Autumn: The Community Kitchen Bears the Fruit of Friendship — Sister One-Pot’s Community Kitchen
Foodthink Says
I. The Age-Defying Community Kitchen
Summer was hard to bear, but bear it we must. The hot season in Chengdu this year has been unusually long. Everyone has been shuttling between the sweat-drenched outdoors and the air-conditioned indoors, their bodies constantly readjusting, burning through plenty of vital energy. But perhaps thanks to six months of regular routines and healthy eating, my meal companions have been turning up on time every day to collect their meals, which suggests their bodies are holding up well—not falling apart at the change of season, as in years past.
That sense of accomplishment puts the cook in good spirits, and she feels quite justified in pressing the advantage, making good use of “golden September, silver October” to help everyone build up their reserves for the winter.
As for the cook herself, her energy each day is boundless, and she owes it all to the community kitchen.
When spring came, I drew up an “Anti-Ageing Plan”, hoping to restore body and mind through comprehensive adjustments to exercise, diet and daily routine, and to slow the approach of age-related ailments as much as possible. After all, I’m well into my forties, and age shows no mercy.
If one wants to keep one’s mind sharp and one’s body nimble in old age, now is the time to start preparing: exercise more, keep a regular routine, eat a balanced diet.
Since opening the community kitchen, my meal companions have fallen into a rhythm of eating whatever the farming partners’ fields happen to provide. Nearly 180 days have passed, and the results have been striking. Every time I stand in the kitchen, my heart fills with creative fervour, and a joy born of friendship rises within me.
More than once, I’ve wanted to declare to the world just how wonderful the community kitchen is: Designing a balance of staples and dishes from whatever the fridge and the pantry hold is a splendid mental exercise; every stage—washing, chopping, composing, stir-frying—trains the coordination of hands, eyes, mind and heart.
II. Autumn: The Community Kitchen Bears the Fruit of Friendship
For me, the feedback my meal companions give is the finest tonic of all.
Looking back over this half year of running the community kitchen, we’ve faced all sorts of problems, and every time we’ve come through them together, shoulder to shoulder:
A water pipe in the flat the cook was renting sprang a problem, and for a stretch there was no running water. A nearby meal companion sent an invitation, moving the cook—along with her pots and ingredients—into her flat, and they set up a temporary base for the community kitchen. The temporary base came with a steamer, so those weeks we ate plenty of steamed and tossed dishes, and the steamed spare ribs with rice flour we’d long been craving finally made it onto the menu.
One time, I found kohlrabi in a vegetable parcel from my farming partner Hu Xuemei. Ah—a vegetable I had long forgotten (and had deliberately steered clear of all along). But since it was already here, and considering my meal companions might never have tried it, I quietly julienned the kohlrabi and stir-fried it with shredded pork, scattering spring garlic shoots over just before plating. In the course of preparing this dish, I faced some memories too painful to revisit, and tried hard to think about what I had learned from my past.
The vegetables my farming partners sent over the summer were mostly leafy greens and squashes. When I came across vegetables that required endless cleaning, the cook entertained some alternatives: leave a note for the farming partners to stop sending such vegetables, or ease up and not fuss quite so much over the preparation. But every time, a second thought intervened: why not use the opportunity for a bit of extra dexterity work, to guard against dementia in later years? This is the beauty of having meal companions. Without them, I would never demand so much of myself.
The days passed, and a mutual understanding grew between us. Everyone brings their own spare meal boxes and stores them at my place, so I can portion out the food straight from the wok. If someone can’t make it on time, I pop their packed portions into the fridge for them to collect when convenient. This not only reduces the interruptions to my own meal from people arriving to collect their food one by one, but also saves me a great deal of time on clean-up.
Since my meal companions are all freelancers, their lives before joining the community kitchen were rather free-and-easy, with little in the way of routine. Now that they’ve come to share meals at my table, each person’s daily schedule takes meal-collecting time as its reference point. Gradually, each person’s life has settled into an orderly and relatively regular rhythm—not only strengthening one’s sense of command over daily life, but also forging close connections between one’s body, one’s surroundings and other people, establishing a new cadence.
This month, a new meal companion joined us—Xiao Gao. She loves music and sings part-time, and after her very first visit to collect a meal, at my request she composed the “Song of the Community Kitchen”: “Community kitchen, community kitchen, I have a community kitchen.” She even shared photos on her Moments feed of “Teacher Xia’s beautiful meals”, joyfully declaring to the whole world: “The Yulin neighbourhood has one more healthy kid eating on time!”
