Ada Demirgian is a lady whom I’ve endeared unconditionally although we never met. Do you know why? Because she writes stories. Stories were the airplane that flew me over my childhood and I would have given all my savings to buy a story book (I actually did that several times). I’ve always seen story writers as magical creatures. Ada dared me to write a children’s recipe, which I did. She posted the story yesterday, on her blog, and she was kind enough to allow me to post it on mine, as a 1st of June present for my readers’ children or grandchildren. Here’s the story (because it turned out a story, in the end).
“Orezel’s adventures in this big word begin right in the Country of milk and honey. That’s because here is where Orezel was born, with a face made from rice bathed in milk and honey, grape eyes, melon mouth, lemon eyebrows, strawberry nose and fresh, green mint hair. Where did all these come from? From the Country of milk and honey, of course, which is known to be full of…that’s right, fruit! As money doesn’t exist in this country, everyone who needs milk or honey for cookies, cake or for the breakfast of the Queen over Countries and Seas, just leaves in exchange a basket of grapes, a case of oranges, a chest of freckled strawberries, a large sack of corn cobs just right to roast, or a cart of round pumpkins yelling “we want to go in the oven, we want to go in the oven!”. This why, my darlings, the Country of milk and honey has everything for free and plenty for everyone. Now, let’s get back to how appeared Orezel. Weeeell…
The Fairy with milk face and honey mouth grabbed from the pantry a cup of long-grain rice brought all the way from the Chinese Kingdom in return for a bucket of honey their Empress needed to make traditional honey body wraps that any true empress deserves.
The Fairy obtained some strawberries of which she just needed one, but the one didn’t want to come alone. You know how it is, strawberries are easily bored and the Fairy didn’t want to make Orezel a bored nose.
Grapes for the eyes can be found anywhere (actually, almost every creature in the Country of honey and milk has grape eyes, except the Judges, who have black currant eyes, and except Fairies, who have ripe blackberry eyes). Well, regarding the milk, it’s obvious that it pours through every valley and the melons are rolling like crazy next to the ones that are green on the outside and red on the inside every time Vaivode Pumpkin’s messengers show up to demand milk for the children in their country (and they do this every morning, you know, otherwise how would their children grow big and healthy if they don’t drink milk?).
The bumble bees are really buzzing around the honey waterfalls from the Country of milk and honey, but this isn’t a bad thing, the buzzing comes from their wings, which flicker really fast for the drops of honey-foam rising from the waterfall to fly off as beautiful, fluffy yellow clouds towards the fields of honeysuckle flowers. If you’re wondering why this happens, you should know that from these beautiful, fluffy clouds rains with nectar right on the honeysuckle flowers. Nectar is good because bees make honey out of it, which then return to the honey waterfalls by taking a slightly complicated road, so I won’t take up your time with this story today. Anyway, you should simply know that it’s good and that’s all you need to know now.
Let me tell you what the Fairy did next: she put the milk and the rice to boil in a pot. She also added honey, three full teaspoons of it. She then let the pot on low heat, to simmer nice and slowly. She kept on stirring in the pot (well, not with a spoon, as I would do, but with a magic wand that she bought from the Negreni fair last year) until all the rice grains have boiled and in their place appeared a creamy, grainy cream (it’s called this way because here and there you can find halves or quarters of rice grains), sweet but not too sweet, velvety where it’s not grainy and extremely tasty.
After the creamy, grainy cream was chilled, the Fairy spread it on a plate and made Orezel a pair of eyes from grapes. Orezel saw that he could see. He would have told the Fairy that he can see her and that she’s very beautiful, but he didn’t have a mouth. This was quickly taken care of, with a slice of melon. The nose, a strawberry that wasn’t at all bored, appeared in its place, meaning in the spot where any nose should be, and the hair, a bob of green, perfumed mint, made Orezel proud of what he looked like.
My darlings, if you enjoyed the first Orezel story, surely the rest will follow. Until then, don’t forget to eat plenty of fresh fruit and veggies, because they’re full of vitamins, health and smartness, and there are things we all need.”
Special thanks to
Oana Bodnariuc, Authorized Translator
oana.bodnariuc@gmail.com
facebook.com/oana.bodnariuc