August 28, 2016

My dearest,

Remember how I used to cut garlic? I’d grab a giant chopper (kitchen knife of choice for most Chinese cooks; in fact, the only one we’d really need) and whack at them garlic cloves and mince away. Voila! Done.

Nowadays I’ll use a smaller knife. I’ll carefully slice the cloves into larger pieces so that after I’ve cooked it with whatever other ingredients at hand, you can pick the garlic out easily. (You like the flavour, you say, but not so much that you’d risk biting into any.)

Our favourite garlic memory: Walking through a grove of wild garlic behind our friend’s house in Bath, stopping somewhere in the middle of those fragrant blossoms, a sea of green peppered with pristine white stars, and hugging each other. Life can be so simple and so beautiful all the same.

Yours, ever and always.