My housemate called to say her flight north has been delayed. She is reading a Patricia Cornwall detective novel and drinking caffe latte.
Back at home, I am slowly and generously composing a big soup for myself: in Italian, minestra is soup and minestrone is big soup. Minestrone is a miraculous answer to the problem of leftovers, but needs to be made on a very gentle, scarcely bubbling simmer for about three hours. It always tastes better the next day. Along with various echt-Jewish chicken soups, minestrone is a wonderful comfort food. It freezes well, especially if you don’t add pasta or potatoes. I divide up freezer portions and then add pasta (penne or bowties or little gnocci–type shells) to the remaining minestrone in the pot.
Today my minestrone is composed of red onions, carrots, celery, parsley, courgettes, French beans, pak choi, butternut, broccoli, lentils, barley, cooked chicken, pancetta, ripe tomatoes, red peppers and some cooked borlotti beans , with penne rigate pasta added for the last hour. As is the way in life, it looks and tastes better than anything served up to the guests this weekend. I am going to eat it in a deep ceramic soup bowl with an old heavy soup spoon while sitting at the kitchen table reading and looking out at the garden. I may or may not add garlic, anchovies, pine nuts, capers, origanum — this kind of minestrone is a bold and rich soup that holds multitudes. A friend of mine makes her best soups after Christmas, amazing broths of distilled turkey and goose and roast potatoes, right down to the brussel sprouts. On the whole I opt for simpler soups but it is satisfying to know that no left-overs need be wasted.
In those first few months when I was learning how to stay sober, I made myself big nourishing soups at least twice a week and they made me feel mothered.
What I shall read as I spoon up my minestrone is Tchekov, whose every story is about perception with heart. Every single character in a Tchekov narrative is trying to come to terms with time, the relentlessness of change, mortality. And failing. Lives that are grounded in failure. Located in the silliness of our lives, that we fuss with petty concerns while the inexorable presses up against us, unnoticed until it is too late. And the background is 19th-century Russia, the farway distances of the steppes, the pine forests and dachas by snowy rivers, the mud and the conversations of lonely passers-by, the shabby rooms and cooling samovars, yapping dogs, improbable fairgrounds, the winters silencing the conversations, blanketing the cities, the rivers freezing up like conversations that go nowhere. I have been reading the subtleties of Tchekov for nearly 36 years and I find something new and surprising each time I read one of the stories.
In the garden my daylilies are flowering all at once, bronze, scarlet, yellow, orange, butterscotch. It looks like the circus has come to town.
The soup sounds delicious. And the day lilies are divine. Have a good Monday.
My daylilies are all but disappeared now. Although there is a geranium hanging on the back shed that has still one small red flower on it, thumbing it’s nose at the end of November.
PS–I probably have about 3 minestrones in my freezer now! And sometimes when I take out the vegetable soups, I magically turn them into minestrones. ( kitchen wizard.)
Life is good.
Couldn’t get my Nano registered, saw your entry yesterday, can’t keep up with my browsing while I am computer-less. Hope you made your goal!
Thank you so much for your kind words.
I adore the flowers and I would love to be able to make a decent minestrone or soup of any kind. I would need some lessons, I guess. Your descriptions always sound so delicious I can almost taste what you are making.
Love and prayers,
PG
Sorry about your NanoWriMo. I did it once and it was hell. Hoped for a portal to The Zone, The Waking Dream. Maybe I didn’t hang in there long enough. D.M.Thomas (The White Hotel) told me writing fiction is the toughest job there is.
At the moment I’m holding onto Louise Doughty’s apron strings(A Novel in a Year). She lets me play! Calls me in for cookies and milk when I get anxious. But I just know, one of these days she’s going to say time to put away childish things!
Not in a good place at the moment. Boss insecure about whether I respect him. Bob Dylan sang “Everybody got to serve somebody.” Raymond Carver said everyone has drama in their lives they can write about. Hmmm……. For me, he and Alice Munro are the modern Chekovs.
Speaking of never tiring of someone’s writing, do you know Donald Bisset, a children’s writer from, I think, the 30′s? I love his stories.
The Story of Zzzz (Donald Bisset, Next Time Stories)
Once upon a time there was a great big whale whose name was Nicky. He was as big as thirty-three girls and boys standing in a row.
There was one thing that Nicky liked better than anything else in the world and that was honey.
Now Nicky had a friend whose name was Zzzz. He was a little fly who lived in Mummy’s kitchen.
One day Zzzz was going for a walk on the kitchen ceiling when he saw a notice that Mummy had put on the wall
‘Zzzzzz, please buzz off.’
‘Well!’ he thought, ‘that’s not very friendly!’ I’ll go and stay with Nicky. At any rate he loves me.’
So he said goodbye to Marmy, the cat, and flew out of the window.
As soon as he got out of the window he saw some bees gathering honey. ‘I wish I was a bee!’ he said, ‘then I could gather honey too.’ But he wasn’t, so he couldn’t.
He wanted to take some honey to Nicky. So he sat on a hollyhock and thought. Then a friend of his, Buzzy Bee came along and sat down beside him. ‘Why are you so thoughtful, Zzzz?’ he said.
‘Well!’ said Zzzz, I want some honey for friend Nicky. I’m going to stay with him and I’d like to take him a present. But I don’t know how to get any honey.’
‘Well! I’ll tell you what do do,’ said Buzzy, and he whispered in Zzzz’s ear. Zzzz was ever so pleased and flew away to where Nicky was in the sea.
When he got there, Nicky was sound asleep having his afternoon nap.
Zzzz tip-toed very quietly so as not to wake him, and he got a great big jar and took the top off and waited.
Presently he heard a buzzing sound which got louder and louder and along came a bee who flew round the jar and then emptied a little bag of honey into it. Then some more bees came and emptied their honey bags into the jar. There were hundreds of them and they all emptied their honey bags till the jar was quite full. Then they said goodbye to Zzzz and flew back to the garden where they lived.
Presently Nicky woke up and when he saw the jar of honey that Zzzz had got for him he opened his mouth as wide as he could and Zzzz poured the honey in.
‘Yum! Yum! Yum!’ said Nicky, ‘that was nice!’
And he gave Zzzz a great big sticky kiss.
Then he yawned. ‘Where’s Zzzzz?’ he said, ‘Hm! He must have flown away. Oh well! I think I’ll have another little sleep.’
But Zzzz hadn’t flown away, he’d stuck to him. He struggled to get free, pulling first with one leg then with another and , at last, he got free and he went for a walk on Nicky’s back. Nicky was so long that it took him nearly an hour to reach his tail.
When he got back Nicky had woken up and they had a lovely time playing Zzzz’s favourite game which was to sit on Nicky’s blowhole and be blown high up in the air. And the captains of all the ships that passed used to watch him through their telescopes. ‘My, my, what fun that fly has!’ they said.