I never used to like black pepper, except in leftover mashed potatoes when it blooms into something rich and spicy, but now the smell of freshly ground black pepper is floral and savory, intoxicating. I put piles of it in everything I make so I can smell it as it sifts down from its grinder, and taste the smell as I eat.
I found cherry bitters in the back of the cupboard, bought years ago for a party at another house, in another world. I put drops of it in my water glass, which sits beside me next to the couch, and from time to time an air current brings me the scent of cherries, and I remember sundaes with maraschino cherries on top, and Shirley Temples, icy and sweet, making a wet ring on the shiny wooden tabletop at a hamburger joint. Yesterday I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on an English muffin, crunchy peanut butter, kept in the warm kitchen cupboard and a little drippy, and cold raspberry jam full of seeds, and it tasted like a hamburger, like a ghost hamburger overlaid on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, like hot green leaf lettuce and sliced tomato and ketchup and mayonnaise, and it made me think of, no, remember with my whole body, the McDLT, a hamburger served in a two-compartment white styrofoam container in the eighties (keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold!). The acidity of the raspberry jam, maybe? I don't know. It was delicious.
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AuthorBitter Water
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Archives
June 2019
Categories© Francie Nevill and Every Sweet Thing, 2017.
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