THE BITTER SWEETNESS OF IT ALL

On Sunday we plucked some of our winter oranges…the ones that had peeped through the thick green foliage and soaked in the rays of the autumn sun and ripened before the others. I pointed to the ripe oranges with a broomstick and Yiannis hunched under the tree, craned his neck and tugged at them while I screeched out instructions in the background…` No! No! not that one!’… because he kept reaching out for the big yellowy green ones…the unripe oranges. It was a blustery affair…` Come and show me then!’ he shouted back. No way! I felt this tingling quiver run down my spine, like a live wire when I recalled how some bugs…little spiders… had dropped into my curly mop last year and raced around madly on my scalp, desperately trying to find a way out. We finally managed to fill a whole basket which would last us for a week. The scent of freshly plucked oranges are so invigorating…the peel exudes a bitter citrusy burst of fragrance and the fruit… succulent, sweet and tangy. The taste of the orange is in itself an oxymoron… it is a pairing of opposites that lends it depth and fascination. I wanted to get started right away and squeeze out the fresh juice with all its intoxicating aromas…But he believes in… delayed gratification… `What about the pomegranates in the fruit bowl? Shouldn’t we do them first?’

 When we first started picking our pomegranates a few years ago, we thought we could munch the fleshy seeds and let the juices squirt into our mouth. But unfortunately our shrub is a wild one and the seeds are big and hard. All the manual juicers didn’t work. We even scooped them out into a huge basin and crushed them with a hand held masher for mashed potatoes. It took a lot of brute force and energy and sprayed us with red juice. I kept reminding him about the pomegranate press in the streets of Istanbul, where the vendors crushed the fruit with a hand press and offered us huge glasses of sweet violet-red nectar…spilling over the brim…fit for any Sultan. But he couldn’t find a similar device in Chania…for a bargain price.  So he bought…online… two… last year and the year before… that were only good for oranges. Then last week, he sent off for two more. So before lunch on Sunday, we used the first one…the Super Juicer. It crushed the pulp and flesh and seeds and the frothy juice gushed out and we guzzled down two glasses each…it was sweet but so heavy in tannins because of the pulp and seeds that our tongues became tart and dry and kept getting stuck to our palates.

Anyway with mouths all puckered with the after-taste of pomegranate, we headed off to a town nearby to have a leisurely seafood Sunday lunch and some white wine to get the salivary glands working again. It’s a lovely little marina with a few boats rocking in the water and where once upon a time we launched our boat. I had mentioned it in one of my previous posts. We made ourselves comfortable and soon realized that the next table was occupied by a couple that we knew. They were about our age with children who had flown the nest and were lunching alone just like us. Now and then we exchanged a few words during the meal when we were removing the bones from the fish. The wife, who I was just getting to know, and I, mumbled about how we were not having any fun separating the soft white flesh from the needle like bones. The men were much more adept than we were. They were Greeks and had a lifetime of training. Give me a fish fillet anytime…bones all removed like in the finest restaurants but… this was a tavern.

Well into the meal when our tongues and brains had been washed with wine, we became chattier and delved into the subject of cooking. I mentioned that I normally scrambled up a meal hastily and kept to very simple dishes. It was never my lifetime’s ambition to spend too much time in the kitchen. She nodded in agreement because she shared the very same sentiments…` We’ve so much in common. I don’t like getting my hands dirty,’ she said…` Oh Yes!’ I thought. We were right on the same page…except that with a little suppressed snort of smugness, I felt I wasn’t so bad. I got my hands dirty and had some great moves in the kitchen, chopping and throwing ingredients into a crackling skillet and whipping up a meal in record time.

Then she smiled at me and told me about this new appliance they had…it was like having a personal chef at home… a Thermomix…` Oh,’ said Yiannis…`We have a rice cooker. It even steams food.’….  They paused… and very kindly explained that THEIR’S… blended and ground and mixed and kneaded and pulverized and cooked and steamed and fried…a kitchen wizard…what every household had been praying for. It rolled out an impressive menu…and everyday she’d scan it, get the ingredients and…no sweating over the cutting board… tip them in according to the instructions. She had done thick blended soups, creamy risottos, rich stews and cakes…and she made a gesture of how it rose and how soft it was…I thought we were on the same page… but no… she had jumped out of the page and sprinted away in the distance…way out of my league.

Now they were both going on about their new gadget and what delicious meals they were churning out and Yiannis and I felt… we had just crawled out from under a rock…and were blinded by the light. We didn’t know anything about this wonder machine. Here we were still trying to get our heads around a juicer. We hardly have any appliances… no pressure cooker or slow cooker or bread maker. We don’t even possess a microwave or a humble potato chip fryer. We just have an ancient toaster, a coffee maker and that rice cooker that also steams…and oh yes… four juicers…we have to get our heads around them first before we move on to more sophisticated stuff.

Just then the waiter came with the bill and a takeaway bag. I was shocked. We didn’t have any leftovers…`What’s in the bag???’ I asked…The couple looked at him as well…` The bread,’ he replied cooly. I was aghast. He actually asked the waiter to pack the uneaten bread on our table…`But why?’…` Because we don’t have any. I forgot to buy some on Saturday,’ he said. The couple kept looking at us and I felt I needed to offer an explanation and repeated what he said, lest they thought we did this all the time… `Uh…It’s just that he forgot to buy the bread.’… I could sense the aspersions waiting to spring off their tongues…` She’s retired, doesn’t like spending too much time in the kitchen, is totally unschooled in kitchen appliances…and can’t even buy the bread.’… I made it worse by answering their muted accusations…`He likes his bread from a certain bakery and so that’s why he normally buys it.’  They brushed off my attempts to redeem myself and the man beamed at his wife proudly and exclaimed…` She even makes bread!’…She appeared a little hesitant to take credit for it and tried to play the whole thing down…` The Thermomix does it. It’s very easy.’… There was no end to the wonders of this device.

We walked towards the car silently and Yiannis  cautiously posed the question…` Do you think we should get one?’ I thought about it during the drive back…and decided…DEFINITELY NOT… because it rubs against the very grain of my nature. Here I can’t even follow a recipe to the end. I would be totally stressed out taking directions from a machine that rolls out endless menus and specifies the ingredients and measures them down to a tee and… if I fall short… I’m certain it’ll beep and flash its lights and keep repeating …`PUT IN 200 GRAMS OF MUSHROOMS! PUT IN 200 GRAMS OF MUSHROOMS! …the ones I hadn’t bought. They also tell me… IT ALWAYS GETS THE DISH RIGHT! How clinically dull is that… to pare away and discard all the bitter sweet layers of life…of failures rolled up in successes.

 When I go shopping, I first admire all the colourful vegetables and then select whatever catches my fancy …crunchy orange carrots, gleaming red and yellow peppers, curly heads of broccoli, wild greens heaped up in baskets and a root of ginger sticking out from a shelf, which I grab on my way to the cashier’s. Then I come home and contemplate what to do with them. On other days I’d stare hard into the fridge… pull out a couple of courgettes, drag out some limp stalks of celery, do some quick chopping and dicing and cutting and get my pulse racing… throw them all into the pot…run out into the garden and see what else is available…no oregano…throw in a sprig of thyme…no lemon…squeeze an orange…no mince in the freezer for the pasta sauce…chop up some ham. And the same dish…however many times I repeat it… never tastes the same because it is all in the energy of the day… sapping and dull on bleak days and bland food on the table… and on brighter days …a rush of energy unbridled and free… and a dish to set the taste buds on fire.

So cheers till the next time.