It begins with us cooking around the kitchen, the girls, with blue flames on the burners and tarnished pots spilling over with bubbling liquid.
Ziggy's from Eritrea.
She teaches me how to clean lentils properly and what I like most about Ziggy is that she cooks with her hands.
She turns on the faucet and water spills into a glass bowl of dry legumes.
"This is how you clean lentils," and she uses her hand as a stopper to block grains of orange lentil from tumbling out the bowl and down the drain pipe.
She turns the faucet back on and repeats the process over and over until there's no more foam.
It's that simple, but I like watching her do it because there's something very maternal about the process.
This is going to be a good year.
Injera, the sour sponge bread, and brick-red chili powder and cloves of peeled garlic and neon yellow cumin.
It's the tart fumes that lift from the stove-top and waft throughout the house, down the hall, and up the chimney. It seeps into our fingernails and thickens into our hair.
"In my country, the women cook and we talk and share stories."
Around the stove, stirring lentils and spices and minced onion.
The next day, the house is full.
Ziggy rolls the injera and organizes them onto a white serving plate so that they look like moist towelettes. People sit cross-legged on the ground, talking about their New Year's resolutions, eating this food that boiled for so long.
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