But first, last night:
The dhal was good, and the butternut squash was too. I made spiced cauliflower to go with it, and cut up some cucumber for alongside. If I’m eating something savoury, there will always be acidity and crispiness nearby – this time in the form of crunchy kale and astringent, back-of-the-throat-burn lemon juice poured over the cucumbers. Cai had four little cubes of the stuff, and I had the rest. This morning I checked on the dhal to suss out how my lunch would shape up, but the coconut milk in it made it set like a pudding. I will have to re-whip it later.
Morning
Eating the same oat breakfast for four days running has meant neglecting the five bardsey apples in my fruit bowl, picked and handed to me by my great aunt from her apple tree in Anglesey last week. A little mottled with dirt and discolouration, I have them like flat pancakes, baked with (the tiniest amount of) powdered cinnamon, the same yogurt from last night and some sliced grapes. Also the same spoon, the same bowl, the same mug. The apples are slippery with still a bit of a chew to them. I text this photo to my aunt to thank her again for letting me stay and eat her food.
Afternoon
I wade through foggy focus while reading for a while, then decide to make lunch early instead, despite being not at all hungry. I try to take my time with it, to keep myself busy. At the moment I am eating my way through the refrigerator, and refuse to buy new food when I have a cupboard full of tins. I look to see whether the dhal is even more firm than it was this morning but luckily, it’s not, so I scoop out a bit of it and whip it up like double cream. The butternut squash blends in like a jammy egg yolk. Added to it, I roast butter beans and green beans. I shimmy some stale rye bread into crumbs and roast this pile of dark sand too. I love the glass lemon squeezer I have recently acquired from somewhere, and love it so much I juice a whole lemon for lunch. It catches the pips in its teeth, like I used to before I had a lemon juicer. While it’s all in the oven, I cut up more cucumber. I put together a white miso, dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar and olive oil dressing. I forget about both of these and eat my lunch without either, but with more yogurt again. Tonight I’ll use the dressing though. It’s no bother.
Dinner
Every day, when the light drips away from the valley, I run by the house near mine and catch a glimpse of two married people, sitting beside one another to eat dinner. They have a crossword in between them, they have candles and they have bowls. I like the way they sit side by side – they don’t have to do that.
After another glimpse of them with the candles and the crossword, I ducked into the garden.
There were torrents of golf ball drops this evening and they drummed on the polytunnel as I rummaged for tomatoes on my hands and knees. I picked up some nibbled basil leaves while I was in there too, knowing that in my bowl, dinner was already, almost, basically ready to eat. I put it all in the saucepan with olive oil, then garlic, then paprika. I squashed it all down a little with the potato masher, then in a separate saucepan, browned some butter with even more garlic. As the spaghetti swam, I tipped the leftover butter beans into a baking tray with some kale, and covered it all in the salad dressing with miso from this morning. Once the pasta called me to the table, I put the wrong end of a little spoon into the sauce which had deepened red all by itself. Thick and together, I smiled at it the way someone does when they win a pub quiz. Over it, dusty parmesan, thrown to me from the top of the stairs by Leia in a rush because her TV show was still on.