A number of years after my mother passed away, my father gave me one of her recipe books. He also gave me another, much older book which he thought was hers but which, as it turned out was my grandmother’s.
I am not really attracted to the whole notion of trying out new recipes despite being a fairly creative person and rather enjoying food although I have friends and family who are constantly swopping recipes and trying to squeeze secret sauces or special ingredients out of one another. I am not the least bit interested in the whole chemistry of food and how and why certain flavours act harmoniously together and why others clash spectacularly. My youngest, son, who has a degree in hospitality and has spent many hours in the kitchen playing with flavours, effortlessly throws together a fabulous dish of salmon and some green stuff and something nutty and I’m in seventh heaven eating it! I do not have the slightest inclination to know how he created it. He often reprimands me for randomly grabbing herb and spice bottles and throwing as many of them as possible into every dish without having the faintest idea which ones actually belong together! I then have to endure an ear lashing like an itinerant child and swallow my food, oblivious to the fact that I obviously have a completely uneducated palate!
I have even been called a Food Philistine by my culinary offspring ! Cultured friends have often offered me wine reciting the pedigree and metaphorically rolling their eyes and sighing lightly as I smile politely and look blank reminding them that good wine is absolutely wasted on me. I am equally happy drinking cheap box wine with pizza as they are swirling; nosing; sipping and savouring the grape which I would happily have consumed plucking it absentmindedly from the bunch or even had it made it as far as being processed as a cheap Grapetiser*.
During what will probably be known by future generations as the Great COVID Lockdown of 2020 , a neighbour and I got into a discussion in our street, standing our 1.5m apart of course about sourdough bread, pineapple beer and homegrown, vegetables and herbs which could be smoked, which apparently EVERYONE (excepting me) was doing. I was sewing and catching up on maths, my goal being to catch up to where I had left off maths in 1978. She offered to give me a “starter” and assured me it was such fun as it just grew and voila! Wonderful bread! I couldn’t believe it! Here eventually was something which would make itself! (I need to add here that I had already given away the bread machine my son gave me hoping to encourage me to bake my own bread, but which I obviously failed at, subsequently blaming the stupid bread machine) I burst into the house with this “amoeba” as I called it and presented it and the recipe to my partner, a man of science, a navigator, one of those who understands figures and weights and stuff like that, ok, a ship’s captain. He took one look at it and said these words: “Well, let me try it and if it’s not too difficult, I will help you with it.” It’s not so much that he uttered those words in any patronising way at all, it was that I knew when I looked at the recipe it was way beyond me. We would be the only people who would not be eating fresh sourdough bread every day. I returned, shoulders drooping a little, feeling, if not defeated, then a little deflated to my sewing machine and knitting needles. Ok, it’s been 4 months since then and I finally have my dream of fresh homemade bread every day, but, and here’s the clincher: I have not lifted a finger to even feed this “amoeba.” I am so grateful that my darling took over the “project.” It took absolutely no manipulation on my part whatsoever. I am even willing to clean the dough off the cupboard doors and floor and strange places like the door of the washing machine, which sticks like wood glue just to not have to prove yet again, how absolutely useless I am at baking. I keep quiet, I do not add any advice. I just add butter and eat this manna from heaven.
But then someone gave me a load of lemons(is that even a collective noun?) and in another over confident, buoyant moment of self belief, I convinced myself that I could make lemon Marmalade. How hard could cutting up a few lemons, adding water and sugar and boiling it for an hour or so be? Well, that was just that! I discovered that somehow, magically, this was something I could do. I COULD cut up the lemons. I could deeply inhale the fresh citrus peel and slice through the halves then the quarter the fruit and heal my soul. My fingers enjoyed the process. My heart felt as if I were finally home. I didn’t rush. I asked people for bottles and in no time I ended up with a cupboard full of bottles. I felt virtuous because I was rescuing these empty glass jars from the recycling bin or worse still from the landfill.
The humble lemon became my new passion. I scanned neighbours’ trees, I checked lemon prices, I shamelessly bartered with friends for lemons in exchange for shopping bags and aprons and expired home magazines! After a few batches, I learnt that the 1:1:1 ratio was something even I could understand.
And then something organic started happening, something bordering on the mystical. This lemon mush started talking to me. It did. It bubbled quietly, the fragrance filled my kitchen and subtly crept into my heart. I fell in love with my Marmalade. Some said test it on a cold plate and when it looks like this or that, it’s ready but I didn’t want it to look and taste and feel like they said it should. I wanted it to look and taste like something I hadn’t quite figured out yet. I’d eaten so much Marmalade, over-sugared, bitter, chewy, runny, mushy, too much peel, too little peel. I didn’t know, until one night long after midnight having cooked and tasted and put it on the cool plate, scooped off the scum; licked the back of the boiling spoon, feeding my half asleep darling who’s sugar levels were by now bordering on hospitalisation levels and probably fast heading for a coma, suddenly, I heard these words … mmm … mmm … and I felt like I’d won an Oscar.
Someone said something about mindfulness. I’ve been trying to work it out and maybe she’s right. I thought mindfulness meant I needed to sit in a yogi position and meditate on something meaningful which is impossible for me to do. I was always that child with ants in my pants. It’s like baking bread and riding a bike and jumping out of an aeroplane. I’m just not that into it, mostly because I don’t have either the concentration or the nerves or the sense of balance to do it, but making marmalade I can do.
You know those people who say smart things like: “When Life gives you lemons, make lemonade” or “add tequila and salt”? I don’t get those either, but I am beginning to understand lemons a little better now. Trini Lopez once sang about the Lemon Tree but maybe he completely missed the point. The fruit of the poor lemon IS possible to eat. Such a maligned little fruit and so full of goodness … like some people you meet. They look as if life has handed them a truckload of lemons (which by the way, since I’ve fallen in love with lemons, I wish someone would do for me). We look away. Their world worn faces embarrass us. The sourness of the life they’ve lived, the tartness is difficult to digest. Maybe if they sweetened up a little, their lot may be easier (for us) to bear. Maybe if “they” sorted themselves out first,” maybe took a bath or found a job or did something with their lives first or even tried to show they’re at least trying not to be so sour and distasteful. Maybe this maybe that. But the truth for me, in the lemon that is, is grace. Acceptance. It’s a lemon. It’s always smelt and tasted like that, and it IS possible to make something really sweet and lovely out of it, you just have to be willing to try
*Trademark
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