paul_stapleton04

Day 2: Tuesday 23rd April 2007
Today was Paul’s turn to cook. I love Mexican food so I was very happy about this. I spent most of the day at the table in the dining room working on the second chapter of my PhD. Paul was in the kitchen and Meabh was helping him find things he needed. She was also spending time playing with Luke in the living room. Paul seemed to be enjoying himself in the kitchen. I was enjoying the smell of cooking and also the conversation as I worked. It was a nice way to spend a day.
Throughout the day Meabh and I were a bit worried about our Rabbit Bean. She was acting really strange. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her and kept heading off into the storeroom under the stairs to make a nest. Meabh and I after lots of discussion came to the conclusion that she might be having a phantom pregnancy. We looked it up on the internet and discovered it was possible for rabbits to have this. We knew she wasn’t pregnant as we had the mail rabbit Parsnip neutered (poor lad).
For dinner Paul made:
* Refried beans,
* Home baked tortillas, which became quesadillas
* Fresh guacamole
* Fresh salsa
* Spanish rice, which has olives in it.
The dinner was amazing. We all really loved it. Luke really enjoyed it as well. I was a little bit worried he wouldn’t like it because he isn’t so fond of spicy food, but he really enjoyed Paul’s meal. It was so nice to eat this kind of food, especially when it had all been made from scratch. You could taste the freshness in the whole thing. It was fantastic. There is nothing like a good meal with friends. I am reminded of the remark that some performance artist once made, I think it was Richard Martel, he said ‘the diner table is the only institution we can trust.’ Chew that one over for a while.
After dinner we had a bit of a Jam. Meabh plays flute and I can play guitar. Paul likes to play guitar too. We have a couple of guitars, so things started off this way. Then Luke went and got his box of instruments. He’s very musical. I’ve been teaching him about rhythm recently by teaching him some of the saying you use to get different rhythms like ‘mummy daddy’ for drum roles and ‘watermelon’ for 4/4 time and ‘Liverpool Everton’ for 3/4. It’s good fun!
After Jamming Paul talked a bit about wanting to change the way he was doing things. We thought this was totally fine and to be expected. This is the nature of residencies. One of things Paul wanted to do was organising a ‘cook off’. Essentially Paul, Meabh and I would each make individual dishes. One main dish, one sweet dish and a drink. The rules were we had to make something Luke had never had before and he would be the judge of which was best. So Luke and Paul then began to talk about criteria for this competition. Luke loved the idea. He was getting on really well with Paul, which was nice to see.

Image: Luke enjoying quesadillas, spanish rice and guacamole.