For The Love Of Food

Nine weeks, twenty photo shoots, sixteen interviews and enough food to feed a small village. The first stage of The Weekend Chef's debut cookbook - For The Love Of Food - is done. All that’s left is to slap the gorgeous pictures and stories onto the appropriate pages, publish it and wait for the stampede. In other words, the real work is only just beginning. But it’s been a wild and wonderful ride so far.

True to form, The Weekend Chef once again laid out a platform where people, whose paths would ordinarily never have crossed, reached across plates of food to form unexpected kinships with each other. As the food warmed our hearts and tummies, it also melted away our reservations. By the third shoot, we were sashaying into the chefs’ houses like we owned them. In between setting up the lights and lifting lids off pans, we brought each other up to date on our lives as hot cups of coffee and tea were handed around. At the first click of the shutter, the room instantly became charged with creativity, intensity, drollery and of course, the obligatory squabbles. And four hours later, everyone plopped around the dining table plowing their way through a very deserving feast. But not every shoot revolved around the same storyline. Some - three to be exact – had a touch of drama that we (and the chef concerned) will always remember.

The first took place at Zakri’s apartment. We were gushing over the view from his balcony, when the sky suddenly clouded over and a strange wind blew. Our arms became speckled with tiny pearly drops.

“Going to rain,” we said to each other wisely, and retreated into the apartment. Within minutes, the light drizzle turned into a howling freak storm. The stunning view slowly disappeared behind a white curtain of raindrops and the cacophony of doors slamming began. Zakri’s front door flew open and it took three of us to push it shut. His bamboo blinds were ripped off the balcony and his huge flowerpots crashed to the ground. Fearing for the life of the dancing cushions on the loveseat, Zakri slid open the balcony door and dashed outside to retrieve them. The fury of the wind that forced its way through the gap, had us all yelling and jumping to hold down our camera equipment. But sliding the door shut posed another threat. The wind pummeled the glass so angrily, that most of us were ducking behind furniture to avoid any flying shards of glass. Then just as sudden as it began, it stopped and a calm descended upon the neighbourhood. We surveyed the destruction and proceeded to soothe our nerves by digging into the food.

The second freak incident took place in Candice’s house, albeit on a smaller scale. Less than five minutes after we arrived, the downpour began and one magnificent flash of lightening plunged the house into darkness. Flipping the main switch back on again, we discovered that one of our lights had gone into shock. All forms of resuscitation proved useless. Yan Sean stared helplessly at the remaining light, then bravely decided to soldier on. The shoot turned out pretty well considering this little handicap and we joked that if there was ever a third water-related incident, we were officially jinxed. We spoke too soon.

A week later, we were making our way to Tricia’s service apartment with the sun blazing above us. According to Enid Blyton, it won’t rain if there’s enough blue in the sky to make a sailor’s trousers. Well, on that afternoon there was enough blue to make trousers for a whole platoon. When we arrived, all the food was ready except the bread and the toppings. Perfect, we cried, indulging in happy visions of returning home early that day. Then Fate gatecrashed the party. We were in the midst of shooting Tricia wearing the TWC apron when a loud rushing sound of water came from her bathroom. A pipe above her bathroom had burst and water was pouring from the ceiling. Tricia shut the door and serenely said, “I’ll call maintenance.”

While waiting for her to return, we laughed about our jinxed shoots. Suddenly, one of us noticed water creeping into the living room. A peep into her bedroom revealed that the bathroom had drowned and the rest of the apartment was about to follow suit. Shrieking in panic, we snatched our equipment off the floor, piled them up on the dining table and watched the snaking water in horrified fascination. To cut a long story short, maintenance took control of the situation and we were offered another service apartment for our shoot.

Thankfully, that was the last of our watery escapades. From then on, the shoots progressed without a hitch. Perhaps it’s true what they say about ‘bad luck’ coming in threes. But we solemnly swear that should you decide to contribute to our future books, we will mandi bunga before setting food in your home.

Pictures documenting the disasters can be viewed on the website. Slide your cursor across the door picture for some action.

Golden Book

I recently read a literary gem. Devoured four hundred and forty six pages in just over twenty-four hours. The sun rose and set. I didn’t notice. I was drunk on the beautiful prose unraveling the story of one person’s life – a person I never imaged could touch me so deeply. When I turned the last page, I sat in stillness for a while, soaking in the afterglow of a truly great book. I wanted to tell everyone about it, but it is only a month later that I’m finally writing this review.

Goldie Hawn’s A Lotus Grows In The Mud is not a biography detailing the dizzyingly inane highs and lows of life in Hollywood. In fact, it only makes the briefest mention of her movies and that too, in relation to the lessons she has gleaned from the experience. This book is a personal and deep reflection on the life of a woman who is journeying through her life with her eyes and heart wide open. It’s raw honesty and it touched me to the very core. She shares her wisdom without sounding the least bit preachy, her sense of humour with every intention at laughing at herself and her compassion in the hope of giving her readers an ‘aha’ moment. The writing, the work of both Hawn and Wendy Holden, a journalist with the Daily Telegraph is as moving as the story itself. It’s like eating a warm moist chocolate cake that gets richer with every bite.

