A beautiful kitchen does not good food make

A series of what can only be considered fortunate events culminated in finally pushing the Quotidian household towards Chicago. If cities could be soul mates, I’d say I’ve found my other half. As the Intelligentsia website put it, Chicago is “a city that is brooding, practical and reluctantly beautiful.” (Their flagship coffeebar, by the way, is a mere 472 ft from my front door.) I hesitate to label myself in front of others who know me so well because I can just imagine you coming up with counter examples to any category in which I choose to place myself. However, brooding practicality seems as good a description of my personality as any.  It’s true I once favored the purely decorative, whether it was collections of porcelain figurines or jelly shoes that caused my toes to grow funny. As I’ve grown older, though,  I’ve come to recognize the beauty in things like a quilt casually crumpled over the back of a chair, a bowed shelf of canned goods in a cold basement,  or even an expanse of cleared off table.

And you don’t know me well if you think I don’t indulge in a good brood every once in awhile.

While I do get a thrill out of already claiming Chicago as “my city,” I know that I am still a newcomer here. There are new corners to be rounded just about everywhere I go. So it seems a bit disingenuous to inventory all the reasons Chicago and I are the perfect match. Things like not being the only one sporting the homeless granny chic grocery cart. Or being able to attend a live jazz concert simply by opening my window. Or that summer here waits until spring is finished speaking. There are also some things that are common to any major city- enjoying public transportation along with people from all different economic backgrounds, passing a couple in the street and not being able to assume the conversation you overhear will be in English, and deciding on a cuisine for dinner (Japanese, Italian, Lebanese, ect) still leaves you with about three restaurant choices within walking distance.

There are also other less desirable things common to cities. Namely, the mac ‘n’ cheese kitchen. You know the type: a room that seems like an afterthought with a fridge squeezed in, postage stamp size counters,  and just enough cupboard space to store a few pots, bowls, and of course, your blue stash of mac ‘n’ cheese. I am now the proud owner renter of just such a kitchen.

This is the picture I took  during our apartment hunt which turned into more of a scavenge when two (!) apartments were rented out from under us. By the time the dust had settled, this was the only apartment left out of the dozen or so we’d looked at. The rest of the apartment is quite nice. There’s wood floors instead of plastic elementary school style tile. (Yes, that huge hole in the floor is still there. It grabs disturbingly as stocking feet.) The apartment is on the south side of the building, so even though I don’t have any private outdoor space, there’s ample sunlight.  And the location is something out of a dream. Two bus lines within blocks that will take you downtown within 20 minutes. A local bagel bakery, diner,  and chocolate shop clustered at the end of the block. The kitchen, however, was cause for big tears and gnashing teeth. And maybe a little sackcloth. Only Mr. Quotidian will know whether or not ashes and swearing off cooking for the duration of our lease were involved, and he’s been sworn to secrecy on the matter.

How was I supposed to cook -  I mean really cook – in a kitchen like this? Sure, it’d be perfectly adequate for other people, but for me? Where’s my food processor and 16 pots and pans supposed to go? Not to mention all my pantry foodstuffs,herbs, and spices, which accounted for an eighth of our moving boxes all on their own. My cookbook collection probably bumps that fraction up to a quarter. Where were all these chef-ly accouterments supposed to go in a kitchen like this?

To hell with a chef’s kitchen you say? Power to the small kitchened people? Granite and stainless be damned, too, you say?

Oh,
….right.

A few days after signing the lease through tears, I decided sackcloth and ashes was probably not the most helpful response. (Actually Mr. Quotidian decided for me and I was forced to agree.) After all, a beautiful kitchen does not good food make. Do I seem sure of that? It’s only because I’ve repeated it as a mantra these past weeks. As I came to terms with my new kitchen, I began to look at it as a creative challenge. A wise person once taught me that limits are the harbinger of creativity. If that’s true, and I believe it is, this will be one of my most creative kitchens yet.

Here are some of my limits:

• I’d rather spend money on quality ingredients than fancy kitchen organizers. Therefore, make every effort to repurpose things I already own. When something must be bought, try to purchase things that can be repurposed themselves in a new kitchen. (I won’t, after all, be living with this kitchen forever.)
• The kitchen must be as intrinsically baby proof as possible. Safety latches and rubber bands can only go so far.
• Even though it’s small, it must not feel cluttery. The counters will be kept clear.

