Care Instructions

for the vegetables and humans in your life

I bought two fennel bulbs last week at the market. The fronds were long and unruly and hung over my basket like a woman draped on a chaise lounge. Fluffy, tangled, chaos. Their bodies were fine and tender, not round like the fennel I know so well¹. I’ve since learned these little, flatter, stringier bulbs are females, best for cooking and baking, while the short and bulbous, crisp versions are males. The thin stringy bulbs are also a sign of the end of the season. These girls are stretching up, thinning out and trying to multiply. It’s hard work. 

I tucked the bulbs away on their own shelf in the fridge, carefully cushioning the bulbs under a bed of fronds. Then the days passed and the bulbs were buried by a tub of yogurt. A punnet of blueberries. A container filled with last night’s spaghetti. Seven days later I found the bulbs, washed up and limp, but still breathing. I revived them in a bowl of ice water and stretched their fronds long on the counter. Mermaids in an icy ocean. I added half a head of celery that had also been abandoned in the fridge. Soon the vegetables would absorb the water and their parched cells would revive. I needed revived vegetables; I was making juice for my aunt who has just had throat surgery. She needed hydration. Watering. 

I wrote about watering this morning in my morning pages. About the window boxes thriving at the front of the house, the late bloomers, despite our warm and dry September. How they are beautiful but thirsty. How I am thirsty. How I have glasses all over the house, but I forget to drink. 

My dog was lying beside me as I wrote, inching closer as my hand slid across the page. She knew I was focused, that I wouldn’t notice her body squashing my books and the jacket that I shouldn’t have discarded on the bed. The jacket is made by Paynter, a two person team from London who sell the most thoughtful jackets via their newsletter just a few times a year. They always tell the story of their designs, of the fabrics and buttons they’ve chosen and the people in their community who wear their jackets. But the best part of jackets are their care instructions, stitched inside the left breast pocket:

Take care of yourself

Pat that dog. 

Water your plants.

Be kind to yourself. 

Keep an open mind.

Read more.

Exercise if it feels good. 

Have a bowl of Coco Pops. 

I had forgotten about that care label. I needed it, along with these additional lines:

Make green juice. 

Using the wrong sized glass happens to the best of us.

Wipe up the mess.

Bring the juice to your aunt. 

Save some for yourself. 

A recipe for green juice:

2 female fennel bulbs - revive in water if needed

2 apples

6 stalks of celery, give or take

a half a cucumber

a few fresh mint leaves

Cut off the fennel fronds, saving for another use - a pesto? Chopped into a salad? Run the ingredients through a juicer. Laugh at yourself if you forget to put a proper sized jug under the spout. Clean up and carry on. Recipe makes about 500ml / 2 cups of juice.

1. Click here for a nice roasted fennel salad from my archives, complete with a taste of Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen