Really Slowing Time

Since last post we have a new baby. With my new charge I am busier than ever but not working so maybe a little writing can happen. And what I am into now is food. Really slow food-- pretty au courant-- yet I am remembering my French exchange mom in the summer of 1984 who spent 2-3 hours a day preparing and cooking lunch for us in her modest kitchen. We ate dishes of celery baked au gratin or maybe biftek and homemade french fries always followed by a frisee salad made from unusually bitter greens and then a cheese plate and a fruit plate. My French sister Valerie and I woke late -- around eleven or noon while our mom was at the marche buying the fresh produce, made ourselves hot chocolate for dipping our pain au chocolat then an hour later returned to the kitchen table for the event of the day: dejeuner, a serious undertaking. I soon learned that if I ate everything I was truly beloved by all. The pace was slow. We slept a lot. From midnight to noon, woke, ate, ate again and then napped with the shutters fast shut against the searing Avignon sun. Dinner was in front of the TV watching dubbed Dallas reruns while eating charcuterie, fresh baguettes and more frise.

Ironically, Valerie chose that summer to take out her teen rebellion as a food war. She resisted everything yummy and homemade. She was working on losing weight off her shapely hips while I gained 10 pounds-- easily lost when I returned home and spent the fall eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on wonder bread.

My idea of slow means trying out a cool new recipe for cranberry shelling beans bought fresh and boiled briefly then marinated in olive oil, lemon, garlic, parmesan cheese and basil and mixed with steamed haricot vert. It means taking my toddler to the market, discussing the meal with him in the check out line and then making it with him. Even better our neighbor Ginny brought us stalks of her garden's collards and we prepared them from scratch. Our plum trees produced several gallon tubs of vanilla plum butter that we swapped for apricot jam from our other neighbors. Steve, the artist up the street shares his raspberries strawberries and peaches with us as we stroll by, Pretty cool for gardens the size of a large living room. Needing space--emotional or physical-- I dream of building vertical with fruit trees and bean stalks. It's not going to save the world as some think, but it definitely can make a slow year happily slower-- and it is community to be proud of.