i am not working in the next four days so i have the luxury of doing nothing really. ordinarily, i would be stressed planning what to do, under the misguided notion that i must plan everything out in order that i would feel like i made the most of my holiday. i usually end up feeling overactivitized, regretting having done too much when i should have done nothing and feeling frazzled like i need another holiday just to undo the effects of the overplanned vacation.
so i decided today, i would just do what felt right.
two wardrobe changes later, i found myself at the V&A museum looking at the flier announcing an Arabian nights theme. of course, the food exhibit really caught my eye and i had arrived just in time for when it started. when i got there, the food exhibit was really more two tables where they were displaying nuts and dried fruit (which suspiciously looked like products i usually see at the nuts and fruit aisle at sainsbury's and waitrose). they were giving away olives, hummus and flatbread. i was shattered.
i was thinking - whole sheep roasting on a spit, pigeon in bstila, beef simmering to utter melting tenderness in a tagine and couscous slowly softening and cooking over gently simmering lamb flavored with a million arabian spices. i was hoping to find an arabian grandmother bossing about a brigade of cooks, so harassed at the prospect of entertaining a british crowd around their exhibit, their veils would be half hanging off their heads, sweat glistening on their foreheads as they feverishly focused on demonstrating how to make bstila. bstila, is a very thin pastry like a piece of lumpia wrapper prepared by hand over a searingly hot plate (similar to a crepe maker). the plate is heated to around 200 degrees centigrade. the bstila maker then takes a piece of wet dough and painstakingly applies it like a paste, evenly and thinly on the searing hot plate, by hand producing a thin, sheer pastry veil in a matter of seconds. it takes years to master this skill, enduring second degree burns along the way. it would have been amazing to watch someone do this.
my fabulous imagination i think is often the source of fabulous disappointment.
i often find myself, anticipating things and more often than not, i begin to paint or visualize certain things in my head about what i would find. sometimes, it is exactly as i thought it would be. sometimes more fabulous than i thought it would be. more often than not, it is not what i thought it would be.
so i sat in the cafe instead and had a coffee and a carrot cake. coffee is my reliable panacea to all the ills of my world. the carrot cake was forgettable but it was saved by two layers of cream cheese frosting. as i sat at my table, an arabian family sat at the table across me to rest. they had a toddler with them - a little boy with a fabulous mop of curly hair and big beautiful dark eyes with lashes that looked like someone applied an entire bottleful of mascara to them.
his cheeks were bulging and he had an ecstatic look on his face. i realized, he had stuffed his mouth with the sugar cubes available for free, in the jar that sat at his family's table. as he turned around, he realized, EVERY table had a jar of sugar cubes. a look of momentary panic crossed his face then he ran to the table beside mine, which was left open by the previous occupants, and started filling his pockets with more sugar cubes, like he had just found aladdin's stash of gold nuggets. i wanted to take his picture and post it- cheeks filled to bursting while he was busily stashing away more in his pockets, but i was afraid i would be faced with an irate mother and have to face questioning for taking the photo.
i caught his mother's eye and we smiled at each other, amused at her son's antics.
there i was nursing my disappointment over an overimaginized exhibit and here was a little boy who found his treasure in a jar full of free sugar cubes.
the family then left. a few minutes after they did, another family came and sat two tables away from mine. the mom was feeding her two children chocolate cake and appreciative 'YUMMY!!!' was emanating from both the kids much to my amusement. their daddy arrived (from the loo visit i suppose) and took them to the food stand to get more tea and cake i suppose. when they got back, the little boy (whose name was mustafa if i overheard it right) was attracted to the same jar of sugar cubes and was begging his mummy to eat some. his sister saw me working on my laptop, typing this and she volunteered, 'You can take a picture of my hand (showing me the mendhi she had done on her hand) and put it on your computer if you want'. her name was fatima (as i heard from her mum).
i definitely wanted to do that. so snap of a photo i did. her little brother came long and of course demanded i took his photo as well. so here they are both on my blog and they are fantastic.
disappointed imaginings of an arabian feast be damned. i was quite alright after that.
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