My kitchen

(On this site in 1897, nothing happened.)

This is my kitchen.

One of the women who occupied my apartment before the three of us did was a cook; I know this because I benefited from the dregs of her subscription to Bon Appétit and because she left behind a cookbook – The Best of Gourmet Desserts. At this stage in my life, I have almost virtually no sweet tooth, and I have never been a baker. The likelihood that I will ever use this book is pretty much nil, but I keep it anyway. It smells of powdered sugar and I think of it as a sort of talisman, a good luck charm, a nod to the amount of cooking that has already gone on in this kitchen without me.

I love my kitchen. It has good cooking mojo, probably the best of any kitchen I’ve cooked in (although my heart is always, always perched on a stepstool in my grandmother’s kitchen, watching as she stirs a batch of pancake batter.) It has almost everything I require in a kitchen. Ample counter space. Close proximity between the sink and the stove. Plenty of cabinets. I could use a nice pantry, but we make do. I like to think that it looks better with bottles of oils out and visible anyway. The light is imperfect, but I have a window and I can see what I am doing well enough. And the most important feature, to me, is present: a view out into the living space.

I distrust a kitchen that does not have some view of the dining area. I do not like to feel isolated while I am cooking. So much of cooking is communal. My audience is, at all times, important to me. On New Year’s Eve, my friend Meghin perched on a bar stool in the living room and watched as I made a chicken, asparagus, and cashew stir fry, occasionally commenting on what she saw me doing. And this made the experience so much more wonderful. Because cooking is a spiritual experience for me. Feeding, nourishing, providing for people; I love doing it, and I love being reminded of who my audience is while I am doing it.

As far as kitchens go, it is flawed. It is not pretty. It is humble, and functional. I like that. It is not trying to be anything more than it is – it’s not a show piece. It’s just a kitchen. It allows me to experiment, and it allows me to fail. It’s not a kitchen I have a need to live up to – the counters are not made of marble. They are just counters, durable enough, good enough, large enough, enough.

If I had the opportunity to design my own kitchen, it would not look like this. Of course. That kitchen would have a pantry. It would have more windows, and better lighting. It would be quirky and intelligent, a kitchen made specifically for someone who views cooking as her religion.

But this kitchen? I love this kitchen. It is imperfect, but imperfection holds a certain kind of beauty. It is faulty, but it does not fail me. This is a kitchen I can be good-spirited in; a kitchen I can hold conversations in; a kitchen I can invite friends into; and, most assuredly, a kitchen I can happily cook in.