“beautiful kitchens do not good food make”
“beautiful kitchens do not good food make”

“beautiful kitchens do not good food make”
“beautiful kitchens do not good food make”

A Chef’s Kitchen

After belly flopping into the Chicago apartment classifieds the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a disturbing undercurrent: the “chef’s kitchen.” While this sounds very posh and all, it inevitably means two things. See if you can guess.

Is it the thoughtfully laid out floor plan, making everything easily accessible with minimum effort? Or a sink that easily accommodates all the dishes that predictably accompany cooking? Or a dedicated pantry space to properly store food staples? Or how about a space that makes the chef in question feel wanted instead of exiled to a hole?

Nope. A “chef’s kitchen” simply means granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. Preferably new.

Now, I’m not arguing that the above kitchens aren’t nice looking. A couple of them are actually quite beautiful. And I really wouldn’t complain about cooking in them. What troubles me, however, is the way serious cooking is equated with granite and stainless, preferably new. As if good food couldn’t come from an outdated Formica topped kitchen with mismatched appliances.

I suppose it’s a side effect of the “foodie” movement. (And don’t even get me started on the word “foodie.” Or “chef” for that matter.) Food as an idea has become trendy. In many ways that’s a positive development. People who used to fill their grocery carts with boxes and cans are now filling it with vegetables. Or even forgoing the cart altogether in favor of a market basket. the people responsible for bringing us food deserve a little of the lime light. Food is beautiful, necessary, photogenic, and decidedly sensual.

It’s also just dinner. Good food doesn’t have a thing to do with granite and stainless. New or not. Any kitchen can be a chef’s kitchen. The only requirement is someone cooking in it.

learning to read

(Calm down grandmas. It’s not Baby-tidian that’s learning to read.)

I was one of those kids who stayed up till 2 in the morning. I wasn’t talking on the phone or sneaking into places I shouldn’t be, but ever the nerd, I was reading. I read anything and everything that would fit between two covers. Through all of middle school and most of high school, I could lose whole weekends to a book. I’d start a new book on the Friday bus ride home and the next time I looked up it was the wee hours of Monday morning. Since my wise parents pretended not to notice the slit of light coming from under my door at all hours, I never had to resort to the flashlight under a blanket cover.

The only thing I (mildly) regret about all that time spent turning pages is that I consumed mostly pop culture lit. You know the type: multi-book family sagas that begin on the Mayflower and end in the California gold rush, or books detailing the myriad trials of teenagers, be they twins, babysitters, or orphans. I haven’t read as many  classic literature books as I often pretend to. So instead of those late night reading sessions contributing to a rhythmically beating literary heart, I’m left with vague palpatations of plot twists and character descriptions. For example, on a shelf somewhere is a book about a girl trapped in a basement. Whether by friend or foe, for what reason, for how long, I’ll never remember. She types out her memories of adolescent angst on the random typewriter locked in with her. There is also a book about a boy who is able to time travel to the past where he meets his doppelganger who has typhoid, or perhaps tuberculosis. It may or may not involve being stuck in a library.

Anyway, the point I was wanting to make is that in the past I spent hours and hours reading. I read like I napped; if it didn’t last at least 2 hours, it wasn’t worth it. While I still routinely take hours long naps with Babytidian, I’ve had to give up such lingering over pages. As part of my preparation for giving birth, I compiled a rather ambitious list of books I’d like to read. The first few weeks I had a stack teetering next to the bed (right next to the midnight nursing snacks and water). Now I’m lucky if I get all my email read each day. For longer than I ‘d care to admit, I gave up book reading altogether. I subsisted on blogs, Netflix, and Hulu. It was just easier. I could still listen to the dialogue even if Babytidian took my attention away from the screen. (Try as I might, I just couldn’t keep reading if I wasn’t looking at the page.) But I felt mentally bloated and weak.

Slowly, I’ve been relearning how to read. In small bits.

And pieces.

Here.

And there.

While I do sorely miss the days when I would only budge from my comfy chair to make trips to the kitchen and the bathroom, I’m beginning to enjoy reading this way. Instead of sprinting through a book and barely catching my breath before opening the next, I am forced to mosey through the pages, letting each paragraph dissolve on my mind like a lozenge. Perhaps I should take up poetry reading…

Mama Guilt

It’s taken awhile for us to come face to face. I was led to believe that we would meet much sooner than this– as if you would be gripping my son’s heel as he was born. But midwives came and went, the birthing pool was filled and then packed away, and my little family nestled in our bed…and you didn’t appear. Even when we had to take him to the hospital. Or when he shivered because I forgot his blanket.  Or when I realized I’d been buckling him into his car seat incorrectly. You barely whispered a threat, still as a breeze. How funny that I thought I’d stood against the gale those times. I thought I had won. I should have known it was too easy of a victory.

