Larking about with Leftovers

In Marilyn‘s kitchen…

Clarissa: Love your arrangement of lemons and marigolds. Burst of yellow sunshine.

Marilyn: Fun, you know me, always fiddling with food and flowers.

Clarissa: I have a hard time throwing away even leftovers.

I did something similar with eggshells yesterday (shows a picture on her phone).

Marilyn: That's hilarious, Clarissa. Study in white.

Clarissa: No yolks.

Marilyn: No joke? Cracks me up.

Clarissa: But seriously, let’s eggschange photos of our kitchen creations.

___________

Voice-over

What next, indeed. Pasta and herbs intertwined? More fruit and flower fusions?

BBQ season begins

An early summer evening…

Jacques: Time to pull the barbecue out of the shed and onto the deck.

Giselle: It’s getting a bit rusty.

Jacques: Still burns though. Pity we’ve gone vegetarian.

Giselle: Oh, we could make an exception. There’s those lamb chops that have been in the freezer since last year.

Jacques: A barbecue breakout sounds a good excuse to use them up. Deck could do with a waterblast.

__________

Voice-over

Barbecuing (from Native American Taino barbacoa) is cooking with a long history. Burning mainly meaty edibles over wood fires and embers. Nowadays often roasting vegetables and increasingly cooked over gas flames. 

Limits of Seasonal Organic Vegetables

A new package arrives from the organic garden…

Helen: What did the gardener send this time?

Virginia: Eggplants. And squash.

Helen: That’s the fourth week in a row he’s sent them. 

Virginia: It is a bit repetitive.

Helen: And the bugs that come with them. Can’t you specify what he sends?

Virigina: That’s the meaning of seasonal. Take what’s in season. Even the queen insists on seasonal veges.

Helen: With all her gardens, I’m sure she has more choice.

_________

Voice-over

Eating like a queen, in season cucumbers, zucchinis, spinach. Fruit of course. And then all those dinner functions with heads of state relaxes reliance on seasonal fare.

Recipe for a Universe

Searching for a metaphor…

Woodward: The universe. I have to write up the universe by tonight.

Bernstein: Hmm, big subject. What’s in it besides you and me?

Woodward: Dark energy, dark matter, particles like neutrinos and atoms. Need a metaphor.

Bernstein: Quite a mix. Write it like a recipe. The particles are ingredients, apply a big bang to stir it up, it becomes a soup of dark energy, dark matter and neutrinos. Mix in atomic particles to become stars and planets to taste.

_________

Voice-over

Would that astrophysics be as easy as cooking. Though some scientists might wish that cooking were as simple as astrophysics.

For CERN’s recipe go here 

“Take a massive explosion to create plenty of stardust and a raging heat. Simmer for an eternity in a background of cosmic microwaves. Let the ingredients congeal and leave to cool and serve cold with cultures of tiny organisms 13.7 billion years later.”
…

In cooking things just happen

Helen holds forth on cooking.

...

Helen: Cooking borrows. Cooking depends on what is to hand, the art of cooking lies on the details, the subtleties, the context.

Jackie: Example?

Helen: Example, this lamb has a lamby taste, yes, but there is mixed in the flavor of tomatoes, the sniff of garlic, the texture of onion. And alongside, the potatoes, bathed in a mushroom sauce, does that not…

Jackie: What?

Helen: Is it not suggestive?

Jackie: Yes. It suggests you gave up serving up a soup and instead turned it into a mushroom sauce for the caulis and brocs.

Helen: Exactly. In my cooking, nothing is ever as planned. TJH. Things just happen. Que sera.

Jackie: Whatever will be, will be.

________________

Voice-over

Helen is in full Socratic flight as she pushes Jackie twice with negative interrogations: “Does that not…?” and “Is it not suggestive…?”

But Jackie is not the passive student Helen is treating her as. She CAN suggest that the soup became a sauce, and she CAN translate from Turkish to English. 

...