good, I have taken my time with it and poured my thoughts into it - the food will taste of heart and soul.
Well, the chilli will taste as it always does. My knee-jerk reaction to bubbling thoughts, it is my most familiar of foods. It will taste better on Tuesday than it does today, it will sit in the freezer until I need warming some evening after a wet walk home from work.
My stew will taste of home.
I might leave it til tomorrow. By then it will taste of onions, garlic and sweet red peppers, paprika, salt, tabasco and beef, mushrooms, red wine, sour cream and love.
And that goes much better with mashed potatoes.
*Title inspired by my current read, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Emotional cooking inspired by an old favourite, Salman Rusdie's sprawling epic The Moor's Last Sigh.
