Pumpkin soup / Paris, je t'aime
i.
I am home all by myself today. I decide to make one of my signature vegetable soups for lunch. Let's see what we have. Onion… pumpkin… hmm… I haven't cooked properly in ages.
The truth is, now that I am back at home I leave the cooking to my mother or Ladda. The kitchen is their domain. Even though they are more than happy to let me cook, somehow I don't have the time, or, to be more precise, the state of mind for cooking.
It's strange cutting up onion. The onion is a rare vegetable in our house – my father does not eat vegetables like onion or garlic because he finds it too stimulating. Apparently, it interferes with a certain meditative state. Not having eaten it for a while, the smell of the onion is very potent as I cut it. Pungent, even. It's been a while.
I cannot find the oregano. I rummage through the top shelf, among the bottles of sesame oil, manuka honey and coconut milk. There is no oregano.
ii.
I went with my mother to see "Paris, Je t'aime" yesterday.
"Why do you want to see it anyway?" I asked her.
"I liked Paris very much as a city." (My mother spent a week there in October).
Somehow I think my mother has a much more romantic view of Paris than I do, and this film – made of eighteen romantic short stories from famous directors – is not what I would have picked to go and see. But my mother really wanted to go, and specifically wanted to go with me, so I went.
"Well?" my mother asked, as we traipsed through the back-corridor stairwell (the one that exits directly to the main road) of Broadway Cinematheque. "Did it remind you of your time in Paris?"
"Hmm. Not really," I said. "The places are familiar – like the shot they had of Faubourg Saint Denis is right on the street where our school is. But as for the storylines… well, I dunno. Well, I guess it's different living there."
Thinking about it a bit more, however: well, while my time in Paris was not as glossy as those images depicted in that film, I did fall in love in Paris. But more to the point, there was a clarity and freshness about my year in Paris that - on reflection – I haven't felt for the last couple of months now.
Maybe my memories of Paris are now filtered through all those photos I took of my time there.
iii.
There's something very tangible about making food decisions. How big a chunk of Sainsbury's mild hard cheese should I buy? Is the apple season over, and should I buy those apples anyway now that the price seems to have gone up a bit? Will I finish this loaf before it gets stale?
I like buying food. I like feeling my purchasing power, which I will then tangibly consume.
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A good synopsis of the film can be found here
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
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