cooking up a storm
by bam
i’ve been clangin’ up a ruckus all week around here. pots hauled from the shadows. pans doin’ doubletime. little gizmos and doodads–squeezers and peelers and plug-ins that do all the work–let loose, some of them, for the very first time.
if it was steamable, roastable, sauteable, i had my hand ‘round its neck. i was plunking sprouts into boiling water. turning legs of poor little lambs into fuel for the masses. i went so far as to drown a chicken in half a bottle of wine.
i was, believe you me, cooking to soothe, to forget, to pretend that the world is the one that i lay on the table.
the urge, really, was unstoppable.
i’ve not been such a cooking tornado maybe ever. did not do that thing with the baking while timing contractions, those stories you read in the expectancy books or laugh through on reruns of ol’ i love lucy. nope. not me. i was too green at the gills, too rumbly of tummy, to ever care much about flour or sugar or whipping or beating there on the brink of delivery.
but this was different. this was me locking the door, wrapping the blanket, standing up to a world that ruffled my feathers. this was me claiming one piece of the planet where all could be as i cooked.
dinner would roll onto the table in courses. why there’d be main dishes, grownup ones, the kinds that often escape me–roast beast, that fine drunkard chicken–and side dishes, too.
i had my best cookbooks off the shelf. and usually that means the ones where the scribbles are all down the page, or tucked onto scraps with the barest of thoughts.
i pulled out the stops. if i could think of a something my children loved, i made it. pears sliced and simmered with cranberries, check. cherry pie. ala mode. you betcha.
i even invented a few things that now will be made on demand. eggplant roasted with baby tomatoes. drizzled with olive-pressed oil, showered with salt of the sea. the last of the rosemary from one of my pots. a pot now on hiatus till spring.
it is autumn, the season for taking out screens, letting the sun pour in unfiltered. the season for slipping on leggings, sneezing through dust that settled all summer on all of your sweaters.
it is autumn, the season for stews and simmering fruits.
but that wasn’t the thing that drove me this week. it wasn’t just autumn. it was aftershock.
it was, and it is, the lovingest thing i could think of to do. for myself and my children and the tall one who stood right beside me.
i would if i could spread my table as far and as wide as the world. i would set a place for every last soul on the planet. even the lost ones.
but that’s just my imagination running amok. and my heart. i keep learning, the hard way, this is not that fine world. i cling like a fool to the notion that redemption is right around the next bend. that we could stitch back together even the most broken heart.
but then there’s the other voice in my head. the one that says, give it up. you do what you can, and then you let go.
well, maybe then, that’s why i’m a mother. because here in my kitchen, at the table i set, i can make mistake after mistake. i can burn the broccoli, raise my voice, undercook the lamb, slam off the tv, but still i can lay out a meal.
i can fill tummies, and repour into the vessel known as the heart. i can crowd the table with foods that whisper, somebody loves you. i can kindle the candles, watch the plates and the faces glow in the dance of the flame, flickering.
i can cloak the ones i most love with the one inexhaustible foodstuff: i can spoon-feed them comfort and love, a cook’s prerogative.
i can close off my eyes to the world just beyond the edge of the table. at least for the minutes it takes to hold hands, drop heads, whisper grace, lift forks, clean plates, and then linger. over pie ala mode.
it’s the ruckus i made in my kitchen this week. and it was, a most beautiful riotous sound.
do you find you too cook for comfort? the distinction i didn’t even get into is the cooking, not eating, for comfort. long long ago, i ate for comfort. overate. ate to go into trance, really. is it a sign of evolution, progression, that now i partake of the communal? i cook to comfort. rather than simply consume. if that’s not a notion you care to nibble on, and since the subject of food always seems to rouse comments galore, feel free to stick to the no-muss-no-fuss, what might be your most essential comforting recipes?
pull up a chair 
old fashioned ,home cooked meals, those cooked with love.we call it comfort food, and it does comfort us.
