Meals Moods Moments Memories

I’m sitting in my lounge, looking at long stemmed dark red roses, the blooms opening up already in that particular way that roses do, in a glass vase on my coffee table, and over the way, at another bunch filling an even taller vase on the wooden floor, the beautiful blooms on their hothouse stems reaching beyond the height of my hips. The flowers were a gift from my future mother-in-law, from Toronto, sent via her son. I decided that in stead of a bouquet, I would choose flowers for my house for last night’s birthday party, my much anticipated 50^th.

I am pleased to firstly, report that It Did Not Rain!! Not for the first three or four hours, which meant that the pretty outdoors arrangement of ottomans and kelims and Moroccan lamps and candles and bunches and bunches of red roses on tables laden with food and sparkling wine and tall glimmering glasses could be enjoyed to the full: a visual feast as well as a culinary one. When it started raining later, most guests had already started meandering into the house and the lounge and were listening to my future husband and a fellow saxophonist play soulful jazzy tunes to backing tracks. My singing teacher who is also my fiancee’s good friend had left earlier, but she had brought her keyboard, and in a brave moment, I decided to sing him two songs which I had rehearsed somewhat the week before, to her gorgeous accompaniment, and in front of an appreciative audience of all my very best friends, and some of his.

I had spent the entire day making all the food: with help from a son and a fiancée: it was a veritable production line in this little kitchen! At one point my son was stringing the lamb onto sosatie sticks while me and my lover were rolling falafel dough between sticky palms: all in all I cooked about 150 of those! The babaganoush was great: I charred the skins of the aubergines on the gas flame first a la Nigel Slater, but then reverted to the recipe sent to me, as a scanned document by my almost mother-in-law, which her son scrawled into her recipe book more than 35 years ago after a visit to Israel. You can imagine the fragrances filling the air: cumin, sweet smoky aubergine, orange rind…. My one concession was to buy hummus: I had been over my ears in processing soaked chickpeas, so I decided to run out to my favourite veggie shop which stocks a really good one, and bought several tubs. Drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika and a touch of sumac it was a great time saver.

My first guests, my best friend from Durban and her husband found me, at their early arrival, still in an apron. I have learnt through the years that whatever I am doing at around an hour before, I should interrupt that, and go and get showered and perfumed and dressed and lipsticked up… the apron was slung on over my pretty black dress, and I felt pretty(and witty and gay!!)

When all the guests finally arrived, we gathered for the congratulations and speeches: I had asked my longest standing women friend and male friend to each say something, and then my fiancée spoke too. I stood there, feeling so loved, but more than that, really seen for who I have been these last 50 years and who I am still becoming. I felt utterly blessed with the beauty of the evening and a feeling of connectedness to a small circle of people who have been in my life for years and years: my oldest male friend has been in my life for 45 years: we were little playmates as neighbours..

I had a magical night… and tonight for my actual birthday I am being taken out to a favourite restaurant, the one we got engaged in a couple of months ago: a wonderful finale to a beautiful birthday weekend.

I’m beginning to know why people have their fiftieth birthday parties catered, or at venues and restaurants… so much less organising, and anguishing about whether it will rain or not… as I am at the moment. I am having my party at home, for friends, and I plan to have everything set out outside, in the back courtyard, hopefully under a starry sky. The weather forecast says 39% rain for next Saturday, and if that 39% happens in my suburb, I will be wishing that I’d rather booked a restaurant!

Earlier tonight I sat making a final list of guests (almost everyone on my first list to invite have accepted), and then, on a fresh piece of paper, my final To Do and To Get list. It is a long list. I have decided on a Middle Eastern theme for food. On my list of food ingredients: Chickpeas, lamb, aubergine, lemons, coriander, mint, parsley, cucumber, tomatoes, pita bread, olives, baklava, Turkish delight, almonds, pistacchios…. I brought back two packets of sumac from Paris, not having been able to find that in Jhb earlier when I wanted to make a Lebanese dish… I cannot wait to incorporate that into the fatoush(like panzanella but with toasted pita and a lemon and oil and garlic and sumac dressing) that I will serve alongside heaps of falafel, lamb and chicken kebabs, hummus, babaganoush, with pita.. I am making the falafel myself: I had been doing a bit of a taste test of some places making falafel, but they don’t come close to tasting the way I made them last weekend from a new recipe: with soaked dried chickpeas, not tinned ones, green with herbs, fragrant with spices, a slight chilli pepper bite to them, so I will be at the stove cooking falafel an hour before the guests arrive on Saturday! And then have to jump into the shower to get the frying oil smell out of my hair no doubt before I put on my party dress!

