WHAT I TREASURE
My Moroccan soup bowl
Familiar domestic objects can be potent totems of family history, often forgotten but powerful when reawakened. So it was with a capacious, ceramic earthenware soup bowl my husband and I had bought on an adventurefilled trip to Marrakesh in Morocco.
Ours is a long marriage; we will celebrate 33 years this year and, at some point, maybe 15 years ago we left our four children with my parents and headed for the casbah.
Long marriages often have their fallow periods, when love lies dormant. Juggling busy working lives with raising a family, and no grandparents nearby can be tough. My husband is from the Ivory Coast, in
West Africa, so there were no doting aunties to give us a helping hand. We were always in our marriage for the long haul, but it was our short haul trips to Europe or North Africa that brought joy and light to our relationship.
Marrakesh bathed us in sunshine and offered us glimpses of other ways of living. My beloved husband is an inspired, instinctive cook so meandering in local markets is a major feature of our escapes.
Exploring the souks was a multi-sensory experience. As we sampled the local cuisine, we planned to recreate our culinary adventures with a hoard of ceramics that could evoke the magic of the medina and the fun of holidays without responsibility.
We chose a tangine pot, several tiled platters, and two large soup bowls.
Back in the UK, my chef-husband would fill the bowls with his fusion food and sustain the children and me with wholesome cooking that drew upon his Ivorian heritage, long periods of living in France and Italy, interspersed with trips to far flung locations. My own efforts in the kitchen were largely focussed on the early years of family life but on returning home after a long day working in the NHS, I’ve always been a willing recipient of whatever is on offer. Beautiful tableware elevates the food and enhances the experience, and our Moroccan crockery was a key player.
Time passed. And we moved house and city and the ceramics were boxed up until we prepared a feast to welcome our adult children home and unpacked these long lost treasures. Amazingly still intact, our gorgeous North African bowl has now been adopted by my eldest daughter.
Seeing her pleasure at it has re-awakened memories of our travels. So here’s to the next market trip, whenever that might be! What means a lot to you? Tell us in 500 words; thesimplethings@icebergpress.co.uk.