A Story for Kate

It was quiet and she was on her own, this wasn’t unusual for this time of day. Everyone else was out working and she’d turned off the radio. She didn’t like the man in the afternoons, he struck her as a bit of a moron and the other stations well they were worse than the afternoons guy on her station. So the radio was off and no one was around. She was busy kneading bread when it happened. Baking was something she enjoyed rather than something she did out of necessity, it would have been a lot easier to just buy bread but there was something satisfying about making it yourself.

So there was flour over the bench top and her hands were deep in dough when, for whatever reason she looked out of her kitchen window. The house is on the side of a hill with a wide view. At the bottom of that hill is the beach and out as far as the horizon is the sea. It’s a nice kitchen window to glance out of and taking a look at the water and the sky and the blurry line where the two somehow meet, well that was a bit of a habit. A natural routine that she didn’t really notice that she did, she certainly didn’t know why she looked out of the window right at that moment. But she did, just as on countless other days, but this wasn’t any other day.

This was so much of a different sight to all of those other casual thoughtless glances. She left her dough, wiped her hands on her apron most un-thoroughly and rushed down the hill to the beach. The whales were huge, really they were much bigger than she had ever imagined. At this stage there were only about a dozen other people on the beach. There were a couple of men who seemed to have some idea of what to do and were giving directions. One of these men told her to help with the buckets of water, they were trying to keep the whales wet. But they were huge, no one could reach the tops of them, a couple were carrying a ladder over the sand dunes. Feet stuck in the sand she stood watching as they tried to use the ladder to get buckets and wet towels to the top of the giant fish. Mammal. It’s a mammal she corrected herself mumbling a little bit. But no one heard her, she stood there frozen and watching as more and more people arrived but the group remained just as ineffectual. It was like watching a group of ants discovering an entire cake. Even with ladders the people were only halfway up the sides of the whales, they were house sized and the people were still only people sized.

It struck her that these whales were just too big to be saved. It wasn’t like what you see on the TV, there wasn’t going to be any dramatic rescue. None of these giant mammals were going to be turned back towards the water. Her feet picked themselves out of the sand that had seemingly turned to clay around her. The bustle continued all across the beach, there must have been at least ten of them stranded now. She didn’t want to count them, it didn’t matter. They were lost but if they had have died in the sea she would never have seen them, would never have had to know about their demise. She didn’t feel guilty about walking away, it was as clear to her as anything she’d ever understood, those whales were going to die.

The drive back up the hill seemed a lot slower then the descent earlier. She salvaged her dough, it wasn’t going to be her best loaf but it would work out alright. She didn’t look out the window anymore. The habit that had built up over time had disappeared immediately. No regrets about what she’d done but she didn’t want to see. The magic was gone from that seascape. She couldn’t live here anymore; it was time that they moved on anyway. Time to get away from this place. 

Scrambled Eggs with Chilli

Scrambled eggs with chilli, that’s all he ever cooked. It was mostly all he ate, he loved the flavor and he’d absolutely perfected the recipe over the years. Perfected it so much so that the restaurant was full almost every day. On the weekends there was a waiting list. Only one thing on the menu, just scrambled eggs with chilli, breakfast lunch and dinner, six days a week. It exhausted him but he generally felt it was worth it, in fact he was quite proud of where he’d got to, and grateful for the coincidence that brought him here.

Andy didn’t have much of a purpose all of those years ago, he certainly wasn’t a big cooker but he loved eggs for breakfast on a hangover Sunday, or to fuel up for a big day ahead. It was always his specialty he supposed, the only thing he really cooked. The eggs had got better over the years, he’d picked up a few tips and tricks from people and from TV shows or magazine articles. Something about eggs in the ad for a cooking show and he’d be recording it to watch when he got home from work, flicking through magazines in the doctors waiting room he’d memorize the quantities. It wasn’t on purpose, but the knowledge built up, along with regular practice to the point where his eggs were first rate.

He liked to cook his eggs for others and generally had an especially positive response, looking back he realised that he always enjoyed cooking for others. But it wasn’t until Andy got a suggestion from an old flat mate that the chain of events started to clink along with haste. He’d lived with Steve for a few months, they got on well and he’d got into the habit of making eggs before they went out on a Friday night, a quick tasty meal at the end of the week. It was Steve who first suggested adding chilli. It’s worth noting that this wasn’t a great culinary masterstroke from Steve, he suggested adding chilli to everything. He loved chilli, grew his own in the window of his bedroom, used it in most of his cooking, and Andy suspected Steve had been adding a little bit extra over the months to build up Andy’s tolerance.

Andy was glad he’d agreed to add the chilli before he had met Giuseppe. Up until that Friday night the scrambled eggs had been top notch, definitely café level. But with the addition of the chilli, his recipe grew extra legs, it jumped into your mouth, ran around your tongue and slid down your throat like an excited child and a water slide. They both knew that this was perfection on toast. Andy felt like he’d finally cracked the scrambled eggs, he now made it for friends and family not with the eager helpfulness of before but with a reverence and smug knowingness. Aware that they were about to taste the finest eggs they’d ever had.

It was one of these occasions, where Andy was showing off slightly. That a friend of a friend had first tasted the eggs. Giuseppe was a restaurateur and saw the potential in Andy’s eggs right from the beginning. I think they’d both agree that Giuseppe pushed Andy into the whole restaurant thing. Andy didn’t see how it would work, he could only make one thing, people weren’t interested in going out just to eat eggs. He smirked to himself as he remembered saying that. Remembered what a sensation he’d become when they first became popular, and thought about the financial security he had now. He didn’t like the term celebrity chef, didn’t really see himself as a chef, didn’t have the range the real chefs had. But there was one thing that earned him the celebrity status, the magic in his one dish. The thing he did better than anything else. That he did better, probably, than anyone else could. His scrambled eggs with chilli.

Menu

Scrambled eggs with chilli

Options

Sourdough

Ciabata

Wholegrain

Gluten Free

Condiments

Tomato chutney

Avocado (available seasonally)

Homemade basil pesto