My Happy Place

This post has been kicking around in my head for a few days, but a simple exchange with Scott last night brought the hazy jabberings of my mind into focus.

I am lucky to have a lot of friends who love to cook and who are also fantastic cooks - they make the best guests and the best hosts! When I am lucky enough to score an invite to their tables I know I am in for a treat, and when I invite them for dinner I know that they are not going to whine or freak out if they see a brussels sprout on their plate or a piece of fish. When I have my more finicky friends over for dinner I wrack my brains trying to find something to serve that they won't mind eating, but when my foodie friends come by the sky is the limit! I can get as creative and flavorful as I like!

Scott is one of those wonderful people who loves to cook and cooks food that I love. But right now, his kitchen is a work in progress - he really can't get in there to cook! Last night we were in my sitting room talking and laughing when I noticed the time and said that I needed to get started on dinner if we were actually going to eat. He asked if there was anything he could do to help. My first instinct was to tell him not to worry about it, just relax and hang out ... but this is Scott. A man who really likes to cook and hasn't been able to in a while. Instead, I looked at him and said "If you want to get your hands on some food and play with knives, of course you can come cook with me, but if you would rather hang out and relax, I can handle it solo." It turned out that he wanted to cook and it was really nice to be in the kitchen with him! He wasn't offering to help out of a sense of duty and being polite, he wanted to cook! I guess the kitchen is his happy place, too!

My kitchen is my happy place.

I spend a lot of time in my kitchen, even if I am not cooking. I have a laptop that lives on my counter so I can listen to music, watch TV and movies, access my recipe blog and search for new recipes. I don't have a large, state of the art kitchen - I live in a 2 bedroom garden apartment so it's really small and it doesn't have top of the line appliances or counter space to display a ton of gadgets and electronics, but it's my tiny kingdom and I love it. Where some might see these as limitations, I see these as important factors that shape the way I cook.

My kitchen may be tiny, but it is arranged to my convenience and liking - I can move around really quickly and rely on muscle memory to grab exactly the ingredient or implement I am after. My kitchen is set up to compliment the way I think - it's all about ME! With a small electric range and oven, I learned to really think through my meal plan - I need to determine whether or not I have the space for everything that needs to happen at once to actually happen. I learned what cooking temperatures can be nudged around a bit to allow several things to cook at once ... and which tempertures are absolutes! And occassionally discovering that it will be impossible to cook the meal I planned due to lack of space has been good for me - it forces me out of my comfort zone and inspires creativity (with what I am cooking AND how I cook it!) Since I have limited space, I have had to really consider what gadgets and appliances I really need. Rice cooker? OMG, yes! I use it constantly, I can cook whole meals in it and the steamer basket is so handy! Microwave? I got rid of it years ago and have yet to miss it - I only used it to reheat leftovers or nuke frozen veggies ... my stove and oven can do that, the microwave was redundant for me.

My kitchen is my happy place because cooking relaxes me and stills my mind. I have had a weird couple of years - stressful and unsettling - but going to a familiar place that is MINE, where I have the final say, where everything is according to my whim, gave me something to hold on to when everything else in my life was in flux. My kitchen kept me sane. I am competent in the kitchen - I have decent knife skills, a good understanding of flavors and an ingredients purpose in a recipe. When I feel imcompetent in life, I go to my kitchen and it makes me feel better. When I am anxious or my head is turning, nothing calms me like chopping and slicing and stirring and basting - the more fussy, technical and complicated the recipe, the faster my head stops spinning. Some people meditate when they are stressed, some people pray ... I put a brunoise on an apple and make apple madaleines. Worries and troubles get lost in the repetitive, precise movements - my head goes empty and the food is all that exists. It's a little mini-vacation from the real world.

But most of all, my kitchen is my happy place because cooking is one of the ways I show some love to the important people in my life. My mother (and the rest of my family, too!) loves coming to my place for dinner - every time she says "It's like going to a fancy restuarant!" That is balm to my soul - my mother is a wonderful woman who loves me beyond reason and I love that I can make her feel spoiled with my cooking. I use the good china, table linens and silverware as often as possible - I like to show people that I think a meal with them is a special occassion, even if its not a holiday or celebration. I like to surprise people with foods I know they like (or foods I know they will love once they try them!) I bake cookies from scratch when talking with friends - sometimes even grownups need cookies after a bad day. I know not everyone sees the world the same way, but I see a home cooked meal as an expression of love - you are fed body and soul, care and expense is taken to plan and make a wonderful meal and it is lovingly prepared by hand with the hope of pleasing and stisfying everyone who will eat it - to make them full in every sense!

It may be tiny, it may not be shiny and new, but it is home.