Woodsmoke and Wild Strawberries
Musings and Culinary Endeavours: because blogs and food should be more satisfying than a rice cake.
Somerset House
Merry Christmas Everyone! I truly mean that. I know it is basically a month late, but this is the kind of reaction time I am operating at these days. My tree came down on 7th Jan, punctually, but all I felt I had to get off my chest just languished, unvented. So with a few temporal tweaks, without further ado, here is my very tardy end of November / Christmas post, in case you were wondering what was really lurking behind all those lovely instagrammed meals:
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Italians consider cooking (and eating) good food at every meal an absolute given, a necessity, meaning that the work of many a home cook is taken quite for granted. Rain or shine my aunty every day of the year sets the table and cooks for her husband, and at least one grown son and his wife and children. Not dissimilar to an Autogrill she has them in and out in under an hour with a 3 course meal under their belts so that they can all return to school/work. The tide goes out then in and there she is suddenly sweeping up and clearing plates and getting on with the rest of her day as if it were all some delicious dream. I’m not saying this level of taking for granted is right, it just is. It is the way of things in some households. Roles are clear and logical. You are not lauded, but neither are you judged as a vacant housewife either. The role of the home-maker is truly appreciated. Mums rule the roost. They are obeyed, they are loved and they are valued and it is how so many of my peers manage to bring up their kids without losing their minds….
Pesto made and snapped by me. It is in a flavour-league all of its own.
I absolutely advocate shortcuts in family life. There is so much general friction just in getting out the door every day that if I can cut corners without compromising the end result too much then I’m all for it. I sometimes shake may head in numb disbelief at how much time of my life I spend just mechanically loading and unloading the dishwasher multiple times a day, scrubbing pots, emptying potties and picking peas up off the floor. It is hard to cook wholesome food that doesn’t generate lots of prep and clearing up etc. so, since I really am committed to wholesome food, I need to make it count and I need to know that nutritionally, my meal is going to blow the doors off to make it worth it. Pesto is one of those things that can vary in quality hugely. We’ve all fallen upon the odd jar of Sacla in our hour of need but I must say that I always feel underwhelmed and kind of disappointed after I’ve eaten it. It’s basically fast food masquerading as proper food. No aroma, no depth, cloying, too much acidity, and most probably very limited nutritional value. It is all about balance – would it be easier to just open a jar? Yes. Would it taste as good? No. Would it be as good value both nutritionally and economically? No. Too much of a compromise for me in that case.
One thing that makes me feel not so much old as very different from the childless segment of the population born after 1985 is their complete obliviousness to the fact that there will most likely come a day when you will have to put yourself last. It’s like a baptism of your own when you have kids. A watershed moment after which nothing is ever the same. You can’t unbreak eggs, just as you can’t unknow parental responsibility and love. I am a bit obsessed with those turning points in life that give you a sort of shell shock. It’s like the Gayle Forman quote:
It’s like losing your virginity – you can’t imagine it will ever happen, and then suddenly you are on the other side of it and one of the initiated. At first you look around you, and at your parents and your neighbours and teachers and think “they all do this weird thing, it’s so weird!” The same temporal jump happened with all the crucial watersheds, school exams and then Finals, your driving test. It is that mind-blowing notion that you graduate to new dimensions of experience /achievement. When my mum died I just suddenly felt the door opening and shutting and and a cool realization that I had had scales on my eyes, that I was ignorant to so much, to what so many people deal with in their lives every day. I felt small. I actually felt dumb, I felt I had barely scratched the surface of life and what its purpose is. I became aware that I had seen, like a pre-enlightenment citizen, my world as flat, as mostly sunshine and light, with my concerns only stretching as far as my own eye could see, when in reality the world is spherical, riddled with hidden depths, dazzling light as well as the darkest shadow. It makes you realign your priorities, painfully reinvent yourself, give less of a damn and generally shake off much time-wasting and dithering. Death when it strikes close can prompt you to finally eliminate the chaff, be it badly written books from your bedside table, destructive relationships, clutter, with no guilt. One of the best blogposts I ever read was this one. I think it captures what happens as you feel more comfortable in yourself as you age.
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My husband has a pet peeve – apart from the term “pet peeve”natch – that is the relatively new trend of opinions being spun as “news”. For example: a presenter interviewing a presenter and this being passed off as news, when it is in fact just opinion and “filler”. Or worse still, tweets being read out on broadcast shows as if they provide legitimacy / credibility. It is the rice cake of the broadcast world if you ask me so I think he has a very valid point… And yet…. The blogosphere is broadly based on this concept that “my opinion, may not be formally recognised but no matter, it probably has an audience somewhere that might be interested in it”. It was principally for this reason that I hummed and hawed about writing a blog. For years. My first blog I set up in 2008 and did two posts, felt like a fraud and then stopped. Now I just write for fun and because I am opinionated and full of vim (read: bile). I restarted blogging also because I realised that many people pass themselves off as authorities on subjects in which they have no formal qualifications a number of “Doctors” spring to mind, (you know who you are!) and that in the end, it doesn’t really matter as long as you have an interesting perspective/ style. I have to confess that I LOVE derived info masquerading as fact, even if I do feel a bit shallow after reading it. Take Mumsnet. Or a particularly guilty pleasure of mine: reading the Comments section of online articles. It is like Rod Liddle in the Spectator who said that his favourite weekend pastime is to buy the Guardian and read all the indignant diatribes of the public in the Letters section.
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