Cooking In Absentia

Bean assortment from the allotment - including my favourite Borlottis. I  don't know what the others are - their labels( in not indelible ink) got washed away in the rain -   purple black and lime green and speckled pink - all turn an unappetising grey when cooked. But dress them when they are still  steaming hot in chopped up tomatoes, coriander, garlic and a ladle of walnut oil and they are squashily delicious.

Tonight's fruit salad -  skin-wrinked donut peaches and nectarines past their best  - perfectly perked up with fresh figs and autumn raspberries from my sister's garden. The raspberries are especially precious as they come from my father's original canes that he brought with him from The Small Garden in Berkshire....all those years ago. 

Yesterday's gift of tall spiked gladioli gracing the dining room table - their pale blooms unfolding one bud at a time, like stars coming out in a ladder....

My husband says he wants something different for supper tonight. He usually makes us something on toast  - eggs/cheese/smoked salmon  - for when I get back from my Deeksha meditation group - which he doesn't come to any more. I say I'll think of something and he can cook it.

He's still  half asleep when I'm ready to leave so I write him a note - instructions for making the supper  ( which I've half  prepared.)

 8am Turn the oven on at 200 degrees.

8.15 Put the sweet potatoes in.

8.45 Take them out.

8.50 Bring the sweetcorn to the boil, cook for 5 minutes. Turn the heat off.

(Take the leaves off the sweetcorn first)

I attach sticky Post It notes to each of them - These are sweet potatoes. These are sweet corn.

I'll ring you when I'm leaving and tell you what to do next.

It's so hard for me to whittle it down to this  - cooking in absentia -  cooking by numbers.  I don't know if the sweet potatoes will take half an hour or twenty three minutes. I need to be there  - to look at them and see their colour..... and prod them with a knife and feel their texture and flip them over if they are burning..... or turn the oven up or down if I think they need a few minutes longer. 

You can't write experience in a note....

Actually, my husband follows my instructions just fine....when I come back the potatoes aren't quite ready because I neglected to say put them on the top shelf not the bottom....the sweet corn are just coming up to the boil....he starts to grill his bacon rashers....I steam the broccoli and the green beans and spoon yesterday's roasted tomatoes and the garlicky bean assortment onto our plates.

By 9pm as I planned, we are sitting down to our supper. And I've climbed another rung up the ladder of letting go of my right-and-only-way of doing things.....