Thursday 30th September
Day 162
I’ve been wondering what it will be like in America when we are on holiday and I won’t be able to cook. Every night in a hotel for two weeks. A friend says you can find wonderful vegetarian food there. So we could buy bagels for breakfast in New York and have picnics on drifts of fallen leaves - red and gold and yellow - in Vermont. And trust the sun will shine.
I can save up my cooking therapy for when we come home.
Wednesday 29th September
Day 161
Sometimes I think we eat the same meals all the time and I could be more adventurous in my supper repertoire. But as the light fades earlier and my energy with it, I gravitate more and more to the simple.
Tonight, round pebble carrots and potatoes boil on the stove. A colander of broccoli flower heads will sit in their steam for five minutes before we sit down. The pan of flat, pale yellow beans - a packet we bought on holiday in France - are softening in a stew of sweet orange tomatoes, garlic and red onions. There is more garlic - ours - in the mayonnaise to dab on the organic salmon fillets. If I get the timing right we’ll have half a mealie each to sink our teeth into while the fish spits and blackens under the grill.
Now the house smells like coming home. Better than last night’s take away pizza.
Tuesday 28th September
Day 160
Outside my window the giant poplar tree is swaying in the wind. Its leaves are turning a rusty yellow. Rain is spitting on the glass. The light is deserting the sky leaving a pale grey stain over the rooftops.
I made an early start this morning in the supermarket trawling for pineapples and avocados for my father’s ten day juice fast. Now I feel like the drained away clouds with no inclination for cooking. Or writing. Earlier, salted cashew nuts filled the gap while I cogitated about supper. Now I’m not hungry. The fridge is full of green beans and tomatoes and things that need eating up before we go on holiday.
I wonder if that lovely husband of mine has any supper inspiration since mine, like the evening light, has sadly leaked away.
Monday 27th September
Day 159
On the way to our anniversary lunch we call in to visit a dear friend who we haven’t seen for a long time. All summer I’ve been meaning to take her a jar of my strawberry jam. Several years ago she gave us our first strawberry plants which reproduce themselves over and over again in their long trailing suckers at the allotment. This time I tuck in a jar of Victoria plum jam as well.
When we are leaving she hands me two bottles of her own - glistening dark chutneys - Pear and Walnut, Tomato and Courgette speckled with mustard seeds. We exchange hugs and our missed summer months - sun and hot fruits captured in glass jars - extending our friendship into the winter.
Sunday 26th September
Day 158
We are sitting on the sheltered steps of a fourteenth century quay having our lunch. The sun is hot on my face. Behind us, seagulls swoop over three sailing boats tethered in a turquoise sea. We have walked down a vertical cobbled street made from beach pebbles to get here. When Charles Kingsley - who wrote ‘The Water Babies’ - lived here over a hundred and fifty years ago he wouldn’t have paid £12.50 in a car park to enter his own village - Clovelly.
My husband’s baguette is piled high with crayfish tails. I am biting into a hot smoked mackerel roll smothered in a horrible mayonnaise. We are remembering this day twenty four years ago - the day before our wedding.
I said, ‘I was probably rolling out pastry for the quiches, or having a panicky cigarette in the garden. And your mother said it was unlucky to see you but in the evening you came round to my sister’s house and and I cut your hair in the kitchen.’
It was all ahead of us then. We didn’t know our six year old bridesmaid, my sweet niece, would make this her wedding day too, twenty two years later. A date we are so happy to share.
Saturday 25th September
Day 157
When I come home this evening I find that my husband has pruned the apple tree. We have different words for it. His is trimmed. Mine is butchered. He is surprised by my grief.
Since I can’t put back the severed limbs and their fruit I’ve been wondering how to undo my loss. And my rage at him. Which of course cuts deeper into us, and is more hurtful to him - and to me - than any murdered branch.
Right now I could apply the salve of loving kindness - always good to spread on the most tender wounds - real or imagined. But am I willing to give up oozing first?
Friday 24th September
Day 156
‘I want something delicious for supper but I don’t want to cook it,’ I say to my husband in the car on our way home.
‘We’ve got lots of apples.’ he says. ‘Or a takeaway? Or cheese on toast?’
I’m not inspired by this and peer into the depths of the fridge hoping for quick deliciousness to leap out.
In the end he scrubs the potatoes and cuts up the beans. I chop the Brussel sprout tops and purple sprouting broccoli. He skins mackerel fillets and I mix up horseradish mayonnaise. We watch the end of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ while the pots boil on the stove.
A delicious Friday night after all - and cooking takes half the time if you do it together. Even if he doesn’t slice the beans quite like I do.
