We used to fish for strings of sunfish, filet them, and eat them like popcorn. It must be one of the sweetest fish on the planet. With the passing of my gramma, who was the chief fillet-er and fish fryer, the fish feasts have passed. But food is the center of our cabin life. Freed from daily responsibilities, and strict schedules, food is the apex of a day.
Planning starts days and weeks in advance, especially if guests are involved. In the city we walk two blocks to our lovely store, formerly a GJ’s Super Value that in desperation and fatigue I had been known to appear at with children in PJs. But here, the store requires a drive. And it may not have the ingredients we need, and people come off a lake demanding food.
Time becomes food focused, we have picked the strawberries, always too many, and then we have to clean them, freeze them, jam them for winter. Or the apples from our tree, so sour, and a little bit tasteless, but sugar and cinnamon can make any apple edible. Reaching to the too high branches with a basket picker, bag after bag of apples plop down. We eat anywhere, inside and outside, on the dock, in the boat, and we linger, into evenings and past breakfast time.
So when you linger, food becomes paired with talking and talking becomes paired with relationship, and knowing who you live with. Outside, food sits beside nature, where the food came from in the first place. Eating next to the tree that gave the apple and the lake that grew the fish. Walking next to the hives that sheltered the honey over the swamp.
Fresh spices clipped from a wheelbarrow garden dust the pasta, sparkling over the heavy noodles. Beer from the brewery poaches the brats from the market. Food is a great gift, a joy and a way to create. In our First World, we revel in it. In the Third World it is life and sometimes death, as parched lands tracked by scientists from satellites closes its food fists. I can’t not think of them, I want everyone to have what we have, I want us all to think and act. To listen to our best, brightest thinkers who recommend actions, and plans so that all can have.
Our little food traditions, ebliskivers, luxurious fat bacon, grilled anything, soups from scraps, pizza from the delivery car, food on the farm, donuts from Cold Spring. All day spaghetti, laborious and rich to the taste. Frozen orange rolls, monkey bread, Chez Panisse simmered olive oil sauce, fruit salad with mayo/pudding sauce, and suddenly salad with our own additions. They are fuel for when we are not here. Teaching, deal-making, preaching, donating, volunteering, parenting, sandwhich generationing. They all need fueling.
The lake gives, and we take. We take and then we give elsewhere. The watery presence becomes a present when we go back. To the classroom, the courtroom, the office, the surgery theater. We bring there the solid food of the lake. The water from far below the surface, the airy honey collected on the wing. We pour out, what has been poured in.
Kris Potter lives in Minneapolis and on Lake Sylvia. In Minneapolis she works as an Early Childhood Educator. She and her family have had a cabin on Lake Sylvia for more than 40 years.
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