Cooking with Ferdinand

And the electricity goes out.

I had just thrown the spaghetti in the pan, the lingering water sizzling instantly on top of oily vegetables.

If one doesn’t act quickly in situations such as this, spaghetti could begin starching to the pan. You cannot let them sit on spots without oil for long, but you must leave them long enough to soak up the “spaghetti spices,” basil and garlic.

Spaghetti spices are a tad short of a miracle. When Candy first showed me the plain plastic packet stained bright orange-red, it seemed unexciting and expected. If spices weren’t red, they were just green. And black.

Ferdinand is our cook and then some. We talk to each other in languages the other does not understand and point. Today I read in The History of Love, that hand gestures are the most primitive and expressive use of the human language and emotions.

I’m standing in complete darkness, mourning the untossed spaghetti now probably mercilessly searing onto the pans surface. I stand and wait, and Ferdinand comes. Lights me candles, and laughs. After a few minutes of exchanging one-way conversations in our respective languages, the power turns on.

I continue my frying game, and blow the candles out. And Ferdinand is just there, putting away things, pointing at others. As I prepare my plate, and sprinkle fresh gouda over the now mouth-watering result of spaghetti spices, he lingers and looks at my creation.

“Good.” I translated as he pointed, smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

“Thanks.” I smiled, which he understood. And left.

I grabbed the book and put the bowl on the coffee table, excited for a dinner date with The History of Love. Also, I think I just realized how ridiculous that sounds.

 I attempt to balance the now hot bowl on the edge of a book page and my thigh, while aiming the fork towards my mouth, blindly maneuvering spaghetti and forking vegetables just in order to reach the bottom of page 68.

Within 30 seconds I feel consumed. Exhausted. I shut the book and stare at my bowl. The pasta was really good, I could taste that.

But not really. Because I wasn’t really paying attention.

So I watched my self roll the spaghetti onto the fork and stick one each of the gouda-engulfed vegetables. Carefully getting every ingredient on one fork, I close my eyes, tasting each spice in the miracle mix. And the olive oil. And the little extra, I know I shouldn’t have put in, but I did.

Chewing carb by carb, seeing only the back of my eyelids, I taste. every. Bite.

Ferdinand forgets important things and does not believe in boiling just carrots. I am not sure what he does all day and he is forty years old with five children. somewhere. The History of Love is also fiction. But I think its better just to believe it is real.