I haven’t eaten a proper meal at home for almost 4 weeks. Nor have I been to the supermarket to buy more than milk and the occasional coca-cola. My fridge is a sad state of affairs and yet I am happier than ever. Taking into account my gross tendency to exaggerate but I sun-woozily told my flatmate the other day that this is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Maybe it’s the start of summer. Maybe it’s not being confined to an office job. Maybe it’s dressing up as a chef each day, fulfilling my Big Cook Little Cook fantasy. Maybe it’s the amount of butter that I’m eating. But it is feeling significantly easier to find small moments of joy in the quotidian.
Unbounded joy sounds like a phrase from a hymn or the bible but the idea of unrestrained elation is a nice one to hold onto. The past week has bestowed many a moment of this sneaky joy:
Fête de la musique is one of the most joyful days in the French calendar. The celebration of music. An audible moment of frenetic energy buzzing throughout the city. Each street corner comes alive in its own way, providing brass bands, techno, jazz, Cardi B, and anything else you’re looking for. The key to success on this day is to keep yourself flexible, too much rigidity in your plans and you’ll miss the merry minutiae. I had a cocktail this night that tasted like tzatziki in a very delicious, if unnerving, way.
With the debut of summer and the glimpses of sunshine that we are profiting from, comes the event of the year — the arrival of tomatoes (tomatoes that actually have flavour). June is tomato month in France but with luck and global warming the juicy season should last until September. To get the best out of your tomatoes, you gotta salt ‘em. Roughly or beautifully chop your tomatoes, depending on your final presentation desire, chuck into a sieve, and heavily salt. Leave them to drain some juices into the sink and what you’ll be left with are tomatoes sans the wateriness, pure tom flavour.
Achieving something that has previously felt out of reach or unattainable brings its own sense of joy and that came last week in the form of fish. I have always found fish really difficult to cook, let alone prepare. I was a pescatarian for many years but that didn’t aid my fish phobia. The extent of my pescy prep included salmon parcels in the oven and fish fingers wraps. The past two weeks at school, however, we have been going ham on fish. Full, head-on fish, de-boning, gutting, filleting, marinading, cooking, eating. It is now possible to say that I am maybe getting the hang of it. Sole meunière, sea bream with quenelle potatoes, monkfish with courgette ceviche and saffron aioli. Pretty happy with the new repertoire.
Pride and joy and the joy at Pride. My mum has been visiting this weekend for Mia’s graduation, which in itself is a joyous moment. We enjoyed a lazily long lunch at Grand Coeur with very fresh and summery dishes, despite the temperamental weather on Saturday. On our convoluted walk home, we arrived at Bastille where the annual Pride march was beginning to disperse leaving a trail of glitter and glee in its wake. The yearly celebration has the Midas touch, bringing nothing but light and life to everything and everyone it passes.
But as always, with great highs come great lows and I wouldn’t be able to write this weekend without mentioning the devastating blow for freedom that women have recently endured in the US. It is a maddening prospect that a right so fiercely protected in so many places has been stripped away in the ‘land of the free’. The gravity of the situation is stomach turning, like the feeling of a Drop’n’Smile ride at the fair, except you keep dropping and there is nothing to smile about. America has always been somewhat of a life-goal, one day I’ll move to New York or Boston. I’ll realise my Mary-Kate and Ashley dream by rollerskating down Venice beach. But now the dream has become more of a gruelling nightmare.
Our minds and screens have been flooded this weekend with reminders of why the right to a safe abortion is imperative to protect but if you have found the influx of information overwhelming, I implore you to read Jia Tolentino’s piece for the New Yorker, which explains the devastating effect that this will have on marginalised women from Black and Indigenous backgrounds. This ripple will be felt in decades to come. Living in a part of the world where, fortunately, this right for us is protected, we need to grasp onto it fiercely, like we grasp the women in our lives.
What to cook when you can’t get your mind off the bad news
Anything from a jar will help you when the effort in the kitchen is just that little…bit…too…much.
A jar of white beans, or chickpeas, drained and slowly heated with parmesan and black pepper. Mashed onto toast and slicked with good olive oil
If that is too much, the real deal Heinz is, of course, an option
Crispy chilli oil that comes in a jar can be the main component of your meal. White rice, one fried egg, vibrant red oil. As comforting as it is simple
Peanut butter by the spoonful out of the jar
Jam and bread with tea alla Julie Andrews
Important Shopping list for you
The Blanket Statement from Semaine and Jemima Kirke supporting Planned Parenthood NY
To watch on repeat until you don’t get goosebumps (took me 5 repeats)
Great tomato tips 🙏🏻
Read the article in New Yorker … it’s shocking but we all need to know the raw facts