I fed some of the grandchildren last night. It was a lovely evening so we ate outside. I'd dished up their pizza and gone back in the house for our plates when GrandDaughter2 came staggering in to the kitchen grasping her throat, and appearing to be in agony. "Aah!" she screamed, "I just ate a vegetable!"
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Cooking in Zac's this morning it occurred to me that Claire, the professional chef employed part-time, and I have different ways of doing things. I will scrape every last dribble or minute piece of carrot out of a pan; Claire doesn't. I wonder if it's an age thing. Without making it sound as if I lived through rationing in the war, I was brought up to not waste anything. Or maybe it's a professional thing. Working with large quantities so much the little bits don't matter. The good thing is that when Claire doesn't scrape out the bits of mashed potato around the edge, say, I get in there with my spoon and eat it all.
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Last night in Zac's I talked to a woman who'd been beaten up by her partner. I've never seen the results of violence so close up before. Her face was black and blue.
I'm not sure when it happened because, like many of our friends in Zac's, she is an unreliable narrator and the timeline was a bit wobbly. But I did establish that she had been to hospital and been checked over including a head scan, and that her partner had been arrested.
She told me only one of the men she's been with over the years hasn't beaten her up. She's an alcoholic but in the periods when she's managed to get and stay dry she's held quite responsible jobs. Sadly the 'friends' - maybe that should be people she mixes with - don't help her. They ask to meet in pubs and encourage her to drink. "And once it's gone past my lips, that's it. I hate it."
Easy to say, get new friends, hard to do without moving out of the area and changing her whole way of living.
6 comments:
Addiction is a terrible thing. Every scumbag around preys on addicts.
GrandDaughter2's comment is hilarious! I know from talking with acquaintances alcoholics will sometimes attempt a 'geographic cure'-moving to a new location to get away from their issues. However, their disease comes with them and they're soon back in the same boat.
I have the same instincts about food! It's precious, waste nothing. It comes from childhood poverty in my case, as well as religious training never to waste the gifts of God. I think trained chefs are much more cavalier, especially when they write recipes and tell you to throw away the whole onion you used to make spaghetti sauce, or the whey you drain in order to make labneh. Never!
I've done work with domestic violence situations as a side effect of my job in a women's organization. It's not pretty. And about changing your life, getting new friends, I know three separate, pretty happy, marriages between people who eventually say they met in AA. They went to massive smoking and coffee drinking, which might be the addiction taking a different form. But they set up alcohol free lives. Too bad a lot of social life involves alcohol, hard to avoid.
That's sad that her friends don't encourage her efforts to stay sober.
Too funny on the granddaughter gagging over a vegetable
We have a bottle of plum sauce in the fridge. It’s tipped upside down and has about 1 tablespoon of sauce in it. There is another full bottle right beside it waiting to be opened. But Sue hates to throw anything out so we will keep that table spoon until the bitter end.
Seems like the abusee knows a main factor of the problem, but can't get past it. New friends, easier said than done? Hopefully she can break that cycle.
I've worked in professional kitchens - Oh, the waste!
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