Chapter 9 - Salt
Chuck awoke and felt warmth next to him. ‘Dylan,’ he thought, ‘My sweet Dylan.’ He opened his eyes and looked at his sleeping lover. Dylan had cried out in the night and he’d comforted him. He calmed him and he went back to sleep. Chuck couldn’t believe such a beautiful, red haired man was in his arms. How did this happen to him? A week ago he’d awaken with a thunderous hangover feeling his life wasn’t worth living. He was alone, so alone and so tired. Now, he felt a surge as he watched Dylan’s breath go in and out of him. And Dylan was smiling. He was making Dylan smile in his arms.
Chuck remembered he promised to make breakfast. Carefully, he pulled his arm from beneath his bed partner and Dylan just smiled and snuggled closer. He rolled away and slipped out of bed. In his sleep, Dylan reached out and whined at his departure.
Chuck exited the bedroom and walked down to the kitchen. He surveyed his workspace. The kitchen itself was neat, but apparently Dylan didn’t cook much. There was dust on the stovetop. He got a rag, wet it, and wiped down all the surfaces. He pulled out some cookware. They needed a good rinse as they were dusty as well. He finally got a pot of water on the stove and went in search of ingredients.
As he’d seen last night, there were a dozen eggs and they weren’t out of date. A stick of butter was in a cute little dish. There were three slices of wheat bread. The ham had some green hair growing on it. He threw that in the garbage and checked out the freezer. There were frozen dinners and pizzas but in the back, he found a hoar frost encrusted package of spinach. “Bingo,” he said to himself. Better than rotten ham.
He looked into the pantry and found the bag of potatoes. Most of them were growing but a couple of them on the bottom were still edible. He quickly pared them and got them in cold water. As he worked, Chuck thought about how Nanna made hash browns from scratch. He could see her as she parboiled and then shredded the potatoes just like the morning before she’d made him and Kelli make The Vow. Everything she cooked, she did with care. Chuck did so in the same way as he prepared the ingredients.
Having arranged his mise en place, everything in its place, Chuck started a pot of coffee. The gurgling, aromatic liquid trickled through the maker with the sounds of morning. He searched the cupboards for a box grater and found one on an upper shelf. It still had the price sticker on it. He washed it and peeled off the tag.
Chuck got a fry pan heating up. He dumped the shredded potatoes directly into the sizzling pan, adding a healthy dose of salt and some pepper. He put another pan on a back burner, slipped a little of the butter and added the drained spinach. He added salt and pepper to that too.
Chuck thought about salt, how everything tasted better with it. Potatoes didn’t taste like anything without a healthy dose of sodium chloride. Spinach tasted muddy without salt. Eggs were flavorless without salt to give them substance. Food without salt was lifeless. As he placed a bowl above the boiling water and placed the whipped yolks, he added salt. Slowly, he poured the clarified butter into the yolks while mixing it. As it thickened, he added lemon juice and pulled from the heat. Two dashes of cayenne and a quick taste, Chuck carefully added a few more grains of the magic stuff. Salt.
If you ate food without any salt, it was bland, lifeless. It was kind of like life without love. Salt and love. Food and life. Chuck knew that life without love wasn’t just bland, it was, well, lifeless. He’d experienced two years of life without love. The last few days, he’d tasted life with love. At least, that’s what he thought. Food and salt. Life and love. He added another big dash to the potatoes and flipped them. They were lush and golden brown, caramelized to perfection. Dylan would like this. Chuck thought about how he loved making food to express himself. He wasn’t great with words, but with food he could tell those he loved how he felt.
