After spending a relaxing day reading, she decided to prepare her dinner.  Looking in the fridge, she was  lacking inspiration.  Groceries were in need, she sighed, yet she wanted to wait since she had busted her budget already two weeks ago.  She found broccoli stems she had saved, a bag of baby carrots, left over small potatoes that would spoil soon and of course her trusty jar of minced garlic.  Looking up at her vegetable and fruit basket hanging next to the pantry, she took two onions.

She fried the garlic, then onions then filled the pot with water and the chopped vegetables added several heaping tablespoons of beef bouillon, adding spices here and there and let it come to a boil.  Of course she added Worcestershire sauce…it was one staple in her recipes along with a dash or two or three of curry.  She stirred, adding more spices but thought she might wait a while to allow the ingredients to savour the concoction she was making.  She preferred to call it ETF (Empty The Fridge) soup.  But in the past few months there was less and less to empty.  Her fridge was sparse and that was partly trying to follow her more humble budget and also she was tired of throwing away food if she had not got around to cook.  Living alone means not over buying and calculating just enough “in case” family drop by.  Although, her timing was never that great either in those instances.  She tried to keep some things she had cooked in the freezer since she usually cooked enough for at least eight persons.

She stirred the bubbling vegetable liquid and lowered the heat to simmer.  She realized she needed to add more water so she transferred the pot to a bigger pot and then she added lentils she had rinsed several times to the stock.  As she added a few more dashes of this and that, she could not help but think of her GrandMaman.  How she wished she would have been more interested in cooking as a young adult and spent more time cooking with her.  She saw her cook as a teenager but once she married and left home, she rarely watched her do her magic in the kitchen.  She was such an amazing cook too.  The only thing she got down almost perfect was her turkey dressing.  And that was just by tasting, adding this and that and tasting over and over until it tasted like Christmas a long long time ago growing up.

She stirred absent mindedly, rapt in her thoughts that  brought her back in time. Perhaps that was why cooking was so comforting for many people.

swirls of broth
waves in a tin pool
bubbling with stories

listening to her old stories
turn of the last century

washboards and lye soap
horses pulling bread and milk
times of yore

© Tournesol ‘19/08/27