A Year of Improvising
At my table there are at least ten notebooks. Each one testament to a casual moment where I flipped one open to scribble something down. One that became notes on Italy, the brown visual diary, a nice one to lie flat for art notes or images, the blue one with black binding for notes on life goals. Scrawled lines, black marks, ticked sentences, notations in the margins, long sentences I can barely read, scrawled, etched, highlighted, crossed out, words and more words. Typical journal writer I cannot read my own writing. I open to the middle of the notebook I see the sentence ‘A Year of Improvising’…..
I see there is a spontaneous musing on simple ingredients, the virtues of planting more trees to create some consumer credits for my imported Italian wines and those Rega and Mucci tomatoes that are so good. It’s not my fault if the Italians do it better. I am mindful of buying local, eating local and Australian made, but I cannot get to Italy and they make me happy.
A year of improvising is that a life goal, a way to live, a virtue? I am often caught between simplicity, hedonism and flights of fancy.
When I grocery shop I look for Australian made, however sometimes I am lured by those pretty tins I like to keep lined up on the window sill in my laundry by Annalisa, I get sidetracked sometimes. I imagine I will plant basil in them knowing how completely useless that idea is as basil likes lots of water and a bigger pot is necessary. Otherwise the tins are good for paint brushes, plants cuttings that works too.
It stops there and then I see I have taken notes from Richard Olney’s Simple French Food. He reminds me that I need to get a Bay Tree. A wise suggestion for the kitchen garden. He mentions Laurus nobilis, yes noble bay tree. My last one got hit by frost or the position was just not sunny enough and died of neglect. I will try again. Us gardeners we do not give up.
I like the beginning of his book, it makes me smile. He begins a chapter on 1. Simple Food and 2. Thoughts on Improvising.
Really that sums up my whole life however after reading the chapter, he submits to the fact that one cannot exactly suggest to improvise in a cookbook, is too varying, too vague for each individual and depends on ability and intuition.
The other day I had a dream. I was told I was an artist not a scientist. I woke up thinking to myself what, I know that but what exactly is the science detail symbolic of? After all a dream is just a clue to something more. The only science I think I do is perhaps food science. Is it my dream telling me I need to paint more and cook less (I do have a talent for domestic life), or is it just to accept the fact that I am living the tempestuous artists life, not a life of objectivity, but subjectivity.
I tell Rich about the dream some weeks later. We are driving to see the film The Truffle Hunters.
He tells me, well of course you always use your intuition and scientists rely on facts. Shell, when do you read the instructions for something? Hmm he has a point but…. I remind him I do actually read recipes, but only once. Unless it is very good, like Simca’s cake, the chocolate one La Diabolo from Simca’s Cuisine that I will follow to the gram. But that is unusual for me. I continue to mull over it, like why would I have a dream to give me this information when I know this?
La Diabolo from Simca, this cake is very, very good in fact don’t event bother making anything else there is no point….
Back to Olney, perhaps you have to know the rules to break the rules. Of course we are all doing our best with what we know and what we don’t know. But I do like the idea of it no less. He says, “Improvisation is at war with the printed word. It either defies analysis or, in accepting it, finds its wings clipped”. Yes, I have to admit most of the recipes I once tried when either Richard or Maddy asked to make a particular dish, I have to then stop and give them notes on what I changed and why. It is a minefield this cookery business, like the gardening thing, one shall not give up…
Here she is, the bay tree I finally replaced, a wholesome beauty in terracotta pot.