Water boils on the stove. The windows in my kitchen drip. Snow outside sweeps by in desert dunes of white. The only sounds that penetrate are the crows – definitions of black in this moment, this landscape. I wonder what message the birds are bringing me today? This winter they’ve showed me that sometimes in life, there is no gray.
I’m boiling a can. That’s all I’m doing and that’s enough. The recipe’s instructions are clear and cautionary. ‘Do not let the water level drop below the top of the can for three hours or it will explode.’ Boiling an unopened can of sweetened condensed milk can be treacherous. A kitchen, a can, a pot of boiling water. The world is a dangerous place. And all this for a bit of caramel.
Peering into the pot and below the bursting surface of the water — the can shutters, finds its place and settles. Nothing bad should happen as long as I keep the can covered in water. It doesn’t look any different — yet all the changes are there + happening, invisible. I maintain the balance between enough and not enough. I feel like this is some kind of gastronomic apex, a culinary mountaintop.
During those three hours over heat and under pressure – the sweetened condensed milk in the can slowly, gradually caramelizes. It will become opaque + golden, dense but not runny or stringy. And then it’ll be stirred into a cup of coffee, be spread between layers of cake or over the bottom of a piecrust and topped with whipped cream. It will be licked off a spoon.
The intense heat and pressure around the can reminds me of hugging my children — surrounding them with firmness. Cocooning their small bodies when they rattle out of control – about to burst and take flight in fear, pain, anger or sickness. I give them warmth + compression from the outside to help them from feeling like they’ll split apart from the inside – exposed + jagged. Closed in tight, I tell them ‘You are safe.’
While the can boils, nothing happens and yet everything happens.
I’m attentive to the water level and pour in hot water to sustain the heat. The odorless steam is comforting on a cold winter day as much as it’s disturbing. I use my sense of smell to cook and yet here, there is none. It’s blank. This lack – a negative where I’m used to a positive is un-nerving and makes me antsy. I think of ways to interfere, to interject. I question…’This can’t be right – I should be doing something, it’s too easy, too basic, too plain. Shouldn’t there be more of Me in this process? More of my hand?…’ But the answer is simple. The answer is, this is all there is to it. Sometimes, there is nothing more for me to do.
The crows outside are quiet.