scandinavian almond cake, yogurt smoothies, soups that involves lots of chopping and pureeing, kneading and punching the elastic and sticky bread doughthese are a few of the things that bring comfort.oh i forgot to mention, that I need music while I am cooking and I think it transforms the meal.love to you as you seek refuge in your beautiful kitchen with your beautiful and precious family
The food that soothes my soul is pot roast. The delicious aroma is an essential ingredient in the soothing process – as essential as the peeling and chopping and dicing prep work I do before putting the pot into the oven and as important as the gathering at the table to share the meal with my family.
yes yes hh, you bring up the clouds of perfume thing. the olfactory factory, the churning of smell. not enough ink is given to that. we must try to put words, poetry even, to the whole smell thing………it is the shaking out of the tablecloth before it is set with the knives and the spoons. it is sending out an alert, to whoevers’ within nose range: love coming soon. or comfort. or are they really synonymous? it is blanketing a whole house in the sense that’s too often forgotten, but one of the last to forget. i can still smell my grandma lucille’s….her potroast, her 3-4-5 stew, her buttery cookies. and she’s been gone, oh, dozens of years, at least. comfort begins then with the nose…..the subtle surround before the taste buds and tongue sink in for the zinger….ms slj, care to cough up the scandinavian almond cake recipe? i think that’s what you wrote….the darn thing about these comment boxes is they don’t let you scroll back up to see what you just read. they expect you to commit to memory every word. anyway, anything with scandinavian in it makes me feel warm and cozy, and anything with almond gets my mouth watering. staying tuned for more comfort food all day and maybe all weekend. keep it rolling. love, the comfort cook.
While you are cooking for your gathered family in your kitchen you are also cooking with words for us who pull up at the table in cyberspace. Your words have aroma, texture, flavor, comfort – all the while stimulating our senses and emotions. I am pulling out my standby comfort recipe from my neighbor Julie – her brisquet recipe has become a standard of simplicity and comfort care here and it will be accompanied by mashed potatoes, gravey a big lovely green salad….dinner is planned now for tomorrow. A new week begins….
Back to the beginning…..I was meandering your site and stopped at the “kitchen table” and paused to read about the “why” of “pull up a chair”. Your last paragraph strikes home, mirroring the experiences of the last couple of weeks and affirming the purpose of your journey which you have so graciously and lovingly have opened to us….thank you.
I read a week of “meanderings” yesterday afternoon and digested them overnight, fascinated by the saga and loving a little boy’s efforts to understand what it was all about. All very sad, though I am of course relieved that no one was hurt. While I don’t have the definition of trauma near at hand, it’s something about having your trust in the orderliness of the world shaken. These are my thoughts. We can’t protect our children from terrible things, but supporting them while they come to terms with an event makes all the difference. Maybe it will prove to be a good lesson, albeit disappointing, that not everyone can be trusted, even those you’ve been kind to.I look at the man who did this from a not-religious perspective based on my work with families in a welfare-to-work program in Humboldt Park, with students who have emotional and behavior disorders, and my current gig as a volunteer teaching art classes at one of the Illinois Youth Centers. The folks with whom many of us have so much sympathy mostly did not grow up with a parent who helped them develop a moral code. Then the window of time during which this is nurtured in a developing child closed. We can be kind and helpful, but the emotional/character/cognitive deficits are almost beyond the imagination of most of us to grasp. That’s my opinion. It causes me such pain when one of “my boys” turns 20 and is sent to an adult prison (mostly I do not know what their crimes were, though none are there for murder), and I rail at the injustice of their impoverished lives, but I could never make up the difference. They are mostly “lost boys,” which is why I go there (and why you go to the soup kitchen), wanting it to be otherwise.Also, just as an aside, about a year ago a friend and I met for lunch and were sitting in the courtyard of the Art Institute when a young, attractive couple (white) stopped at a nearby bench with two suitcases. The woman pulled some old clothes from one of the suitcases, putting them over her nice outfit, rubbed some dirt on her face (neither of them looked at us during the change), then went on their way. On my way to the train I passed that young woman begging by Sears and have never given another dollar to any “homeless” person. I give instead to those folks wearing a vest collecting money for Kiwanis, etc., and we give generously to United Way.The commitment you have made to the soup kitchen is wonderful. I hope you can recover from this experience and continue your good work.