CASTELNAUDARY

I used to think only horrendously tragic events slowed time. The ephemeral - too often the primary focus - ceased to exist. Then I started futzing with "old world" cuisine, starting brine buckets, boning out pig's feet and accumulating duck fat for confit and cassoulet.

These activities take time. Lots of it. They slow everything down. No time for pointless politics, shameless materialism, who isn't sleeping with Lindsay Lohan. You're following the knife around complicated bone structure, or rendering fat, or soaking white beans for cassoulet. Your mind is quiet, hands active, feet calling for a soak from too much standing.

Even the cooking processes impart something of the ineffable. Cassoulet - if you do it "right" - takes two days. Much longer depending on whether or not you're collecting lipid and meats. Beans must soak and cook. Bread needs to be crumbed - a lot of it. Sausages and bacon and duck confit and goose and lamb must be browned. Tomatoes must be cored and seeded and chopped and cooked down to their essence. Assemblage is key, too.

I cooked my last cassoulet this winter. Beans soaked and cooked with pork knuckle 'til plump, swollen. Sausages wound and browned. Lamb bits browned. Confit pulled from jars of thick white fat. Duck meat picked pink from its bones. Goose breast browned the color of Abueleta. Bacon crisped brown. Beans drained and mixed with the tomatoes. A casserole dish slicked with lard. Beans, meat, breadcrumbs. Repeat. The roof? Breadcrumbs swathed in duck fat. Into a medium oven for a long slow cook.

Remarkably, winter had come to Georgia. Trees swayed in wind and creaked and then settled silently. The house brought about in the early 1900s, becomes cantankerous when the temperature dips below freezing. It stretches, groans. Soon the air smells of meat and spice. Ah, Sam Smith's Imperial Stout. Another. A doze on the den couch. The gas oven clicks on and off every 20 minutes. Cassoulet needs tending. Smooth the crust further down into the bean, meat, tomato mixture. More breadcrumbs. Another Stout. A snooze. Click on and off. The wind. The smell. A look to the Faulkner on the floor... Nah.

Hours later the casserole comes out. It's top bubbling brown and red, volcanic. A spoonful for the cook in small hours' midst. Nothing tastes better. Yup. Time has stopped.