Kitchen ballet
No two days are the same…
A few days ago, I made lunch – turkey pot pie for the first time. As I was making this meal, the dishwasher replacement men came into the kitchen and pulled out the dishwasher and put in the new one (while asking me what I was making, and suggesting that I should let the pastry dough come to room temperature. I foolishly explained pot pie like this, “it’s like a quiche! With veggies and meat! Except without the eggs…” The conversation ended there).
While the men were wrestling with the dishwasher, and I was frantically stirring my béchamel (cream sauce) and sautéing veggies and meat for my second pie, Martine and Sarah came back from weekly grocery shopping and filled up what remaining space in the kitchen there was. As soon as the dishwasher men left, Jean-Pierre took up installing a filter for our water line (we don’t have drinkable water here), which was also in… the kitchen.
Along with ranting (in my head) that this was all at really bad timing (“Franchement, ce n’est pas bon ‘timing’!” – I was practicing!), I found it all really hilarious. It was an insane sort of dance, all very polite, all very rushed… Priscille and Sonia waltzed through the kitchen, laughing and rolling their eyes at the flying tile dust, groceries, and sauted veggies.
The guest we were going to have for lunch was 20 minutes late. So in the span of 10 minutes, A Rocha France went from insanity in the kitchen to everyone sitting in the living room, waiting hungrily for lunch, reading magazines. Somehow, even with the sudden lull of activity, the guest still arrived to the deafening sound of Jean-Pierre drilling into the kitchen tile wall…
