A Philosophy or Poetry of the Kitchen

I spend a lot of time in our kitchen.  I work two involved jobs and have several time consuming projects on my hand in any given week, but I would estimate that I spend around an hour and a half cooking most of the meals that my husband and I eat together. I also love making beverages and tea, things from scratch, including food for our chickens that we are blending and grinding at home.

I have considered why this may be true, why even in the face of so much busyness I can commit to giving up hours each week to be in the midst of my kitchen making things to nourish us.  I have arrived at a theory.

Fifty years ago, people lead sensory lives. Work meant touching things, moving things, affecting change in actual things. Today, my work involves moving my ten fingers across a smooth mouse pad about two inches and not much else. I also talk. I talk a lot. And I sit. I imagine that when one of my pets has the opportunity to observe me doing this work, she would not notice much difference between my state of sleep and my state of work, with the slight location and posture change being the only real difference. 

This lack of movement, of actual handling of substance, of actual creation is misleading and depressing. I may go to bed exhausted but never be feel truly tired in my body for lack of actual exertion. I may feel depressed for lack of a measurable contribution or provable outcome.

When I cook, I am immersed in a world of sensuality.  I affect immediate change. I create percievable, nearly instant beauty. I attempt and fail, I attempt and succeed. I am brave, I am flavorful, I am adventurous, I am active.

As I navigate my kitchen, I am in a place truly my own. I have chosen these spices, these vegetables.  I feel connected to my community as I cut a squash from such and such a farmer, I feel grateful as I open eggs from a friends chickens, I feel rebellious as I drink raw milk and love it. I feel innovative as I blend and modify recipes. I feel connected to my history as I remember the first time I made biscotti with my grandmother, the first time I tried Italian cheesecake and hated it.

My hands immediately shape the eternity of a few carrots; their surface has a gentle roughness. Shallots and onions interact with my eyes and I am never so happy to be weeping.  I connect with the earth as I wash dirt from a potato and a leek. I marvel at science as I start yeast or ferment yogurt. 

I am creative in my kitchen. I am truly myself, allowed to explore my senses- to touch and to feel, to smell and decide, to taste and adjust. And I am forced to wait, but not forever. I am in real time. 

The sense of my house warming with flavor feels like my love for my home and my family. I have a sense of rhythm and the realness of time as I make broth from scraps for next week’s soup or seitan, as I can tomato sauce for the winter, as I await the rising of the next batch of dough.  I understand investment as I save seeds for the spring or save potato skins for the compost.  I am in place, and the world moves in a sane way.

It is an hour and a half, perhaps more time consuming than taking an anti-depressant, but cheaper than therapy and more realistic than a job change.

I am truly an artist, truly a woman in my kitchen.