It follows that people are very idiosyncratic about what they consider essential things in their life; what’s essential to one could well be meaningless to another. So it follows that if you asked a person to name the list of the things he/she would want “always in the house”, the choices would tell you a great deal about the kind of individual he/she is. In that vein, therefore, here is a list of things I always want in my house, wherever I live.
My house would always have some tomatoes, some olive oil, some garlic and some kind of pasta. Sounds odd, but you could come home late, starving hungry, no dinner prepared, and with those few ingredients, in 15 minutes, you would have a very enjoyable meal. You cut up the tomatoes, sauté them in olive oil and garlic for about 10 minutes, have the pasta cooking in the meantime, and when the pasta’s done your Italian repast is ready…delicious, too. When there’s time for more leisurely cooking, I always need geera, some oregano, and some Cajun seasoning, and, of course, given whom I’m married to, some blazing hot pepper sauce. When I run short of the latter, my friend Carmen Abdool comes to the rescue – always.
Wherever I live, I always want to have a new book or two waiting to be read, and a handful of gems I’ve read before and keep going back to. One of those gems is