I wrote this essay for Inviting Writing in the Smithsonian Magazine food blog. It was rejected because there were so many submissions. I also received the nicest rejection letter I've ever received:
"Thanks very much for this essay for Food & Think. It's delightful
-- very thoughtful and full of inviting details. Unfortunately, we
had so many submissions that closely fit the "kitchen" theme that we
weren't able to publish this one. We hope you'll consider sending a
version of this story or a new essay in for a future Inviting Writing
series. You have a great voice."
Best,
Laura
I love my kitchen, well sort of. It’s a 1939 kitchen and not glitzy by today’s standards. I don’t have enough cabinets or pantry space to keep all the things that I feel are required to turn out some of my amazing meals. I keep cake plates, big casserole dishes and my salad spinner on the glassed-in back porch. My big stand mixer is kept in the spare bedroom. I move things around on my one kitchen counter when I bake bread.
I dream of a kitchen with miles of counter space and cabinets with little crooks and crannies to store all my equipment. Those things are wonderful, but they are not what turns out good meals and sometimes even great ones.
After the tornado ripped through Rainsville, Alabama (my home town), I stayed in my grandmother’s house for several weeks. Her kitchen had a sink, a stove and a refrigerator. She raised the last four of her 11 children in that house. She cooked meals in it until she broke her leg in her 80’s.
Up on the hill, my mother built a house when I was 12. It had a little U-Shaped kitchen that only had room for two people at the most in it. The last thing she cooked when I was 19 was an apple cobbler for one of my cousins. Her little kitchen became mine and I cooked in it happily until my husband and I moved to a new town in 1983. Our house that my brother still lived in was destroyed by the tornado. I can still close my eyes though and remember my mother cooking chicken and dumplings at that old stove.
I didn’t really know how to cook. I could read what was on the back of the box and cook that and then I ordered the two-volume set of The Doubleday Cookbook by Jean Anderson and Elaine Hanna© 1975. I learned to cook anything and everything from those two books. They still hold pride of place in my kitchen and they look every one of their years. They are yellowed and stained and well used. They told me how and sometimes, more importantly, why one needs to follow an order when cooking.
When we moved to Rome, Georgia, I spent weeks looking for a house that we could live in and be happy, one that wasn’t too close to its neighbors, one we would feel content in. We were only leasing a house, we wouldn’t be there forever. The kitchen is a large room and it didn’t seem like it would be that important. I learned to really cook in this house. We also bought this house, paid for it, and it will be our home for the rest of our lives.
All that’s really required to be able to be an excellent cook, is a stove, a refrigerator, and little bit of counter space. All the glitz in the world won’t do any good if you don’t have the skills to turn out the meals. The other thing that is required for great meals and wonderful food is love. I love my old house and I love to cook in it. I learned to cook well enough to begin the Community Kitchen here in Rome. I was the director of the kitchen for 7 years. It still continues to operate to this day. My philosophy for the kitchen was to cook only meals for our clients that I would serve my family. Everyone who came received a “meat and two” from the kitchen and became like family over the years. They also received a plate of love that I and my volunteers prepared for them.
Someday, maybe, I’ll have a glitzy kitchen. If I don’t, it won’t really matter though, because… I will be cooking in my kitchen. I’ll cook sometimes just to put food in our bodies, sometimes grand meals for big crowds, but all of the time I’ll be cooking with love.
