The Wing Commander is a great cook. He has a tried and trusted collection of favourite recipes among which is a wonderful carrot and coriander soup. It is a special favourite for light lunches and so yesterday he decided, at the last minute, to make a pot of said soup. I had already had my lunch as I was going out in the afternoon so it was for himself with enough left over for the next day.
As he sat down to enjoy his bowl of soup he went unexpectedly quiet. This was followed by a stiffled cough after which he approached me with the bowl, offering me a taste. Unsuspecting, I swallowed the proffered spoonful. As my tonsils retreated to my stomach he smiled and asked: ‘A bit too spicy?’
Sometimes, it appears, a chilli has more bite than its kin! On questioning later he admitted that he thought he had probably added more chilli and seeds than he should but, hey, what the heck, he went for it…and the chilli returned the favour!
Not wishing to waste any I had a large bowl for lunch today. The first spoonful ellicited a cough, the second produced a spasm in my diaphram resulting in extensive and prolonged hiccoughing. By the time I had finished the bowl my mouth was numb, my ears and nose were running and my eyeballs were speaking in tongues. However, the more I persisted the more tolerant my body appeared to become of the unusually fiery soup.
Why did I persist? I suppose I am from the tail end of that generation of ‘waste not, want not’ but I was also reminded of a memory from childhood. We only got a bowl of icecream on special days and Sundays. Mum kept a gallon tub of vanilla icecream in the big chest freezer and heaven help us if we took a scoop outside the prescribed days! On one exciting ocassion she had returned from the Frozen Food Centre with a tub of strawberry icecream. We couldn’t believe we were so lucky that such a delight existed and we had it in our freezer! The first Sunday came and we knew we would be eating this divine delight. The anticipation was palpable.
After our dinner the tub was brought from the freezer and served up. With sparkling eyes and expectant stomachs we all took our first spoonful. We looked at each other and all put our spoons down. I may even have spit out what remained in my mouth back into my bowl. It was vile. Whoever had tried to combine icecream with strawberries had failed monumentally in their experiment. How was it possible for two such wonderful creations, strawberries and icecream, to taste completely horrible when combined? Our disappointment was extreme.
Our predicament became worse still when Mum announced that, even though it was horrible in every way, she had spent good money on it and therefore not another tub of icecream would enter the house until that gallon of ‘strawberry icecream’ was eaten. There was no more ‘If you don’t eat your dinner there will be no icecream’. We got the icecream whether we wanted it or not…and believe me, we did not!
So in persisting with the over fiery bowl of soup I was, perhaps, unconciously assuming I would never get another decent carrot and coriander soup if I didn’t spoon my way through this one.
Significantly Different 