[Miscellany]

The first thing you see is blue on blue. A cloudless sky resting atop a line of deep indigo on the horizon. The sun is already burning a red line across your bare skin; where you couldn't quite reach to put the sunscreen properly. A thin film of sweat collects at the nape of your neck. You breathe in the waves and swat at the flies before making your way down the hill to the sand. Do you want an ice-cream now or later? your companion muses while looking hungrily at the van. Can't we do both? you laugh back.

The bathing boxes are lined up like soldiers at the ready for a gay mardi gras parade. You can hear the delighted squeals of small children no doubt wearing hats that are much too big and being taunted by splashes of water. This makes you smile as you remember countless summers spent by the water. Your mind goes back in time almost 20 years to your dad dripping freezing cold water onto your back while you sunbaked, purposely trying to annoy you. These memories make you smile now. They didn't back then.

You hoist the umbrella up under your arm with effort (everything takes effort on a day already hitting 30 degrees before 10am) and take those first tentative steps across the hot sand. A scratchy towel, under the other arm is already throwing you off balance and you falter a little, tipping dangerously to one side. Walking on sand involves feeling like one is temporarily drunk. Finding the right spot is an art. Private but close to the water, sandy but not shelly, away from the freaks playing with a ball (who ARE these people that do this?) and enough room to have a conversation without being overheard.

With the umbrella erected and tilted, the picnic rug spread and the towels positioned just right you peel back your clothes and sigh backwards onto your towel. "A" pulls back the lid on a container to reveal a bunch of crispy green grapes, nectarines, watermelon and ripe strawberries. You take a strawberry and enjoy its sweet coolness across your lips. A perfect beach breakfast. You smile, engaging in a cheerful conversation that soon dies away as the sun sends you both into drowsy silence.

You close your eyes and hear the sounds of the beach all around you. Cheery laughter, sunscreen bottles clicking closed, a shuffling of feet close by, occasional outbursts of loud laughter and the heavy splashes of people frolicking in the waves. You open one eye and peer at the middle aged Greek ladies proudly displaying their slight ponches and legs complete with a touch of cellulite. They laugh and recount stories in their own language while sunning themselves. You notice they're set up for the whole day. Food, and drinks, books and sunscreen - everything a close knit group of friends will need. You know they won't hit the books, they've got too much to talk about. You grin to yourself. You much prefer these real creatures of life and laughter to the gaggle of silent but deadly young things further down who look like they've had one too many days in the sun and are much too conscious of looking the part of the beach-goer. Give it a rest girls, this ain't LA you think.

The best part of the afternoon ticks by as you doze, and talk and imagine and sigh. The water feels like a silky awakening and you are christened by a new feeling of contentment. Hallelujah! And under you go again.

By the time you both pack away the makeshift picnic the beach dwellers have tripled. The sand is a patchwork of gaudy tends and Pisa tilted umbrellas. Making your way back to the car is always a challenge with your head weighted with daydreams as it is today. You smell a little bit like cocoa butter and sunscreen, ice-cream and sand all mixed together with a pinch of salt. It's a nice smell. You smell like summer.

Labels: breakfast, endless summer lift the curse, friends, holiday, lazy holiday, peaceful, real women

posted by M at 8:58 pm 17 comments

Usually on Sunday morning I go out for breakfast (well by the time it happens, it's actually closer to lunch, but who's counting the minutes anyway, punk?). Since I didn't do that this morning I decided to make myself breakfast. That is... make something that wasn't cornflakes. And yes, I DO count cornflakes as cooking, you got a problem with that? I figured, eggs florentine was the go - mostly because that's what I usually have if I'm going out for breaky, also it looked like a harmless meal to make. Bit of egg - more egg on top..bit of muffin...bit or spinach. Easy peasy, Japanesey.

WRONG. HARD! HARD! VERY FUCKING HARD!

I guess my first problem was not actually ever having made a Hollandaise sauce in my life - so I looked it up on the old internet on a site called "reluctant gourmet" and discovered that apparently this sauce is quite a difficult one to master. Pshhhhh! How difficult can it really be to whisk a few egg yolks together? Then as I kept reading I realised that it did actually sound a bit hard. I mean, they had so many specifications like 'make sure the water is simmering not boiling' and that 'the purpose of whisking was not to aerate but to something-something' (lost track a bit). Meh I hate wordy presidential speeches disguised as recipes, so I figured that jumping in feet first would be the way to go. Best not to get bogged down in the specifics of it all.

About half way through desperately trying NOT to aerate the egg yolks and holding a pan of hot butter ready to pour into the mixture my eyes fell upon the part of the recipe that confused me

as you near the milk solids, be at your most diligent not to add too much as the hollandaise is more likely to split at this stage.

HUH?

My eyes go back up to the ingredients. No mention of milk solids there. Was this a trick? A typo? What the fuck is a milk solid anyway? Isn't solid milk a cow? What's cows got to do with it? Why are they mentioning cows all of a sudden? Here, my friends is where I started to panic. Then I read the word Sabayon and lost it. SABAYON? What the fuck? I'm still confused about where I'm going to find a fucking cow in suburbia and reluctant gourmet brings out the Sabayon big guns. The whole thing got me so flustered that my hand "slipped" and the oh so important "steady thin stream" of hot butter turned into a farking waterfall right into the goddamn Sabayon and the hollandaise started to split. The split, according to reluctant gourmet is the most dreaded of all kitchen terms to a chef. Well, THANK YOU!

I looked down at my dreaded split Hollandaise sauce and decided that I was going to whisk the shit out of it and keep on going anyway! I am a trooper dammit and I want eggs florentine for breakfast. I am the breakfast MASTER! The excessive whisking was burning the hell out of my biceps but the mixture was beginning to gel. Ha! I knew then I didn't need reluctant gourmet telling me what to do. Sabayon my ARSE!

It looked okay so I decided to concentrate on the egg poaching instead. The problem was that I'd never actually poached an egg (successfully) before either. So back to the internet where I found a site that informed me that this was basically a foolproof recipe and reading over it I realised that I could do the gently floating the egg in the water thing. It WAS kind of easy. The only problem was that I had forgotten about my muffins. They needed to be toasted. It took a little while to get that done and then I realised that after cooking spinach it must be strained...so I did that. Meanwhile the eggs have been in the fucking water for so long they've turned completely hard. Then I look down at the Hollandaise and it had split again..

Muffin with soggy spinach, hard boiled egg and split Hollandaise! Yuuuuuuuuuum.

Next week, I'm going out for breakfast!

Labels: best to stick to foods which do not require heating such as icecream, breakfast, crap cook

posted by M at 2:25 pm 17 comments