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Humans are more sensitive to petrichor than sharks are to blood. So, we obviously already hunted all the soil creatures to extinction. I imagine they made a good stew.
This is not a recipe. Soup requires no recipe. Soup is soup. All you must remember is that food is love and food is for sharing. Now onto the recipe.
Whenever you prepare soup, you must tend to it. Unwatched stoves are the most common cause of housefires. What? Did you expect me to speak of the loneliness of unattended soup? I need not speak of unattended soup. You know what happens when you leave soup unattended. You will not like what happens when you leave soup unattended.
That's right - possibly a housefire.
Start with liquid - stock or water will do. If you are adding cream to the soup, do not add it yet, it does not do well with extended boiling. Next, find your meat, if you consume it. The bones are the best, and a chicken carcass is my favourite to start with, although lamb will always work wonderfully after hours of boiling and skimming off fat repeatedly. Here, you must extract all the flavour from the bones and leave them hollow like an old tree where you might find fairies - or a possum - there is no difference really. The meat should fall of the bones and swim in the water. Now, you add the chopped-up root vegetables. Carrots, potatoes, swede - whatever takes long to cook. Do not forget your grains - barley and rice are delicious additions to any soup, soaked for hours to absorb flavour. Heat this on a low heat with the lid on for a long time; it will not overflow. Turn off the heat and go to bed now. The soup and you both need rest. Continue to heat it the next morning. Add whatever else you wish (now or earlier even) - salt, pepper, leak, onion, garlic, basil, sage, thyme - it matters not to the hungry soup.
Serve the soup and share the soup. A soup ladle is designed to cradle the soup like you should cradle the ones you share the soup with. Gently.
Some may try to tell you that the soup is bland. That it has no substance and is not a meal worth treasuring or even cooking. Pay this no mind. There are many places, many times, many families, where not much was to be had. Tough meat and tougher vegetables were made soft and spread further with the love and time taken to craft them into soup. Whatever you have, it has always been worth taking pride in the dinner you serve. To sleep with quietened bellies is to sleep full of love.
To eat soup is to find comfort in whatever you have in the pantry or fridge or garden. To share soup is to find comfort in those around you.
The stinging nettle (Urtica dioica): A bee sting in plant form. Both give you acidic stings, but whilst a bee will die after a single sting, the nettle holds no such melodrama. Importantly, the underside of the nettle has no stinging needles - using this, a nettle leaf can be folded and eaten. Quite delicious, but like oysters, it is best to only chew them just enough to experience the flavour. Unlike oysters, it is an established tea.
The dock leaf (Rumex obtusifolius): The apologetic, unassuming, elder sibling of our funny little trio. Never too far behind the stinging nettle, growing in the same habitat, it is a welcome gift for the unlucky or unwary. Simply crushing it's flat, broad leaf, arranged in small clumps, low to the ground, and rubbing the remains on the sting will greatly ease the pain. Unfortunately, as some kind of earthy punishment for irresponsible agricultural practices, or maybe it's simply prone to seasickness, it did not accompany the stinging nettle on its torment to Australia.
(Important note: it is NOT a certified doctor, and, in fact, does not hold any kind of medical certificate or degree).
The dead nettle (Lamium purpureum): Surprisingly, edible, and harmless enough. It's pretty pink-ish-purple flowers will ruin its disguise in certain seasons, along with its ever-present diminutive size. The dead nettle relies on the terrifying reputation of the stinging nettle to warn away anyone and anything. Yet, it you touch one, you will find no sting. Like if the spirit of the plant it pretends to be manifests in that sting, it finds itself lacking something it will never achieve. However, for the dead nettle, once that sting is proven absent, it's likely already dead - possibly uprooted for its uncanny skill of growing in driveways.
I am a writer.
I swear.
I promise myself: I am a writer!
But my words are stuck.
I don’t think in monologue.
I think in abstract ideas without real words.
I think in colours.
Synesthesia and neurodivergence on paper hints at delicately built structures supporting the colours that move like swirling, shimmering mist inside my brain.
No.
Never have I just one isolated, traceable thought — against my will, every one flutters by on erratic wings, overwhelmed by so many others. Could you keep your eye trained on a single monarch butterfly in a migrating swarm?
My thoughts are strobe lights — echoing, pounding, deep vibrations that reverberate off the walls of my skull in primary colours.
They float like soft, hazy clouds that wistfully blur the sky with creamy lavender, glittering magenta, electric peach, and yearning forget-me-not blue. So full of stories, beckoning me to tell them. My earnest hand strains its tendons, returning with nothing to show for the desperation with which I extended my reach.
They pool at the top of a dark room, iron shades of smoke billowing out of my ears, daring me to latch onto them with a foolish grip. The cloud mocks me from above, choking me with my own sheer volume of intangibility.
I know so badly what I want to say. What I need to say. What I have to say or else I might die.
But none of the words to say it.
My thoughts are a glossy, sticky honey — a glistening liquid with flecks of sunlight, flowing leisurely towards the small opening of its glass container. They are an infuriating, sluggish tar — a languid sludge rolling across the backroads carved into my brain.
Syrup or grease, they ooze with unrivalled lethargy, clogging the channels in which they travel before ever becoming.
But I am a writer, I promise myself.
I am.
I swear.
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