apropos of anything

At first, I thought all of the cucumber-milk mixture that was the beginnings of my soup would fit into my food processor. I was in the midst of congratulating myself on managing to move the entire contents of my saucepan into the bowl of the food processor without splattering or spilling — a heretofore unmanageable feat for me, Mistress of Spill — when the milky part began leaking out the bottom of the bowl. Rapidly, even.

There was a period of about thirty seconds where my brain simply refused to function. I stood there, frozen, watching as the liquid began to spread towards the edges of the countertop.

And then I wailed, to nobody in particular as the kitchen was empty, “I don’t know what to do!”

In fact, I did know what to do. It’s what any good five-year-old would do when confronted with a quickly moving spill: grab some paper towels and start mopping. It’s what I did when all my receptors clicked back into the “on” position and I could actually move my hands and feet again.

Mansoor was upstairs praying, as I should have been except that I was wiping up spilled milk (of sorts) in a desperate attempt to move my chilled shrimp cucumber soup towards some state of doneness, particularly as it was almost 9:00 and my dinner was nowhere near the table. Then, because I was worried about texture and a cucumber/milk balance, I heated up some extra milk with the intention of adding it to what remained in the food processor after those remains had been pureed. And then I worried some more.

I’m grateful that Aamir did not come to dinner as planned because then I’d have him to worry about in addition to myself and Mansoor, and I’m particularly grateful that Mansoor did not utter one word about dinner being late, except to say, “Um, I think you missed a spot,” when he noticed the original version of the soup had dripped into my silverware drawer, unbeknownst to me.

I’m also grateful that my chilled shrimp cucumber soup, despite being late and malformed and not “chilled” so much as “lukewarm”, looks exactly like the picture, and tastes decent as well, once you pick out all the dill. (I’m not exactly a fan of dill, although I love how artistic the thin green strands look floating on top of creamy soup.)

And finally, I am grateful that despite the spill, there wasn’t too large a mess in my kitchen, and I was able to clean it easily… because then my mother, Mistress of Clean, arrived.

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