Determination

Her children were on top of her mind. Always. The class was about Japanese food, but the topic had now clearly shifted. To her second youngest son. He would sit around a campfire and would even eat there too. Maybe snowflakes would decorate their heads and cover their clothes, but they would sit outside and eat.
'So what will they prepare you?', she asked
'Probably sandwiches with ham and cheese', he answered.
After 30 years of working herself to the bone, and not skipping one day of cooking her family a warm & balanced meal this was not an answer she was going to accept. This was a call for action. She dialled the school's number.
'I've heard you're going to organise a campfire for the kids'.
'Yes madam'.
'And that their meal will consist of sandwiches and cheese'.
'Yes indeed, and ham of course'.
'They need a warm soup. It's freezing cold outside'.
'We don't have time to make it'.
'It doesn't take long'.
'I's for fifty people, madam, it's out of the question'.
'Ok, when exactly is the meal?'
'Monday evening at 18.30'.
'You'll soup will be delivered Monday at 6 pm sharp'.

And that's what she did. Together with two of her other kids she cubed carrots, made a celery stock, peeled and sliced hokkaido pumpkin, collected fresh thyme and parsley and delivered a bucket full of fresh & creamy pumpkin soup at an open campspot near the great woods of Antwerp. On the bucket was a label with the ingredients, the little time she spent on the preparation -40 minutes- and the very limited costs she had.

We absolutely need more crazy women in this country.

Accepting

They say I'm a bird 'cause I eat seeds
But I've been born as a cow
The name 'Bella' definitely misleads
had to get rid of it somehow
For a while been an ape in the Antwerp zoo
Then ate grains to become human
But the others there...
gave me no good review

Hearts

'When you give a person this drink, his heart will start beating again'. And mine missed at least one beat when hearing this. My brains should have intercepted this information 8 years earlier, saving a certain person from falling down the street. Or rather to help him to get up again. Maybe my life was running backwards, salving past events and trying to rewrite history. All the time I had despised synchrony, considering presence as a mixture of future and past, always being able to grasp the truth at each humble second. My head felt as if smashed against a wall. Time had definitely tricked me and it was now up to me to find a way out. A few days before I had just accepted that my life was how it should be and that nothing had to be changed. But now, if I had the chance to throw everything in a box and shake it all around, would I do that? Would you? Advices are always welcome.

Kyoko's secret golden trick mix one raw egg with a spoon of shoyu sauce and give this to whom already felt down

Distance

'So who's enjoying your food now?'. Her voice sounded slightly emotional but mainly curious.
'I give it away to friends. I have to. There is always much more than I can eat'.
I was thinking of the bags full of boxes, filled with cherry desserts, the little glass cups topped with coconut pudding, the plastic plates with honey endive tarts. How I was dragging them around the city, holding the handle bars with one hand, balancing the food bags with the other. My friends and I went to cafés where no food was served, so we could dig up my left over chocolate cake and sesame cookies. We would eat one fourth of the cake, the other half would be a gift for the pub owners, they could sell it to hungry coffee drinkers. Lately I was surprising friends on their birthdays with macro-desserts in nice bowls and candies in cardboard boxes. And sometimes Max came buy and ate a bowl of soup.
'Gosh, I feel like the perfect candidate for your delicacies, only I live 360 km too far. I have to stick to black pudding and jellied eels. But I dó shop where Madonna food-shops, or at least, where her assistant goes', she hurried to say.
I knew she missed my cooking, but I surely missed my audience. Tine was my biggest fan, and through her eyes my dishes reached excellence.
'What do you eat exactly?' I asked
'The soups in EAT are excellent, and there is always a leftover baguette. But there shouldn't be too many managers around then. We can only spend 5,50£ a day. And you know, that's not enough for me'.
My sister and I like eating. When we lived together we always had big meals, we constantly surprised each other with self-made salads and spreads. Tine was an expert in sourdough bread. After she left I found sourdough leftovers on the top of my kitchen cupboard. It had beautiful colours- just a bit too much fermenting.
'Do you manage to cook?'
'Yeah, sure, my Berley is still a great help. I made an impressive 'Shepard's pie' the other day. But how have you been actually?'
'Good'. And then slower: 'Good. Often spending too much time on cooking and then swearing I will never use that damned kitchen again. But the next day I'm experimenting again'.
'So take care'.
'Yeah, you too'.
After I had hung up the phone, I realised I hadn't asked Tine how she was doing, as if what she ate was more important to me. But in fact, by asking her about the small facts of her new established food pattern, I had figured out she was doing great.

if you want to meet Tine, go to Picadilly in Londen and drop by at EAT
http://www.eat.co.uk/
my favourite smoky coffee place in Antwerp with excellent coffees and great waiters:
http://www.caffenation.be/

Slow

She had never liked new clothes, new outfits had to be worn at least 10 times before she felt comfortable. But even worse were new kitchens. She was terrified at the prospect of having to blemish spotless cupboards and new wooden working spaces. If she saw people moving furniture or rearranging cupboards, she would consistently turn her head and pretend nothing was happening. So it happened she was like a rock in her rapidly changing surroundings. People called her to check how it used to be, to ask about old loves and forgotten chopping techniques.

But sometimes changes cannot be avoided. You quickly try to hide under the kitchen table or desperately cover the stain with your hand. The doors are locked but you hear them knocking on the wooden frame. You turn the radio louder and keep turning the pages.

It was late autumn and day after day she had noticed him changing. His words and phrases had been shifting, until finally the result had become undeniable. For two months she hadn't prepared any meals, circling around her stove from a distance. Quietly she entered the kitchen trying not to touch anything. Why would she touch what she didn't know? From then on she'd walk in the kitchen with fabulous ideas for dinner and end up with only serving a little plate of olives. Fruitlessly she would chop vegetables from a distance or peel onions in the air, choosing recipes that were simpler than pouring juice from a bottle. Each meal she saw her family eating less and less, getting stuck in the boredom of raw salads and ravioli cans. They started asking for barley cakes and buckwheat salad, noodle sushis and corn soup, their faces getting thinner, their eyes bigger. One night her empty stomach woke her up and in the deep blackness of a dark night she started cooking again.

Appèl

First I will eat myself, then I will eat my mother and finally they will give me food. This will not last too long though, soon I will have to find my way in supermarkets and corner shops, market places and fish auctions. I will have to smell and feel, touch and rub, weigh and shake. Sometimes I will guess, take risks and entirely trust on my intuition. When tasting, the result of my choices will immediately become clear. At dinner parties I will explain, fight and say no. I will swap plates and sit next to indoor plants. During my travels I will carry my own fire on my back, walk for miles and not complain. I will stop alongside the path, cook the grain and smell the sweet vapour, hungrily eat it with my fingers. Then I will run to catch up with the others, for they ate snickers and kept on walking. In small far away cities I will learn local languages, talk to foreigners and search little streets, examine unknown maps, only to find a mama who wants to sell me honest food. If I ever end up in hospital, I will accept and struggle to get better, but being confined to the menu of the ill, I will count on You to bring me some brown rice and miso soup.