Photo by Gaelle Marcel
Salt and Honey: A Recipe
Leah Rogin
Ingredients
Fear, grief, love, illness, gratefulness, rage
A bit of vegetables, a bit of pasta, mushrooms, divided
An old freezer-burned chicken breast and/or a leftover hotdog and/or the vegan meatballs still in the freezer from the month your daughter tried to be
a vegetarian.
Crumpled packets of Parmesan cheese, hot sauce, ketchup
First: Gather yourself. Make menus for the week, make substitutions, make sure nothing goes to waste. Do the things you do to cope. Wash, chop, stir. Stay away from screens. Lock yourself in the bathroom to cry so tears don’t contaminate. That salt leaves a bad flavor.
Gather the ingredients, which is harder than it used to be, but not as hard as it will become. A handful of any pasta plus any protein plus all the vegetables you can find frozen dregs of.
As long as there’s salt. Soy sauce will do. Find packets shoved in the drawers of your fridge. Fast-food ketchup or salted butter.
Second: Shuck the ingredients from their packaging with minimal touch. Scrub remaining packages and bags in a properly diluted bleach solution. Soak everything in bleach for good measure.
And then you wash your hands. Wash your hands like a prayer to science, like your faith in hot water and a good lather is what will save us all.
Third: Separate the ingredients into individual pans, cooking each mushroom in its own tiny pot because separation has become crucial. Eventually, you have thirty-seven separate dishes, though there are only four burners on your stove, something about the endless movement of the pans is soothing, now.
Everyone washes their hands. No one has left the house for forty-one days and forty days is an official quarantine, but still, everyone washes their hands.
Fourth: Mix the cooked ingredients together. Separation is not so important after all. Divide them, again, between four. Leave space for ghosts. Be thankful if there is skin you can touch.
Fifth: There will be one moment in the meal when you forget everything. Savor the second on your tongue, let it slip down your throat. These seconds will be what sustains.
Sixth: Count your cans. Feel lucky there are cans to count. Organize your dried fruit, think about the people you miss and how hugging felt. Dust your tuna fish. Prepare the next meal.
As long as there’s salt, as long as there’s honey.
Leah Rogin
Ingredients
Fear, grief, love, illness, gratefulness, rage
A bit of vegetables, a bit of pasta, mushrooms, divided
An old freezer-burned chicken breast and/or a leftover hotdog and/or the vegan meatballs still in the freezer from the month your daughter tried to be
a vegetarian.
Crumpled packets of Parmesan cheese, hot sauce, ketchup
First: Gather yourself. Make menus for the week, make substitutions, make sure nothing goes to waste. Do the things you do to cope. Wash, chop, stir. Stay away from screens. Lock yourself in the bathroom to cry so tears don’t contaminate. That salt leaves a bad flavor.
Gather the ingredients, which is harder than it used to be, but not as hard as it will become. A handful of any pasta plus any protein plus all the vegetables you can find frozen dregs of.
As long as there’s salt. Soy sauce will do. Find packets shoved in the drawers of your fridge. Fast-food ketchup or salted butter.
Second: Shuck the ingredients from their packaging with minimal touch. Scrub remaining packages and bags in a properly diluted bleach solution. Soak everything in bleach for good measure.
And then you wash your hands. Wash your hands like a prayer to science, like your faith in hot water and a good lather is what will save us all.
Third: Separate the ingredients into individual pans, cooking each mushroom in its own tiny pot because separation has become crucial. Eventually, you have thirty-seven separate dishes, though there are only four burners on your stove, something about the endless movement of the pans is soothing, now.
Everyone washes their hands. No one has left the house for forty-one days and forty days is an official quarantine, but still, everyone washes their hands.
Fourth: Mix the cooked ingredients together. Separation is not so important after all. Divide them, again, between four. Leave space for ghosts. Be thankful if there is skin you can touch.
Fifth: There will be one moment in the meal when you forget everything. Savor the second on your tongue, let it slip down your throat. These seconds will be what sustains.
Sixth: Count your cans. Feel lucky there are cans to count. Organize your dried fruit, think about the people you miss and how hugging felt. Dust your tuna fish. Prepare the next meal.
As long as there’s salt, as long as there’s honey.