Salt & Avocados

If you know me you know that I love food.  

French food in particular.

And there are a few foods that instantly take me back 

to the year-and-a-half I lived in Paris as a missionary for my church.

It's hard to believe it's been more than seven years since I returned.

Despite the years I still can't get enough of tearing off the end of a baguette,

dipping into the Nutella jar and getting my knuckles covered in chocolate,

or eating ripe avocado sprinkled with sea salt.

Yesterday was the birthday of one of my dearest friends, a woman I met while working in the heart of Paris,

someone who was so different from any friend I'd had before-

She was Haitian, a single mother of three, and had come to Paris on her own years before.

She spoke no English and I almost no French,

but somehow we found ourselves eating and laughing ourselves to tears together on a regular basis.

She cooked and cleaned for a cantankerous old woman called Madame Mouche ('Madame Fly'), and the stories she told- or rather acted out since I couldn't yet grasp the words- 

had us shrieking and weeping with laughter in her small but immaculate kitchen.

Having worked a similar job myself while in college, I could relate and, occasionally,

 add my own charades to the production.

Each time we visited, Raymonde cooked, I ate, and we became closer.

The food she prepared was simple-

a scrambled egg with thin slices of shallot,

fried plantains for dipping in black bean sauce,

a sliced baguette wrapped around a bar of Milka chocolate,

and slices of ripe avocado dusted with a pinch of salt.

I ate like royalty at her house- 

and the lesson I learned from her,

other than il faut prends son temps when you walk in heels, was that, 

more important than any ingredient combination or particular technique you could use,

was the pure joy and love you put into your cooking.

Happy Birthday,  Chere Raymonde!

Tu as changé ma vie pour toujours.