Kitchen Caring, or, Watching the Last of the Sugar Dissolve Into Boiling Water

Last week I finally cracked open the fancy olive oil she bought me.  It's a beautiful bottle, and she is loved, but I figure it's best to get rid of frivolous and edible reminders.  I'm about a third of the way though the crushed pepper sauce stuff she got me.  It would be gone by now, but Secret Aardvark is around throwing competition.  Different foods; different spices.  I could live on them both.

Using the oil,  I cooked up a ton of roasted vegetables and other food for dinner and for the week while listening to some music that was sent to me in recommendation. It was nice to be cooking by myself on a Sunday evening. The house filled with heat and steam and the aroma of onions and vegetables of every imaginable color.  It reminded me of this time last year, when I was addicted to making all sorts of food to take with me for lunch and would pull all sorts of people into it.  Guest co-chefs in my kitchen. It's good to be back in this space. It's what I'm used to, and where I like to be. It's fun to cook with people so I can learn a thing or two from them.  I love the food that I make, but I tend to be a one trick pony as it relates to cooking.  (Baking is a different story, but cooking, I have my seven to ten dishes that I adore and could eat until I die.)

I've been thinking about the role that food has always played in Marilyn's life. (Marilyn is a community leader I've known for upwards of 15 years now since I met her by luck and organizing in the midwest once when she was there). Food is always what links people in organizing, community, culture, family. Marilyn has always been more overt in it's placement, I guess. She's big on the abundance theme, and it works. There always feels like there is more than enough food and love and time and light with and around her. Everyone pitches in on various levels, but she is always the person providing the bulk of the food. That stuff about the love going into food creating and binding communities is true.  I've been thinking about this a lot.  I've been thinking about what it means to be connected, held, loved, supported. Providing all of those things, and receiving all of those things. Where and how it happens.  Yes, it is in the details. But, yes, it is also - so much so and in an irreplaceable way -  in the food.

I also, recently, finally finished Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.  There's a lot on my mind these days. Somehow everything seems to echo in on itself when it has to do with matters of the heart.



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Ed Moses, Mal-a-Vitch (1973) via fuckyeahexpressionism tumblr)