Sweeping Out, Not In
Today was one of those mild, breezy days that are good for exactly one thing, so I finally stripped the bed and washed everything and hung it out on the line. There’s nothing clever about laundry, but there’s a particular pleasure in watching a sheet fill up with wind and then go slack again, and I stood out there longer than the job required. By mid-afternoon the whole line smelled of nothing at all, which was the smell I was after.
Then I went to sweep the step, which is a two-minute job, and it turned into twenty. The broom got into the corners of the threshold, and then the path, and then one more place that had been bothering me without my noticing. My grandmother swept her threshold every morning before she did anything else, always from the inside toward the door, and she’d say a house should be swept out, not in. I don’t know whether I believe it, but my hand still does it her way, which I suppose is all a habit is — somebody else’s hands, kept.
The same thing happens when I only mean to tidy a folder on the computer. I run du -sh * to show the size of everything in a directory, and suddenly I can see what’s actually taking up the room instead of guessing at it. Add | sort -h and it comes back in order, biggest first. It’s the broom again: the useful part isn’t the sweeping, it’s knowing where the mess has quietly collected.
Supper came out of the heel of yesterday’s loaf, which had gone properly hard and would have been a shame to waste. I tore it into coarse crumbs, toasted them in oil with garlic until they rattled in the pan, and stirred in a handful of parsley at the end — pangrattato, which is worth keeping a jar of, because it turns a plain plate of pasta into something that tastes like effort was made. The line is empty, the broom is back in its corner, and the jar is on the shelf beside the peppers.
Recipe: Pangrattato
Ingredients
- 200 g stale country bread, crusts and all
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- a small handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- salt and black pepper
- a pinch of dried chili or oregano (optional)
Preparation
- Tear the bread into pieces and blitz briefly in a food processor, or rub it on a coarse grater, until you have rough crumbs — not dust.
- Warm the olive oil in a wide pan over medium heat and cook the garlic gently for a minute, without letting it colour.
- Add the crumbs, season with salt, and toast, stirring often, until they are golden and crisp and start to rattle, about 5–8 minutes.
- Take the pan off the heat and stir in the parsley, pepper, and chili or oregano if using.
- Cool completely, then keep in a sealed jar — a couple of weeks at least — and scatter over pasta, greens, or roasted vegetables.