Dear friend,
I write to you this morning from the darkness of my living room — the sun has yet to rise, even though I’ve been awake for the better part of the very early morning waiting for it to do just that. My body, still on Italian time, thinks that 1:00 am (Pacific Time) should actually mean bowls full of truffle pasta, crisp white wine, long walks through cobblestone streets, and perhaps another cappuccino (or two).
For the past three weeks, I’ve been guiding guests through rural Umbria: planning, coordinating, serving, and translating. I know, I know. Poor me. But even amazing work, like that which I am blessed to do in Italy, is work. The effort of such an excursion is grand.
And after such efforts, I want to cook.
my amazing crew, before everyone became very sleep deprived
It may seem a bit odd, to seek out time away from the daily grind, only to want a piece of it back?… but if you’re a home cook, you know that it is a blessing and gift to plan, prepare, and share food. That somehow feels overly simplistic and unfulfilling as I type it…. but it’s now only 3:02 am and I’ll allow my brain and words to err on the side of simplicity. Our time in Italy, with our guests and in the surrounding days as a family, finds us at many tables — some with friends, some with acquaintances and strangers who have become friends. They cook and serve us, pouring us another local trebbiano wine, slicing us up another oil-drenched slice of focaccia, meeting our needs and filling us with comfort.
I want to do that for others.
Come on in, belly up to the table, I’ll take care of you.
Though I was hesitant, as I always am, to leave Italy, on the long, early morning drive home from the Seattle airport yesterday morning (approximately 2:00am but who’s tracking hours of sleep anymore besides the bags under my eyes and fatigue in my bones?) I felt excited to return home — to my home kitchen. And considering this newsletter is Confessions from my Kitchen I felt it only fair to share with you what I discovered upon coming home after three weeks away…
Though we had wonderful farm-sitters in our absence, there is no eye as effective at nurturing a kitchen as the home cooks. Even Stuart, my beloved husband who has built this kitchen alongside me, cannot account for my kitchen in my particularly fruitful way. While it’s easy enough for someone else to step in to wash dishes or mop the floor, only I know how old the jar of salsa is, when it’s time to pick up more of my favorite flour, where the dust bunnies conduct secret meetings, and where I’ve hidden the specialty chocolate. Our kitchens need a “man on the inside,” someone who can account for broth on a cold day, an endless supply of spaghetti noodles, and long-fermented pizza crusts initiated days before they find their way to plates on the table. Like that wonderful scene in Cinderella, where the fairies use their magic wands to bibbity-bobbity-boo the tasks at hand, so I am with a spatula in hand.
I know how to make my kitchen sing.
a solid stock of staple ingredients is part of a living kitchen
inspiration at my fingertips is part of keeping the kitchen alive
Breathing meaningful life into the kitchen can take many forms:
Fresh air, through open windows or open doors
Something warm and scented coming from the oven
Cleaned and cleared counters and surfaces
A small, manageable restock of groceries and supplies
Something beautiful to look at (art, a new dish, beautiful produce on display)
The promise of future provision, such as a rising loaf or a simmering stockpot
A feeling of bounty, even if it’s something as small as a bowl of fruit or a filled glass jar
An updated grocery list or menu plan, just a few meals at a time
Soft lighting, from a countertop lamp or open drapes
Fresh kitchen towels for drying hands
Doing a hard but satisfying task (ie: scrubbing out the stinky garbage pail)
Some sort of seasonal ingredients or decor to delight in
A blanket of soft sound from your favorite inspiring playlist
Setting out a favorite bottle of wine for supper, which gives you something wonderful to look forward to
Washing the dishes in small, manageable batches before they build up to a place of overwhelm
The addition of a small potted plant that delights you
A cozy, comfortable spot to sit for those who find themselves in your kitchen (when I was nursing babies constantly, I once put a whole couch in my kitchen!)
Keeping menus and plans simple, which helps create meaningful space for rest
Upon arriving home yesterday, with no less than eight suitcases and six weary bodies, the first task at hand was undoubtedly the kitchen. It needed me to bring it to life. A few scraggly dishes were washed, the sink was bleached, the floors swept and mopped, counters scrubbed, groceries purchased. I restocked the harvest table (a long table that sits under a window in our kitchen, on which I keep a few days’ worth of produce at a time) with lemons, garlic, a bouquet of rosemary from the garden, fresh apples from the neighbor’s orchard, and the eggs gathered by the farmhands in our absence. I fed the sourdough starter, cut a small bouquet of garlic chives from the utter-chaos-of-my-cottage-garden, and filled a small bowl with a few of the ripe tomatoes that the rogue chickens haven’t yet ravaged.
new kitchen rug, who dis
a few new pinch pots from Italy to add into the cabinet
Finally, I lit some candles, watered the plants, and unrolled the new hand-knotted rug that arrived while we were away. The stage was now set, she looked and felt lovely you could tell, for supper: crispy-skinned chicken thighs, quinoa, and a late summer salad.
It took some time, but the power brought back into the kitchen was palpable. Though I’ve been reminded of it many times in the past, it again remains true — our kitchens need us. They are our gardens, and we, their gardeners.
bringing the kitchen to life with real life, in the form of green plants
Though it may seem obvious, I’ll say it nonetheless — if you have a kitchen to cook from, you are incredibly blessed. No really, I mean it. A kitchen, whatever shape and size it comes in, should remain on the list of our biggest and greatest gifts. I’ve had a handful of kitchens over the years: there was the old orchard kitchen I painted bright yellow and in which I learned to make bread, the mold-ridden fishing shack kitchen in Alabama where I wrote my first cookbook and expanded my culinary voice, the rental-farm kitchen in which I learned to process milk and meat, and now the cottage cucina — a room from which I am able to nourish my family well (and make an honest living). It’s easy to look at the actual room, meaning your physical kitchen, and pass judgments on it. I’m sure, like mine, your own kitchen is always in need of a bit of TLC, whether that be scrubbing the shelves of the refrigerator or patching up the dog-scratches on the door. So what.
So I talk to my kitchen, and to the Lord who has given it to me as a gift. I say thank you instead of if only. No matter how imperfect or primal a kitchen is, it is nonetheless a place to prepare nourishment and gather. It is both impossibly simple and remarkably meaningful. To do such a gift justice, I invite people in, welcome them to my table, and allow the marble counters to collect chips and wine stains as signs of life.
There is goodness ahead. Life is good.
Love,
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