"You just need a starting point"

"If you don't know where you're going

Any road will take you there" George Harrison

Yet another day of dithering over what to write about. Even questioning whether I should bother. I began with my latest lucky dip book, but having checked out a couple of recipes for the dish in question, I decided there wasn't much to say and so consigned it to a future oddments post. A road not travelled - at least today.

So where to from there? Dinner tonight? - The possibilities there could be beetroot, soup, beef stews, freezing meat - there are probably more, but I quickly gave up on that one. Not very interesting - at least not today. It will be soup by the way - but probably not beetroot. Something lighter - we are both suffering from a cold.

So I started to look through the Guardian Feast Newsletters, which I have kept in my email inbox because there was something interesting in them, which is where I found the title quote - from Meera Sodha, who was writing about rediscovering a love of cooking. That wasn't really what I wanted to write about but I recognised that the words had a much wider application - life, the universe and everything really - which, now that I think about it, might be why I chose the picture above.

Do you recognise it? I think most of my readers are of my vintage, and so therefore they might. My grandchildren would not. It's from 2001 of course and I think it closes the film and now that I think about it, I guess it might be an illustration of "In my end is my beginning". Because our astronaut lies dying in his bed in his protected room perhaps in the middle of a star, as the embyro, comes into view looking down on earth. Or have I remembered that all wrong? No foodie connections here and I'm really not into philosopy, or interpreting Stanley Kubrik's film. So another path not travelled although it did indeed dredge up memories of the film - seen with David and his mother in Leicester Square. Heaven knows what she thought of it all.

A reasonable depiction of a starting point however, and so I then began looking for an opening quote and found "If you don't know where you're going any road will do" attributed to Lewis Carroll. That's a good metaphor for Rosemary's Ramblings thought I and so began a search to illustrate it - which uncovered many of Alice and the Cheshire Cat. I clicked on one of these, The Gathering Place and an article by Dahni who told me that this is not a quote from Lewis Carroll at all. And he/she reproduced the actual text to prove it:

"Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.

Alice: I don’t much care where— said Alice.

Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.

Alice: So long as I get SOMEWHERE, Alice added as an explanation.

Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough."

Such a wonderful metaphor for how I often write this little pieces to amuse myself in my old age. For life itself of course. And also a reminder of childhood and my copy of this wonderful book, now lost - I have just searched and it is gone.

But if Lewis Carroll did not say it - well he almost did, then who did? Well according to Dahni - whoever he or she may be - it was George Harrison in his song Any Road. And if you click on the link you can watch a video of him singing it, interspersed with pictures and clips from his life. It's a fairly dark song - and we all know that he died far too young - so maybe he knew he was dying, or maybe he was just philosophical by nature. Anyway, again, as I watched the video, I was transported back to my youth, - a later youth than Alice's - but youth nevertheless.

A road travelled a short way along, but not pursued, because I realised that it had nothing at all to do with food, and I am supposed to be writing about food - however remote the link might be. Was I lost at this point? No says Jim Jarmusch - a maker of wonderful, slightly weird and thought-provoking films: It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going."

So let's return to the beginning and the cooks who fell out of love with cooking for a while - as we all do. For them, being 'names' in the cooking world, it is a much more drastic thing. For us, it's just the day we get takeaway, or cook something like an omelette that only takes a moment and not much thought. Like soup for tonight. Soup is especially pleasing if you are feeling pale and wan, as in Picasso's famous blue period painting, although it won't be the Jewish mothers' chicken soup - too complicated. Who knows indeed what kind of soup it will be. Much like the road not yet travelled, it will be a soup not yet made. And there is pleasure and anticipation in that thought, like the beginning of a journey down a road not yet travelled. A journey with no particular destingation.

“It’s about re-enchantment, isn’t it?” says [Bee] Wilson. “Accessing that beautiful, playful space, which is what cooking should be.” Clare Finney/ Feast Newsletter

Having decided on my post title, I decided to revisit - and rename - a draft post from long ago simply called Possibilities, because I couldn't think of anything better at the time. And there, all that I found was this quote, in similar vein to the above:

"when I’m cooking for pleasure, I love the idea of adventuring into the unknown. I prefer to set out with a very loose idea of what I want to achieve, because my favourite part about cooking for pleasure is being able to add anything without thinking, without timing, without weighing, which means that a dish could go in any of a thousand directions." Ixta Belfrage

As on those roads, as in our lives, as in our heads. I don't know about your brain but mine is constantly leaping from place to place, along the thinnest threads of connection from one location to another seemingly far, far away. I have a very, very loose idea of what I want to achieve with tonight's soup - simple, nourishing, light, and soothing ... I shall just have to see what I have in the fridge to achieve that aim. Or maybe when it comes to it I shall do something completely different - a quiche ...? that's soothing too, but it doesn't go with David's bread (he's making bread) as well.

When I was doing my quote search I came across a whole heap of rather more cynical and depressed views of starting points - like this one:

"If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere. Henry A. Kissinger

Well he was a bit of a misery wasn't he? And as the Cheshire Cat said - paraphrased - "You're sure to get somewhere, if you only walk long enough."

Or drive long enough. You need to be adventurous. "A road going nowhere" reminded me of two roads we had followed in France, on two separate occasions, which eventually petered out into a field. Momentarily it was a bit, not exactly fearful, no not fearful at all - confusing, annoying, worrying ...? However both occasions are memorable, and have provided many amusing recountings of how a potential disaster was not actually a disaster but rather a learning experience. Enjoyable in retrospect. I still remember the snake that lazily glided across one of those, by now, tracks. It was what persuaded us to turn around and try again. To find our way back to the right road. Which, of course, we eventually did.

Whether the somewhere was worth getting to might be another question for the more pessimistic amongst us - the glass half empty people. But I reckon that even if the soup isn't that great, or the blog post not that interesting or amusing, or thought-provoking the brain will have been exercised, which might lead to an opportunity for a more successful walk next time.

YEARS GONE BY

July 9

2024 - Nothing

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Kohlrabi - "like Humpty Dumpty hiding in a hedge" was my opening quote - isn't that great?

2021 - Messing with cultural cuisine

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Nothing

2017 - Nothing