The babaganoush, that wonderful eggplant puree I will make from a recipe my fiancée had brought back from Israel when he was in his early twenties: that at least can be made a day before..

So my list awaits on my desk: a whole A4 page, dense with writing. I am an inveterate list maker. It’s an important part of the ritual of entertaining to me. To first sit and write down ideas for a menu: I usually have two or three options, and often the final choice comes down to who I am inviting. Then, once that is decided, the list becomes more specific: the To Get part first: from flowers and candles to a particular brand of whiskey which a particular guest may prefer… then a To Do part… even obvious things like “pick up ice from bottle store” gets written down. I sound like a super organised person no doubt, and in some ways I am. But this is more about feeling more certain and less anxious than efficiency, I have to confess! Also, I like writing… so sitting doing a list, hearing the scratching of my fountain pen, seeing words appear in neat rows give me immense pleasure.

I have a collection of old shopping lists in several journals and even cookbooks, culled from handbags and purses, some written even on the back of envelopes, or on torn out notepaper, denoting special meals cooked in the past: I can write a book based on those: each a little story… my life measured out in abandoned food shopping lists!

On Saturday I cooked for four women, myself included. It was a rare occasion, women only around my table, in my house. I had not seen any of them for a while: yet, we are very good friends, having known one another for around 20 years. We spoke about how even though there’s been many changes and developments in all our lives, the essential qualities which drew us together all those years ago are still there: as elusive as before…

We stood in the kitchen, talking while I cooked, sipping sparkling wine, each of us aware of the very special connection between us. We did not talk about make-up and men, well, definitely not make-up! The subject of men did creep in, but really only in passing acknowledgement and some teasing around my lover who had in the last week, scribbled schoolboy like, left-handed lines on my blackboard in the kitchen: “I must kiss R”… we are all psychologists, so you can imagine the comments! (or maybe that has nothing to do with it!!)

I cooked that duck-with-five spice-mix again, and noodles. I seem to have now almost perfected it. I should have, since I have cooked it (and blogged about it) a couple of times now: this time for four women, in a kitchen, cooking, talking, laughing, almost crying. Earlier that day I wrote a poem, in memory of my father. I read it to them. There was something almost sacred in that moment, each of these women who know me in their own way, listening quietly, attentively, appreciatively…

Sitting around my table eating and laughing and drinking wine brought another sense of a sacred ritual… later I read up on the significance of the number four from a Jungian perspective (two of these women are training to become Jungian analysts) and an earlier remark about the four diamonds in my new ring pricked my curiosity.

And then, after dinner and coffee and koeksisters which I have been having a little bit of an obsession about lately, I plugged my microphone into the amplifier, and me and one other sang some songs in my candle lit lounge…. until after midnight.

Yes, it was THAT kind of evening. Very special moments and memories created once again around a meal shared….

I woke up this morning, the bedroom dark, but not because it was early still: it was raining softly and low cloud was keeping the early morning light from insistently filtering through my curtains as usual for that time of the day. I lay there listening to the rain and the even breathing of my lover who was still fast asleep, in his favourite sleep position: on his stomach, his face turned to me and an arm half flung across my waist. I didn’t want to move, but eventually my need for a cup of tea had me slip out of bed to the kitchen. I brought my tea back to bed though, and propped up against pillows and cushions reinstated to the bed after being thrown off the bed the night before(some people neatly stack the unused pillows on an ottoman or chair: not me!), I opened my journal and sat writing for about half an hour after I had my tea, wondering if the scratching of my fountain pen on the paper would wake up my lover. It seemed very loud in the quiet of the morning as the rain had stopped. It did, for three seconds: enough for him to whisper “good morning” and go straight back to sleep.

