The lessons we learn in the kitchen, with its hearty smells of home, are lessons that can set us up for a taste of the good life.
My mother taught me how to cook. When I was 10 years old, she stopped packing my school lunches and made me help her in the kitchen at night. Understandable, as there were only two of us in the house.
She taught me all the best recipes: pasta with pan-fried courgette, lemon and garlic, brown rice and lentils, chickpea curry, arabiatta – recipes that were easy to cook, cheap and impressive despite their humble ingredients. On the small electric stove under the staircase, I began to experiment. Sauces and marinades, caramelised onions and roasted vegetables.
Often these experiments would go awry and my grandma would fill the silence that settled over the dry, yet undercooked chicken with complements about how well steamed the cauliflower was. But more often the sound of knives scraping on plates and uninterrupted chewing would fill me with pride.
My grandmother’s table was also the setting of the Jewish feasts in which we took part. The Seder meal, the eight days of Chanukah, Shabbat. Their kitchen had a heartier smell to it, even though it was often just as uncoordinated as my mother’s. Perhaps this was because the Hebraic soul-food prepared there was less decadent than the rich Italian and Indian cuisine favoured by her daughter.
My school lunches were less exciting, made at the crack of dawn before the early morning swims at Fish Hoek Beach, arriving battered and often unrecognisable after the frantic sprint for the train. Many mornings I would succumb to the old standards of peanut butter sandwiches or matzo with butter and cheese, although I would quickly tire of these.
Looking into my school bag was a horror in itself, crumpled bits of paper and dry ballpoint pens and books that were bent and torn. Perhaps this chaos was also part of her.
She made me spend an hour doing some kind of craft for every hour spent playing videogames. Collage and poetry, tie-dying clothes, making birthday cards and small gifts. She gave me her little point-and-shoot camera when she bought herself a DSLR, and I spent hours with it, taking it along on family outings and walks around the neighbourhood.
I grew up in a quiet part of the city, a small suburb close to the sea where the concrete walls and overgrown parks spoke of a people whose lives were focused more on the utilitarian rather than the aesthetically pleasing. My mother kept the outside influences out and her inspiration came from the ocean and the arum lilies, the mountains and the brick streets.
But with the turn of the decade more and more people started moving in and the once quiet streets became crowded with traffic. Small daily rituals became the only way to preserve the silence, both within and without. The pre-sunrise water, wet socks and salty skin would accompany me on the long train ride to school – a time when I could sit with my thoughts and watch the world go by. The head of an only child is always full of daydreams.
At this point we were staying in a small flat, and while I completed my homework I’d watch her cook as the room began to fill with the aromas of frying onion and mince, tomato and red wine. We’d head to the grocers every few days and I was always captivated by the colourful array of spices, all in little bags decorated with dusty yellow labels and strange names.
Now I was taller and lankier and my hair was full of curls, and I’d spend more and more evenings with people my own age. I met a girl who could bake and she began to teach me how to create tartlets, cheesecake and crème-brûlée. We wrote each other song-lists and little notes on exam pad paper, exchanged between classes. Of course we fell in love.
Almost two years ago, my mother started a small juice-bar in the green, forested suburb of Noordhoek. We started with simple recipes at our kitchen table – fruit pulp and a noisy old machine – but with the help of some family friends we found ourselves a Wendy house in a veggie garden at the base of Chapman’s Peak.
Here I have met so many people living so many interesting lives. Photographers and pastry chefs, authors and travellers – all tell me their stories in the garden, sipping juice out of repurposed jars. Earthy beetroot and crisp green apple. Every day I spend here I feel I’m coming closer and closer to embarking on my own journey.
Now I find myself, 19 years old, living mostly on my own. I still cook food for my mom when I see her, spending an afternoon in her small wooden cabin preparing an ambitious curry or making pancakes on Sunday morning while listening to music, rolling cigarettes and consuming endless cups of tea. She paints on the stoep while I noodle around on the guitar. We swap jackets and shirts from time to time. We teach each other new things. We share the homes we’ve created.
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