Essential Ingredients, a first novel by Bauermeister, is about a chef named Lillian and her eight students who gather at her restaurant once a month for a cooking class. Lillian, like Chuck, tends not to use recipes, and she uses her cooking to elicit good experiences for those who eat her food. With bits of magic realism tucked in here and there, the book is slightly reminiscent of Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate.
Here’s one of the many passages that made me think of Chuck:
Lillian looked out at her class, at Claire’s hair, still tousled from her baby’s exuberant good-bye, Antonia’s sleek black work blazer, Tom’s business shirt, rumpled at the end of a long day.
“It’s not always easy to slow our lives down. But just in case we need a little help, we have a natural opportunity, three times a day, to relearn the lesson.”
“Food?” Ian suggested with a grin.
“What a lovely idea,” Lillian responded.
Chuck is able to achieve a kind of slow-the-day-down, present-moment mindfulness with his cooking. I hit it sometimes with drawing or writing. How do you slow down the day?
By the way, the azaleas in Shreveport were amazing this week.
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