Some additional thoughts on music and food, to accompany today’s playlist:
A day in music shares much with a day in food. Over the course of any given day we eat according to our needs and desires at the time, adapting to the day as it unfolds, driving us subconsciously towards meals that fulfil something necessary in that moment. Music behaves in the same way, and this is something I’m paying attention to through the week of playlists that accompany this diary. Throughout the day, there are slow, solitary moments and livelier times where I share music with my housemates, usually in the kitchen when we’re convening at meal times. Music is nourishing in a way that differs from food, less tangibly so, but in the times where I’m listening to music it fulfils a need that is so often jointly fulfilled by the food I prepare at that moment.
Tuesday
I wake early and join a friend for coffee from a bakery on the corner of Hyde Park. It feels deeply satisfying to walk in the morning petrichor, chatting and sipping a hot drink to ward off the chill. I pocket the almond croissant I bought, knowing that it would not suffice as my sole breakfast.
We walk for a while through the array of autumn colours falling around us, enjoying the morning for the sake of it. When I return home I make another smoothie - avoiding the kale this time - of blueberries, banana, oats and peanut butter. After exercising I sit down with a cup of tea and retrieve the croissant, breaking off the ends to share with my housemate sitting next to me. We talk over tea and flakes of pastry and almonds, discussing our plans for the day.
For lunch I make a Dahl from lentils retrieved from the back of my cupboard, keen to free space for new ingredients. When the lentils are halfway cooked, I realise I haven’t made enough for a substantial meal, but too late to add more uncooked lentils, I opt instead to make a second soup with butter beans and feta. I love the Dahl but the brownish-green colour feels somehow lacklustre, and so I swirl the butter bean soup through it in an attempt to spark life into the bowl. I brown some parathas in a pan, watching the bubbles rise and fall with a great fixation.
I top the bicolour soup with feta and pickled red onion, and tear shreds of paratha to dip, swirling new patterns in the soup as I go. As the soup falls in the bowl, I enjoy the transformation of its surface. It brings life to the meal, entertaining me as I sit and eat alone in the kitchen.
My friend returns in the evening, feeling under the weather from their booster vaccine earlier in the day. To ward off their temporary sickness, we cook a spicy miso soup together, chopping veggies side by side at the kitchen table. As we both cook in the same restaurant, it feels at once all too familiar and strangely peaceful to be cooking together in the comfort of my home, away from the crowds of hungry patrons. We eat and laugh and share music with each other and my housemates, and sit replenished with a cup of tea after the last sips of broth are exhausted.
Later that night, to a waning crowd, I wax lyrical and passionate about the donuts from a bakery near the restaurant I work at, making an internal plan before bed to venture there tomorrow. Concluding today full of soup and good times, I go to bed hoping to dream of those donuts.