I had woken up remembering that this is my birthday month: I turn 50 at the end of this month, and that means that I will have already lived for 50 years… half a century. So while my journal writing is reserved for non-food related musings, here I can write about thoughts that I have about my 50^th birthday party, which also occupied my mind as I woke up.

I have invited everyone whom I want here: I had decided earlier that I was not going to invite exes, of which I have a few…even though I am on good terms with the father of my children and my second husband…I saw both at my dad’s funeral, even, somewhat bizarrely for the occasion, had a photograph taken there of them and my fiancée and I… but when I drew up the invitation list I suddenly realised that I didn’t want them here: no particular reason… or no clear rational reason… (I know that they may be reading these words, and I hope they understand..)

Some memories of my mother’s 50^th birthday party came up for me: none of the complicated social issues like exes to deal with for her! Her and my father had been married for about 27 years at the time, her oldest daughter, me(bar the 5 minutes with which my twin sister is older) was pregnant with a second child, a heavy sixth month. I remember I wore black leggings and an oversized yellow with big black polka dots top which covered my bottom and my pregnant belly. My mother wore a new silky turquoise blouse, which was bought rather than home sewn, and a calf length black skirt with some pleated detail at the hem,and stockings, and high heeled peep-toed shoes. I think I only remember these details because I have photographs of her at the sink clearing up after her own party probably in stockinged feet and still in her party clothes. There are some pics of me too, scowling at my young husband who was taking photos, feeling uncomfortable with heartburn which I suffered from terribly at the time.

Her party was held at the house where I grew up, a lamb on a spit under a sprawling mulberry tree, a marquee put up against the cool early winter evening. My dad had started the lamb early, hand cranking the rotisserie at regular intervals: nothing like the mechanised contraptions of these days. I remember that he, every so often, sucked up a marinade mix my mother had made into a fat syringe with a thick needle, and proceeded to squirt it into the lamb with aplomb and obvious glee, while he sipped his brandy and coke, standing around the spit with some of the other men, drinking the same ubiquitous Afrikaner drink of the time(for men: the women were maybe having careful white wine spritzers). Needless to say, the meat was tender and tasty. I cannot remember what else was on the menu: probably a favourite potato dish my mom used to make: a bake with onion soup and butter and cream I think, probably a green salad..definitely not garlic bread: my father detested that… I simply can’t remember. But I do remember my grandmother’s face as she sat with her arms folded across her big breasts as her son toasted his 50 year old wife: it suddenly was clear to me that my beloved gran was envious of my mother and the love my dad had for her… no ex husband dynamics, but dynamics nevertheless. My own mother had neither her parents there: they had died years before. But her sisters and brother and in-laws were all there, and friends from work and colleagues of my father and of course, her children, only me and my sister married at the time.

I won’t have either of my parents at my 50^th either, nor any other family really. See, I share a birthday with a non-identical twin, and I had months ago decided that I wanted my own party, even though I guess it is somewhat tradition and expected to have a joint big birthday party… I suggested when we spoke about it that we each have our own party for friends whom we share none of, and the next day have a big lunch for family… I don’t know yet what she has decided to do. We live such different lives in different places..

I am not completely sure yet whether I will have a very long table set beautifully, seating the 35 people I expect, with a side table from where each can help themselves to food and drinks, or several smaller, low tables and chairs to lounge in and food for fingers set out in platters..

I suppose my menu will decide that: if I go with a Middle Eastern theme, which I am considering, it will definitely be the latter… I plan to cater myself, even though it may be madness. I’ve been to several 50ths where the evening is catered and waiters carry continuous platters with exotic finger food to delight in… very sophisticated and smooth and sexy. I thought about doing that too: having outside caterers, but somehow it’s not quite my style, or maybe it’s my ego, wanting all the accolades for the food!

But I am going to have live music: my lover having agreed to play a song or two on his sax, and lots of lanterns in trees, and chandeliers with candles, and good sparkling wine, and white linen napkins…

And I will make a speech. And I will cry, missing my mother and my father. And I will stand there feeling blessed, with people I love and with whom I’ve shared significant moments in my life…