Polka Dots and Moonbeams and Dark Velvet Porridge
I got a
huge basketful of black currants from mother last week, when she and my father came
over to oversee my window washing tactics.
See, I
can’t wash windows well, or at all, if she isn’t there. She possesses a
powerful and absolute, unthinkable magic, and just standing next to me while I
stand on the kitchen stool, scrubbing away in my ancient Minnie Mouse tee-shirt
and ankle-length wear-around-the-house skirt, makes me a better cleaning woman.
It’s not that she scolds me – never – if I wash them badly, or stands next to
me as this astounding, perfect housekeeping woman to look up to or to aspire to,
but there is a benevolent omnipresence about her, I think all mothers possess
that certain something that makes their children want to make them proud as a
rule.
After
making some midmorning coffee and quickly comparing notes on the weather and
driving conditions, how everyone slept, and if anyone had any plans later so we’d
know how fast we needed to be going, we got to work. It is a leisurely pace,
and actually fun. We joke around, laugh at nothing, I snap at mother if she
gets too inquisitive about my personal affairs, then after five minutes tell
her all about them, all the while scrub scrub scrubbing, and before I know it,
clean windows, and the world as I know it bettered the tiniest bit by
discussing it with the woman I love most in this life.
I know I’m
sounding like she is the one who actually does all the work while I yap about
the frivolous panic-stricken metaphysical crisis that is my everyday life, but
I’m telling you, it isn’t like that. Maybe that is how it started many years
ago, I’ll give you that, but these days, I most certainly am the one doing the
heavy lifting, while mother is more like a decorative yet necessary smiling
queen, handing me clean rags or wet rags or hollering father to come change the
water in the bucket. This time I had Bill Evans’ Moon Beams playing on repeat,
father read the newspaper from cover to cover while us ladies worked, went out
to get some lunch from a diner near-by when we were hungry, recited aloud
passages or bits of news he found particularly interesting, a habit of his I
usually have little tolerance for, but that day it made for a cozy background
noise. It was nice to have my folks over, it is a rare occasion that they come
over to my place; we usually always gather at The Old Lady.
I couldn’t
make enough room in the fridge for the giant batch of berries, thanking mother but
telling her what an enormous amount and how in the Sam Hill was I ever going to
use them all before they went bad. “Well, if you really think so, go ahead and
make some of that Cloudy Dream Porridge of yours, just toss the whole batch in,
never mind cleansing them from the leaves, and just, you know, sift the liquid
and make the porridge from that.”
“What a
great idea, mom!” I replied, “I haven’t made that in ages, and I think I once
made some from blueberries instead of lingonberries, so yes, I think I’ll do
just that.”
The next
day, though, I had plans to go to the movies, and it was of extreme importance,
you know, It, so the making of the porridge was delayed, and I found myself desperately
rummaging through the dry-goods cabinet for ingredients on the morning of my
first workday after my days off.
I will now
proceed to relate to you The Story of The Dark Velvet Porridge.
Mealworms.
Oh, foul! Mealworms in my precious semolina container, crawling all over my
darling semolina. So much for vintage containers, for vintage semolina, for
making the porridge. I had to appreciate the It-ness of the discovery, though, or
perhaps, to be more accurate, the Poltergeist-ness of it; remember the
face-off, or face off, scene in the
bathroom? And the crawling steak?
“Oh,
gross!” I exclaimed, out loud, and tossed not only the mealwormy contents of
the container, but the contents of every single other container as well from
that cupboard, everything that wasn’t sealed. And the pretty vintage jar? To
the flea market pile, thank you very much.
I hurried
outside, taking out the thrash while I went shopping for fresh semolina for the
dish. I rushed back inside, opened the paper package just to make sure the
lightning wasn’t striking twice on the same morning, and started preparing the
dish.
The amount
of berries was so huge, I had to add more than two liters of water just to
balance the scale even a little, so of course the concoction took almost an
hour to start boiling, and when it did, I had to stand next to the kettle the
whole time to make sure the dark red liquid didn’t spill all over my pristine
kitchen, making it look like Beverly Marsh’s bathroom after the gory visit from
It from the drain in the sink.
Having
boiled the berries in water successfully for fifteen minutes, I sifted the mush
from the liquid. I had to be creative in finding a dish large enough hold that
much of something, so I ended up using the big glass salad bowl, thinking it
was going to break from the extreme heat of the stuff. I placed the bowl in the
sink to minimize the possible damage, but managed to soak both of my oven mitts
anyway, when the black currant juice naturally overflowed as I was pouring and
trying to mind my bare arms from burning in the hot vapor rising from the
kettle.
