Pruning

It was a little over two weeks ago that I found myself wide awake at 1:00 a.m., unable to sleep, and without a book to read.  I had a few queued up in the list, but none were available from the library.

Like a lot of you, I have a set of Notes that are devoted to books, movies, and podcasts recommended by others.  Some of these are half-jotted from a cocktail party, mis-spelled because it was a dark room, and one stood out:  "Bones Blood Better." What in the world was this, and when did I add it to my list?  Google alerted me to the error of my notation and gifted me the author's name.  Was it available?  Absolutely.

The next morning, I was reading through the NYT and clicked "My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need it Anymore" by Gabrielle Hamilton.  I took this to be a sign that it was time for her book.   Blood, Bones, & Butter first, and then I'd let myself read Hamilton's piece in the Magazine.

Between meals, clean-up and the practice in pastelería, nearly half of my day is in the kitchen.  It's not a complaint, it's just a channel in the quarantine.  I wanted to read about cooking and about writing and about hard loves and well, life.

I couldn't help to get pulled back into my memories of Vermont and five minutes showers and crazy family meals where I felt like the outsider as the lone Southerner.  I remember my midnight tour of Rome and the early morning snack and drinks, and how did the Colosseum look so magnificent and empty?  And I think about Argentina and family meals and cooking.

I like that about books.  These threads that bind us as humans, even if we're never met, even if our experiences are not the same.  That we all have flaws and courage, and sometimes it's just better to lay it all out like a mise en place, waiting for that moment that the dish comes out just the way we like it, even if maybe we didn't do it in the order in which we were taught.