"Each of us goes through transitions and transformations," Hawn writes in the preface to A Lotus Grows in the Mud. "The important thing is that we acknowledge them and learn from them. That is the idea behind this book. Not to tell my life story, but to speak openly and from the heart."

A Lotus Grows In The Mud left me satiated for a long time after I slipped it into my bookshelf. Even as I write this now, I keep looking over my shoulder at it and feel the irresistible urge to plunge into its pages all over again.

Three's Company

More Flash Fiction came in last week. Aplogies to the authors for posting them up so late. It's been a crazy week! So here are delicious little bites by Thaatchaayini, Jane Sunshine and Rafleesia. Oh, and the title of Jane's piece is named 'Untitled' because it doesn't have a title. :)

Smitha
By Thaatchaayini Kananatu

She stood in front of him, a golden goddess - shapely like a curvaceous Sarawakian clay vase, skin as creamy as rich coconut sweets - draped in delicate lavender silk. Her almond eyes watched him as he writhed nervously. With each flutter of her wing-like lashes, his heart skipped many beats.

Mesmerized by the sparkly diamond between her brows, matched only by green emerald pupils, Joe stood in a trance. She soothed him with Arabic prose. He eased. Her ebony hair flowed like a luxurious horsetail as she swooshed around the room like a fleeting nymph. On her silky drape, tiny mirrors shimmered like an embroidery of prism-dreams.

He garnered his scattered courage and reached out with trembling masculine arms, a sacred ochre string coiled around his wrist. Gingerly stroking her arms and holding her petite waist kindly, he whispered.

“Smitha.”

Somewhere, a mellow music played - embraced with the lament of violins and soft beats of a drum. Suddenly gaining momentum, staccatos becoming louder and obnoxious, graduating into accelerated drumbeats pounding like wild African tribes. Then, a rough mannish voice echoing.

“Joe!”

Smitha’s slender waist dissolved into a humid incense-filled smoke and reappeared a sari-clad tree trunk. Her smooth youthful face transformed into a wrinkled turmeric-yellow facade with an enormous red spot on a crinkled forehead. Her heavenly arms no longer draped around Joe’s neck like a luscious scarf; instead flabby short arms waved at him.

Joe shrieked like a sacrificial goat at a Kali temple.

“Do you know what the time is?” yelled the irate face.

Joe – trembling with aftershocks – opened his eyes wide to the rude awakening.

“Breakfast is ready,” said Joe’s mother.

As she closed the door behind her, a luscious figure reappeared. Smitha – flat - on a movie poster.


Untitled
By Jane Sunshine
By evening, she was in love again. Not quite but mostly yes. Let us meet all over again, she must tell him. The planets would have moved to new astrological signs and may bode better things for their destinies. Surely time will pocket the aching residue of all the bruises? She sat waiting.

He was tired. Striding up her limbs, he groped with clumsy familiarity. The cold beer and tobacco slithered down her spine as the lazy sensitivities of her skin stirred.

In a few hours, she will open the front door for the morning newspaper and start breakfast.


Mary Jane’s Shoes
By Rafleesia

Her red, red hair trailed behind her like the coloured streamers of a pom pom in mid celebration. She flew higher into the air. Up, up, up, the swing carried her.

Shrieks of laughter erupted as her white chubby thighs wobbled, her polka dotted skirt flapping up and down in sync with the motion of the swing. Shoes were kicked off gaily in upswing - red little jellies that sparkled like rubies in the sun landing at the edge of the garden where the mowed lawn ended and the great redwoods began.

She leaned her weight back so that her hair swept the ground like a broom. Knuckles white as she clutched the yellow painted metal chain that kept her head from scraping the bottom.

“Mommy! Mommy”, she laughed “Look at me!”

“Mary Jane!” Mommy answered from inside the candy-blue house. “Come in and wash your hands at once!”

Mary Jane, obedient to the very fibre of the silk ribbons in her hair waited slowly for the swing to slow its dance and before she herself danced into the house. Humming Pat A Cake as she went.

From beyond the trees, it watched silently with ragged breath. For that was what it had become. The soil underneath escaping with each rushed exhale.

It watched as the noises from the house receded, as Mary Jane washed her snowy white hands under the dripping tap in the bathroom at the front of the house. It reached out for the left sandal and slowly pulled it into the woods.

“Mary Jane! Where are your shoes?”

Mommy’s holler rang out loud and clear in the open as white fluffy slippers shuffled around the slabs that held the swing in place.

Mutterings and a big sigh and Mommy disappeared into the house again. Mission unaccomplished.

The house fell silent again. A cloven hoof closed over the right shoe and pulled it into the ominous blackness, its pink laces clutching desperately at each blade of grass as it trailed past in graceful finale.