Luckily,
the glass bowl did not break. The thing about black currants, though, is that
once you’ve got some on somewhere, it will never ever come off. So, to the
garbage with the oven mitts after I had returned the liquid into the kettle and
put it back on the burner. I was cutting it dangerously close now, so I had to
whip the porridge right after I had hastily prepared it, not bothering to whisk
the semolina into the liquid but instead just mixing it robustly with my giant
porridge-making ladle. Salt, where are the beaters, apron in case of a catastrophe,
okay. Now, everyone knows the Cloudy Dream Porridge needs to cool for a couple of hours before whipping, but I needed to go, I was going to be late
from work, so I figured, this time I’ll just bend the rules a little.
I sort of
noticed while whipping the porridge, that while the color was gorgeous,
exquisite purple, the substance didn’t seem to thicken at all. Well, I’ll just
put it in the fridge at work, I figured, it’ll thicken when I get it in a cold place.
I poured
the Dark Velvet Porridge into the biggest Tupperware container I own, lifted
the thing in a tote bag after lining it with plastic bags in case of a
catastrophe, and rushed outside. I walked a brisk pace towards the bus stop,
noticing when almost there, that the bus was already pulled over at the stop,
ready to take off. I darted into a laborious run, the humongous Tupperware dish
clomping against my calves, the liquid sloshing and the contents weighing me
down. This is the reason I never have to join the gym I thought while galloping
straight through a puddle of mud, dirtying and wetting my poor white and pink
Adidas trainers completely, so that when I was barely in time to get in the bus
and was examining the damage in my seat, the trainers truly looked as if I had
been down to the sewers, ankle-deep in, you know, shit, searching for It.
I arrived
at work, and immediately put the food in the fridge, and after four or five
hours, took it out again, this time to eat.
Not only
had the porridge not thickened at all, because I had grossly miscalculated the
amount of semolina needed for the dish, but I had also forgotten sugar
altogether, and what I had here was an enormous two-liter Tupperware container
of beautiful burgundy-toned black currant kissel, very very healthy because it
had no sugar, but practically inedible because it tasted like black currant
concentrate. If Plato had been there in the kitchen with me, he would have
marveled happily at how the taste was that of pure black currant, the very essence, The Idea of black currant.
What can I
say, it was horrible. But no way was I tossing the stuff, I had gone through so
much trouble making it, ruining my morning and my oven mitts and my trainers
while at it, so I just decided to bite the bullet. I ate the soup, cringing,
twice that day, and the next morning, I came in early so I could pop by a
grocery store to get something to add in, anything to take the edge off. I
bought cottage cheese for when I would eat the kissel as lunch, and unflavored
yoghurt for when I would have some as a snack.
The entire
weekend I kept relating the story about the making of the amazing sugar free,
invisible semolina Dark Velvet Porridge to anybody who was willing enough to
listen, and because I had it with me the whole time since the surface of the
kissel never seemed to lower at all no matter how much I drank it, the effect
was uncanny.
“Oh my god
this is horrible”, I would iterate to Hanks as he was making his own hotdog lunch
right behind me, or “I’m gonna go have some of my terrible, useless, pointless,
but not tasteless, porridge
masquerading as kissel”, to Roberts who was having pork with rice and some
salad behind the soda fountain. “I’m going to be eating this shit until hell
freezes over”, I would tell Norton, who was hearing all about it for the
umpteenth time, “Or, at least till Tuesday, when I leave for my days off and
get to press the old eject button on this godawful crap that looks like
blood anyway.”
“You know,
if I add enough of this cottage cheese, it isn’t half bad really,” I told Roberts
Saturday evening, while she was trying to hide from me and my porridge story
this time behind a mountain of freshly washed mugs and glasses. “You gotta see
the color, man, it looks like marble when I mix it with this white yogurt”, I
told Norton as I urged him to come check out my lunch, eating it this time from
a small white bowl we usually use to showcase different colored sprinkles out
front.
Sunday, as
I passed Hanks on my way to the locker room after once again eating some more of
what I was by then in my mind referring to as Richard’s mother’s Turtle Neck Soup, in
honor of Gilmore Girls, and, of course, It, by proxy, I told him “With the natural yoghurt, the kissel really
isn’t so terrible after all.” And as I was having some Sunday evening, to Norton:
“You know how I said I’m never making this again? Perhaps I shouldn’t have
spoken so hastily. It really grows on you. Come check out the colors!”
“You know,
I’m good, I saw the colors yesterday, and also Friday, remember?”
“Yeah,
yeah, I do. But you know, this stuff, get the health nuts in on this, I’ll make
a fortune.”
“It is
interesting. Friday you were hating it and you should have seen your face when
you ate it. Now, look at you! Go Mrs. Dalloway!”
“I know!
It’s like, I don’t know, she’s not my little girl anymore. You know, from mealworms
to forgetting the sugar to enjoying the mistake. In Murder, She Wrote there’s
this hilarious line that Parker Stevenson says, guest starring in one of the
episodes. I’ve been thinking about it the whole weekend, every time I’ve ladled
this stuff in a bowl. ‘Me? I’ve just had a quart of bourbon, and a pound of
butter to stay sober. It’s an old trick my father taught me.’”
But Norton
was already gone and I was talking to myself.
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