ysabetwordsmith | Poem: "Fall Down Seven Times"

This poem is spillover from the August 3, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by Shirley Barrette. It also fills the "hand feeding" square in my 8-2-21 card for the August Intimacies Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Broken Angels and Gentle Soul threads of the Polychrome Heroics series.

"Fall Down Seven Times"

[Thursday, March 24, 2016]

"I don't think it worked,"
Aidan said, glumly staring
down at the mixing bowl of
what was supposed to be
strawberry cream cheese.

It had somehow managed
to be lumpy and runny at
the same time, and Cas
was at a loss to explain why.

"Let's test it anyway," Cas said.
He used a cracker to scoop up
some of the lumpier part to taste.

It was ... not inedible, but it was
not very good either. Still, he
couldn't bear to disappoint Aidan.

Cas filled another cracker and
offered it. "Here, just try one."

Aidan leaned forward and
delicately took it in his teeth.

He chewed and swallowed,
then frowned. "I ruined it."

"Nah, we can still eat it,
it just didn't turn out as well
as we hoped," Cas said.
"It tastes okay, the texture
just needs some work."

The spatula made
another sad loop
around the bowl.

"The recipe only
had two ingredients,"
Aidan mourned. "So
how did I wreck it?"

Cream cheese and
powdered strawberries,
so Cas had to think.

"When it goes lumpy,
that's usually because
the cream cheese was
too cold," said Cas, "and
runny means too warm or
overmixed. Also, if you
overheat or overbeat, then
some things can separate."

"It can't be too cold and
too hot all at once,"
Aidan protested.

"No, probably not,"
Cas said. "Maybe
the humidity is a factor."

"Yeah, that affects things,"
Aidan said. "It's always humid
in the Maldives, though."

"We can try again with
this recipe, or we can try
something else," Cas said.
"We are not giving up."

"I know," Aidan said.
"It's just ... hard, still."

Cas tried to get a feel
for what was going wrong
using his barely-there grasp
of his inward senses.

He wasn't very familiar
with them yet, but he had
gotten to know Aidan
extremely well over
the recent days.

There was something,
just at the fringes of
his perception, like
a torn piece of paper.

"Aidan, can you feel
this?" said Cas. "It feels
almost rough. What is it?"

"When I said that I lost
what cooking skills I had,
that wasn't a metaphor,"
Aidan said. "Think of
something torn away,
or burned away. That's
scar tissue you're feeling."

Cas jerked back. "I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to hurt you."

"You're not," Aidan said.
"Well, not really. It's just
tender still. Ignoring it won't
make it any better. It needs
to be worked through, like
a stiffened patch of skin."

"Okay," said Cas. "I'll take
your word on that. You know ...
between us, we have options
that most folks don't. I know
how to cook. If we were
connected, that might help
smooth out the rough spots."

Aidan shook his head. "That's
a very generous offer, but I
don't want to risk hurting you
if anything spilled over."

"All right, it's your choice."
Gently Cas took the bowl
from Aidan. "It's only
a small batch. We can
use it up on snacks."

He scooped out the lumps,
leaving the watery part in
the bowl, and spread them
on crackers and fruit slices.

"Go on, try another," Cas said.
He fed Aidan a second piece,
then took more for himself.
"I've had way, way worse
than this at Mom's parties.
Pot-flavored cheese balls
really taste like grass."

Aidan managed to laugh
a little at that. "You win."

Eating the damn stuff was
worth it to make Aidan smile.

Just then, Drew came home
with Hali and Saraphina in tow.

"Oh, snacks," Drew said happily.

"Aidan made strawberry cream cheese,"
Cas said. "Come and try some."

Drew skidded to a stop, and
Saraphina took a big step back.

Hali pounced on the crackers.

Cas tried out a chunk of
coconut. The flavors
didn't clash too badly.

"Ewwww," Hali said,
wrinkling her nose.

"That's not a nice thing
to say," Cas warned. "Look
at Aidan's face; that made him
sad. What else could we say?"

"Dunno." Hali shrugged.

"We could say, 'You worked
hard on that,' instead," said Drew.
"I know Aidan has tried very hard
to rebuild his cooking skills."

"We could say, 'That was
a good first try. You'll get
better with practice, so
try again'," Cas added.

"Except I won't," Aidan said.
"We may as well admit it."

Cas raised an eyebrow.
"Could you have done
this much ten years ago?"

"Well, no," Aidan admitted.
"That was about when I got back
to making raw things, like piling
greens in a bowl for salad."

"Then you're getting better
with practice," Cas said firmly.

It was weird trying to daddy
someone about a zillion times
older than himself, but Cas figured
the mood mattered more than the years.

"It's just taking so long," Aidan said,
"and it's not working very well."

"Aidan, if I have to count
how many strokes it takes
to mix flavored cream cheese
by hand, so you won't have
to guess, then that is what
I will do," Cas told him.

"It's still a lot of work,"
Aidan said, "and you have
other things to do, too."

"I have a toddler --
not to mention a gang
who track in as much dirt
as toddlers -- so I'm used to
everything taking forever,"
Cas said. "Don't sweat it."

"We don't mind sharing
the work, Aidan," said Drew.
"You've done a lot for us."

