Taking Stock
So much happened last weekend.
The world changed overnight.
As chaos reigned, the Good Husband and I spent several days in the company of three grandsons while my daughter and her husband enjoyed rare time away.
In addition to a football championship, little league games, nature walks, legos, a dinosaur habitat and one flu-struck boy with temps of 101°, we were engaged and distracted from the news and the details of war.
Yesterday we caught up a bit and last night, despite everyone’s best efforts at cough-covering, hand-washing, sanitizing and loads of laundry, TGH and I woke in the wee hours with coughs and aches. So of course, I pulled out my frozen “bone broth makings” and got the pot rolling. Soon enough, chicken soup will be ready, we will rest and we will be well.
If only I could make a pot of soup large enough to heal the world.
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well”
~ Julian of Norwich
Taking Stock
Wilted spring onions
Vidalia roots and tops
garlic skins, leek legs
celery ends and dregs
thigh, breast bones-skin-fatty bits
sage, bay, the rest —
— scraps that most
would trash, compost.
Roast.
Then simmer long and slow.
There, in your warm home
accompanying flu cacophony
aromas grow
convincing you that fixing
what ails these safely housed bodies
will heal the soul
of the world.
There is a book I loved called The Sacred Kitchen - I think you might really like it, too.
I shared this poem in the CWC, and perhaps you've already seen it - but yes to the alchemy of cooking and the magic of beautiful, simple food to mend and stitch back together, to make whole.
She’s standing in the kitchen again,
feet bare on the wood floor,
toenails red and chipped,
dirt clinging to her knees.
She’s been kneeling in the garden all morning,
talking to the basil, singing to the raspberries, trying to understand the lovage
which refuses to take root.
Now her hair falls into her eyes
as she rinses the carrots and sets to chopping.
Her sunburned shoulders lower
as she exhales.
She's watching the butter melt in the pan.
She stirs and listens
as the steam rises and kisses her brow.
She’s praying into the soup again.
Baking. Cakes.
Cinnamon. Chocolate. Vanilla.
As if sweetness could resist the storm.
In the middle of a house of suffering,
there is a kitchen
where I bake small things
to keep the anguish from swallowing me.