I am not going to pretend the last 2 months have been easy, they haven’t.
I met someone 30 years ago and fell in love. The days before email, instant messaging and in our case mobile phones. We reconnected, found the spark was still there and 18 months later I disconnected the power cord with wet hands, before turning it off at the power point on the wall.
Dangerous and risky.
I wanted to stop the noise, stop the hurt, the sadness and the longing.
I wanted that global distance to go away, disappear, scatter on the wind and settle as unseen dust in the corners of my life.
I had been here before. I knew how this went.
Disconnecting at the source, to wash, dry and put away in its rightful place at the back of my mind, until it was needed again.
Except things have not gone the way I expected. The appliance and its features were a bigger part of my repertoire than even I cared to admit.
Torture.
Everyday was meant to get easier, better with less grief. Every day should have flicked up new ways to cook, clarity and a pathway to follow. Except it didn’t, it isn’t and I missed my old appliance, I knew I would of course, I always knew.
I find myself fulfilling daily tasks with manual activity, hand beating egg white, forming stiff peaks when using an appliance would be so much easier.
I have unplugged the appliance.
The silence is deafening, mocking, hurtful or arrogant, I am not sure.
I had not filled out the warranty card all those years ago, young naive and trusting.
I never replaced the appliance, made do with what I had. Only for it to be gifted back to me years later, but it came with attachments, perhaps something else to lose or potentially be better than the actual appliance itself. This appliance had a superfluous lid. This lid kept turning up and I could never quite work out its purpose. Except deep down I knew, this lid was a smart lid, a lid that arranged itself on the kitchen bench so that it had to be used, could not go unnoticed, the dish would not turn out without it.
The lid knew this.
A simple life. A simple recipe for contentment.
Read through the instructions and note the nuances and make sure you have done your mis en place. A tried and tested recipe, I knew the exact amounts of ingredients to make it work. Key ingredients were lacking and in some cases missing entirely. My recipe. Handwritten in a cook book, notes scribbled in pencil to make it the best possible version.
So I yanked that cord out of the power socket to stop the machine, the noise, the confusion, hurt and non compliance to kitchen safety 101.
You need to know what the recipe is going to make. What’s the end result?
Commit to making the dish and being liberal with experimentation and give and take.
Stick your finger in it and taste it. If it’s not right keep working at it.
My apron, is askew - my heart is not in it. I miss my mortar and pestle.
The grind is no fun without the ingredient. There is no appliance to replace the slow, methodical movement of a pestle. It’s a superior resultant product.
Ancient grains, lost love and yellowed recipe pages.
I sit staring at the empty air that pads the pain between my consciousness and heart beat. I look for you in each recipe, each ingredient and know that without the cool granite of pestle in hand, I will never finish the dish.
For the C.
Eat well.