"I appreciate it," said Aidan.
"I just feel like such a failure."

"Remember, failure isn't about
how many times you fall down,
it's about how many times
you get up," Cas said.

That was maybe cheating
a bit, since Aidan had said
exactly the same thing to Cas
when he got discouraged.

"I suppose I can't argue
with that," Aidan admitted.

"You mentioned that you get
distracted with the life energy
in food, especially when it leaves
the food as it cooks," Cas said.
"What about adding life instead?"

"What do you mean?" Aidan said.

"Yogurt and other fermented foods
have live cultures," said Cas. "So
making them is like feeding pets
that turn into delicious food later.
Heron tipped me to that, it's neat."

"I have no idea if that would
even work," Aidan said.
"I haven't done it in years."

"Me neither, but wouldn't it
be fun to try out?" Cas said.
"Heron says that he's getting
better at not making yeast die
or explode, and those are
the worst that could happen."

Aidan grimaced. "Overflows
make ghastly messes," he said.
"I learned that in the 1970s."

"So what?" Cas parried. "You
have a ginormous bathroom, it's
the size of a bedroom, we'll just
put the yogurt jar in there. If it
overflows, it's easy to wash away.
Besides, we can use the heat and
humidity in our favor this time."

"Fair point," Aidan admitted.
"That bathroom is ridiculous, we
might as well get more use of it."

"So, we can try the cream cheese
again, we can try making yogurt,
or we can do something else,"
Cas said. "Your choice."

"Yogurt!" Hali chirped.

"Let Aidan pick, please,
it's his project," Cas said.

"Fall down seven times,
get up eight," Aidan muttered.
"All right, let's try the yogurt."

* * *

Notes:

I got to wondering how they get milk in the Maldives, other than importing it all. Goats (mainly Surti or Osmanabadi) are an obvious choice, but goat milk doesn't work for all purposes. Turns out, they're using Miniature Zebu, a type of miniature cattle from India.

Cream cheese can be made with acid or with a starter culture and rennet. You can also make vegan cream cheese.

Flavored cream cheese recipes come in many variations. Here are some other schmear options. Using only cream cheese and powdered strawberries will minimize moisture, but a combination of powdered and fresh strawberries produces a more complex flavor. Vegetable powder gives you a garden cream cheese. Shop for vegetable powder, whole freeze-dried vegetables, whole and powdered vegetables, whole and powdered fruit.

You would think that a recipe with only 2 ingredients would be really simple, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't go wrong. Cream cheese and related dairy products can turn lumpy or runny, or they can separate.

It has to be okay to make mistakes, because everyone makes mistakes and that's how we learn. They are a natural and necessary part of the learning process. Create an environment that is resilient about mistakes. This encourages people to deal with them and learn from them instead of hiding them and making matters worse. There's even a game for learning this. In one of my online classes I assigned students to try a project at the edge of their current skill level, which pretty much guarantees something will go a bit pear-shaped. Here, Aidan is struggling not because he doesn't know how to cope with failure, but because it's so frustrating to relearn a lost skillset and he feels like he's making no progress.

Toddlers can say terrible things, so it helps to turn that around into something better. There's a knack to being both truthful and gentle. Explore ways of raising a compassionate child. Hali isn't mean, she just doesn't realize yet that blunt honesty can hurt people's feelings.

Life energy flows through everything alive. Food retains more or less of this, depending on whether it is alive, recently alive, or long dead when eaten. Fresh raw food and probiotics have the most life energy. Whole foods that are minimally processed still have significant amounts, even if they are dried or cooked. Ultra-processed food has little or no energy left, and is downright bad for people. Prefer foods toward the live end.

Making yogurt is relatively straightforward, and does not really require special equipment.

Some live cultures, like sourdough and countertop pickles, are notorious for overflowing their containers. Yogurt usually does not, but when you mix superpowers and microbes, unexpected things can happen. Heron's problem is that tamping down his superpowers prevents bread yeast from rising properly, and unleashing them can make it overproof very quickly. Finding a balance has been a lengthy and frustrating problem, but at least he has Turi to help now.

Cooking mistakes are common, so learn how to handle them.
DO NOT READ WITH MOUTH FULL. Sometimes the results are funny. The best approach is often to eat the evidence and try again.

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: https://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/6302695.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

siliconshaman

I can sympathise with Aidan here... I mean, I accidently made plastic one time! Turns out, it's really not as hard as you might think to create a sort of bakelite, but it's not very good as plastic and definitely not edible. Took me a good few years, and innumerable failures, to learn how to cook... actually, I'm still learning and I don't think one ever really stops...

Although now that I think about it. How did Aidan loose his cooking skills? Brain damage?

From:

wispfox

I think it was when he almost died (should have died!) at the time that he and Alicia met. Something about an atomic bomb? Maybe?

Probably it was feeling everything die at once that did it, I'm guessing.

From:

siliconshaman

That was the death field effect during WW2. IIRC, although he lived, most of his tissue died at a cellular level, so I'm guessing brain damage maybe?

There was also damage at a spiritual level, since the death field worked by severing the connection between material and spiritual.

Edited Date: 2021-08-10 06:36 pm (UTC)

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