and that was lunch

and that was lunch

Leonie Orton
Little Nothing Moments

Forgive the food photography - but I had to, because there’s a happy story in there.

That omelette is made from eggs laid by our chooks, and stuffed with silverbeet grown in our garden. And it’s sprinkled with a cavalier amount of roughly chopped herbs that grow on our back verandah, outside the kitchen door.

It’s the boys’ job to water them each morning, so we’re always talking about them, watching them grow, harvesting them, enjoying them and eating them.

And what you can’t see inside the omelette is a few super ripe homegrown cherry tomatoes – but not grown by me (mine are still green). They came from Harvest Swap – a gathering I started a few years ago for swapping homegrown/homemade things and generally I organise a guest speaker – on anything from cultural cooking and fermentation to bee-keeping and chocolate making. 

And in that little glass is water kefir brewed by me, with ruby grapefruit from Harvest Swap. 

So today for lunch I ate local, organic, seasonal – and it cost me 0 dollars. Isn’t that friggin great. I love that in the midst of all the hoopla going on in the world (let’s face it – always) it’s possible to step out of the whole tyranny of it all (even just for lunch) and enjoy a little nothing moment.

The new revolution is a quiet resurrection of the old ways, that are so natural to us humans – having our hands in the earth, growing stuff, living close to nature – and existing as communities of people whose currency is generosity and sharing not dollars and cents.

I know it was only a moment, and I know it’s idealistic. But fuck, why not.

And another thing about that picture – I grew up with that plate.

I had the best moments of my childhood around that plate. I felt a deep sense of belonging while sitting amongst my extended farming family, trying to keep my elbows in, eating dinner off that plate.

And when my beloved grandma Dot breathed her last breath and went to the big kitchen table in the sky, I took three of these plates from her kitchen drawer, kept this one, and gave the others to my sisters.

I don’t keep it in a special place. I don’t keep it locked away for posterity. It rattles around with the rest of the crockery in the cupboard and gets used regularly. And whenever I see it, it takes me right back to Dot’s kitchen. To learning how to make jam tarts and macaroons. To toasting bread with a toasting fork in front of the open fire in the kitchen. To being comforted and supported by her as I made my way through adolescence like a wrecking ball. 

…To standing in her kitchen with the vast emptiness left by her absence – and feeling comforted by that plate.

And that was lunch.   

old friends

old friends
a rambling ode to friendship

a rambling ode to friendship