“I’d rather dance with you than talk with you”
I might be speaking too soon but it’s been awhile since I’ve been this calm and at peace with myself. Poetry, some lovely music (Kings of Convenience)- that might not actually be that lovely if you read the lyrics of the songs but the melody wins over the melancholy, and some sweet Moscato and lasagna soothe my soul.
Except there was banana in the creme brulee that I ordered in. Slices of banana in sickeningly sweet custard with burnt sugar doing hush-hush.
*
“But don’t you love Bananas?”
Do you know how difficult it is to explain how to make French Toast to someone who’s probably never cooked before, like Mousey would say, in their full life.
“So, take a cup of milk, two eggs, add 2 tbsps of sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. Beat the shit out of it, dunk the bread in it and then fry!"
"But I don’t have cinnamon!”
“You do! I used cinnamon to make french toast the other day.”
“But I can’t find it!”
“It’s in your spice rack. I know what’s in your kitchen and you don’t. Pshaw!”
“Oh, found it. How much milk do I add, 100ml? I’m using a tall glass!”
“Uh, I don’t know how much is 100ml but yeah, half the tall glass should do!”
Then there is the bread pudding which is actually a reverse French Toast. You pour the eggy-peggy mix onto tiny bite-sized pieces of bread that have been soaked in generous amounts of butter and then bake it at 350F. Mix in blueberries or strawberries or chopped banananananas(not that I’d recommend banananananas!) with the bread and you have fruity bread pudding.
So what do you do with bananananananas? Make banana walnut bread, of course. But better still! Find large Kerala style bananas, slice them lengthwise, fry in clarified butter, drizzle sugar and nom-nom away.
*
While I pour myself some tea, take a sip from Saki's Tea:
“I’m having a picnic meal,” she announced. “There’s caviare in that jar at your elbow. Begin on that brown bread-and-butter while I cut some more. Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.”
She made no other allusion to food, but talked amusingly and made her visitor talk amusingly too. At the same time she cut the bread- and-butter with a masterly skill and produced red pepper and sliced lemon, where so many women would merely have produced reasons and regrets for not having any.
*
I don’t know what I can save you from. I had never really known you but I realized that the one you were before had changed into somebody for whom I wouldn’t mind to put the kettle on.