On Cooking

“I do not cook,” I have often said in the last couple of years.
I allowed that this could be a thing that a person no longer does.

Some people used to deliver the mail,
others used to do jazzercise.
Some people used to collect stamps,
others used to sell vacuum cleaners.
People used to do lots of things.

The only thing I never want to be is a person who used to dance in the kitchen. I contended that this kitchen is more for dancing than for cooking.

I also contend that a person cannot worry about everything.
I chose to let cooking – and the tasks therein – be a thing I didn’t worry about.

But I am a person who asks for cookbooks for Christmas.

Because I am an enigma, a woman of complexities.
And I contend that the hobby of collecting cookbooks is very different from the hobby of cooking.

I love reading cookbooks, cover to cover.

Yes, tell me how to dredge and dice and julienne.
Lay out a diagram of the side of beef. Label its rounds and ribs.
I like words like poach and braise, the subtleties that define a muffin from a cupcake from a scone from a biscuit.

The Food Network and I have long been the best of friends.
Give me your Inas and your Paulas.
Your Giadas and your Duffs.
I’ll let them speak their algorithms and deliver their happy endings,
golden brown around the edges.

But in my last few years, cooking had been pushed out of my life,
along with its lists and shopping for ingredients.
Cooking had been edged out of my brain,
replaced by the names and needs of 28 children,
in addition to my own two, who are now men.

Men who work evenings and grab dinner on their own time with their own dimes.

Anyway, I got a cookbook for Christmas… or three of them.

And here I am in the week between Christmas and New Year, when the days are long and blurry and filled with pages and naps and cheese.

What a difference time makes.

The authors of my cookbooks go to market, instead of King Soopers or Giant Eagle.
They buy exactly what they need in precise quantities, and they use them the same day.
They know the name of the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker.
They are not beholden to the cycle of buying in bulk, cooking in bulk, freezing in bulk, then defrosting but then losing time and inspiration and throwing it away.

They make it sound like a meditation. A fairy tale.

I had forgotten about the quiet pleasures of cutting an onion, smelling the garlic, browning the meat, and filling the glass.
It is worthwhile. There is a kindness in it.
A present in the presence.

In this kitchen, we dance.
And sometimes, once in a silver-bell blue moon,
somewhere in the blur of days between Christmas and a New Year,
I cook.

Cheers.