III. New Autumn Nourishing Menu
The new rice from farming partner Chen Ying’s family in Meishan has just been milled—the grain germ clearly visible. I promptly ordered 10 kg from her, and stocked up on a new batch of sweet potatoes, peanuts, chestnuts and pumpkin. Every time I cook rice, I use less grain and lean more on beans, seeds, sweet potato or pumpkin. And when the lifestyle market sets up in Chengdu, I pick up some lotus root for slow-cooked soups.
In the most recent vegetable parcel from Hu Xuemei, there were several carrots wrapped in paper and two onions. Indeed, among all things that have their season, plants are the most punctual.
In the scorching heat, the blazing sun is something one wants to flee, but root vegetables push their leaves out in the full blaze, straining to gather as much solar energy as they can so that their “fruit” can grow silently beneath the earth. Then, as the days grow cooler, humans and animals alike gather their energy by eating these root vegetables, preparing for the long winter ahead. Thank you to every plant that grows an edible root.
To show my respect for the onions and carrots, the day after receiving the parcel I went for a morning run—all the way to the vegetable shop at the top of the market—racing to get there before those early-rising “silver-haired treasures” and grabbing two slabs of “firm tofu with a creamy skin” to cook at home.
That firm tofu is hugely popular: only one slab is sold each day, first come, first served, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. The surface looks a touch yellowish and grey, but it feels wonderfully springy in the hand. Once cooked, the aroma fills every corner; the rich, fatty flavour of soy lingers and dances between lips, teeth and nostrils. The last time I happened to get some and cooked it, I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’ve been planning that once the autumn chill really settles in, our “all-female crew” community kitchen must eat more tofu.
That shop selling the firm tofu is truly a Yulin gem. The owner drives fresh fruit and vegetables down from Longquan Mountain every day at five in the morning. By seven, the doorway is already packed with aunties and uncles. Before half past ten, the day’s produce is sold out and the shutters go down; the owner locks up and heads off, leaving her prime-location storefront entirely to the neighbouring fruit shop to make the most of.
However, the owner loves finding reasons to take a break and closes for a few days during every festival. So whenever I suddenly need to pop out for some vegetables or fresh fruit, there’s always a chance the shutters will be down. After the initial disappointment, I find myself envying the owner’s zest for life, and then quietly grateful that the community kitchen’s everyday vegetables come straight and steadily from our farming partners.
This time at the lifestyle market, I deliberately bought a packet of Chen Erwa’s home-fried pickled-cabbage-and-fish seasoning. Next time I get “creamy-skin tofu”, I plan to make a pot of tofu that “tastes like fish” for my meal companions to try. I’ll use plenty of broth and throw in some celery—it’ll be a hit, no doubt.
For our all-female crew’s autumn nourishment, aside from adjusting the staples, eating more root vegetables and cooking more tofu, I also make plenty of soups and thick broths to aid digestion and absorption, helping us store up energy for the long, cold winter ahead.
This is peak season for okra and loofah. I’ve stir-fried loofah and okra with beaten egg for silky, luscious scrambled eggs; I’ve also snipped prawns into tiny pieces, tipped them into the near-done loofah and okra, and added a splash of water, simmering everything into a velvety prawn broth—served over mixed-grain rice, it is simply glorious.
Both okra and loofah are superb for making broths. They both yield that lusciously slippery, viscous juice, and loofah juice in particular is known in folk tradition as “beauty water”, said to be especially good for women. While loofah and okra are still in season, I’ve placed an order with a shepherd friend in Ningxia for some lamb. Once it arrives, I’ll mince it finely and simmer it with vegetables into a rich, hearty broth—it should be delicious and wonderfully easy to digest.
The author of The Physiology of Taste—that violinist who served as mayor of Belley during the French Revolution—began writing only after returning to his homeland from years of exile. His very first aphorism reads: “The universe is meaningful only through the existence of life, and all life requires the absorption of nourishment.” In the chapter “On Digestion”, he shares a proverb: “Man lives not by eating but by digesting. We must digest in order to live. Poor or rich, shepherd or king, before this iron law all are equal.”
Digestion should be the very first consideration when people choose what to eat or prepare food for others. So I wish every friend who reads this article: good digestion, good absorption, good health, and good spirits.
Images: unless otherwise noted, all provided by the author
Edited by Xu Youyou