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let you catch up to me.  That I wouldn’t let you trick me out of my birthright of peacefulness. My rational self knows that I will not be able to make the world perfect for him. That he will get hurt on my watch. That he will be disappointed. That his heart will break and dissolve into tears. It’s not that I desire this for him.  But I am resigned to it in the same way I’ve come to accept those things for myself. In the same way that autumn is so bitterly beautiful, I know these things are part of being human. I was determined not to let you disfigure that very fragile beauty.

But it seems I was preparing the wrong front. You are a crafty enemy and adept at this through much practice no doubt. You let me win those easy battles, appearing weak.  You didn’t attack me with stereotypical things like not enrolling him in baby classes or letting him play on a dirty floor. You didn’t even attack my ability as a mama when I was learning to breastfeed or comfort his newborn cries.

Let me think I was a conqueror.

Instead you disguised yourself, if not as a friend, at least as something familiar that I am much less capable of defeating. In my blindness you came to me with a familiar touch. I knew the scent of you well in my Bible college days. Like then, the problem is not simply that I am doing something wrong. No. It goes much deeper than actions, things I could fix with enough will power. It’s me. My substance. My soul.

There’s not enough of it.

Or too much of it.

Or something.

You make deals with me. Do this, and you’ll be a good mama. But just as I manage to do that, you switch out the prize of winsome competence with swarthy inadequacy. I am tired of having to choose between making sure dinner doesn’t burn and being a good mama. Between shifting to be more comfortable and being a good mama. Between thinking my own thoughts and being a good mama. If I was a good mama, these things wouldn’t be a dichotomy. In a dream world, these needs would gracefully shift up and down the ladder of priorities, glowing with the serenity of angels.   But instead they slip and fall and dash their heads on the rocks below. And I always save the wrong ones. Balance is never mine.

It seems I will never be free of you. Even into the damp inkiness of night, you grab at me. Force me to wrestle with you till I have no strength left to even hold my babe.  I crumple onto the couch. (How is it only 9am?) As I limp through life, I resent what you’ve made of me. I used to be strong. I used to know how to take care of myself and have enough left over to care for others. Why has that ability deserted me now, when I need it the most, to care for the biggest Other I ever will?

It’s not always bad. There are moments, hours, even days, of piercing happiness. Where I feel reunited to an estranged part of myself. I am a favored one, blessed with much. I know this. I have a husband who has both flexible work hours and a flexible heart, never once begrudging me the comfort and care I need. My son is healthy and vivacious. Sometimes, when he’s asleep, I sneak into the bedroom just to watch him. He is always breathing and beautiful. We don’t want for anything. My life is coated in many colors of goodness.

Why then do I feel so enslaved to you? Why will you not let me go? What can I give you that will appease you? There is precious little in this barren famine-riddled place. My best intentions to try harder, to do better… they wither on the vine. There is no fruit. My emotions are thin and wan. Except for frustration. That at least looms large with ghostly eyes. Isn’t the mark of a mother her endless selflessness? All the poems and songs and books say so. I don’t have it. I try to get by with the minimum effort, as if this were some middle school science project. Perhaps then I am not really a mother at all? I so much wanted to be one of those women who takes gracefully to motherhood. Who, whether or not she planned to have children, allows it to bring out the best in her.

Instead all my worst traits are dragged out of me like entrails. I am weepy and selfish. I manipulate and grumble. All my reserves of patience and peace are gone. Even a little fussing makes me grit my teeth. Neediness sends me running to the other room. Having trouble starting a car will ruin my day. When did this become who I am?

And yet I know this is a foreign place. I do not belong here. This will not be my final resting place. You cannot fool me. There is a land where sweet goodness flows and I can look up clear. You cannot fool me. I see hope underneath.

I hope.

Quotidian Ambitions

New Year’s resolutions are in season now. But I always feel a little disingenuous making them. After all who really cares about someone else’s resolutions once it’s not a third grade writing assignment? Also, it sometimes seems like the wrong time of year to be making new beginnings. Everything in nature has gone dormant and I often feel the summons to hunker down with them until spring.

And yet

Something in my psyche needs this shot of motivation after the let down of the holidays. Perhaps instead of dormancy, I ought look at the bare branches and listless patches of ground as a blank slate. Since I squander so many of them, I can use all the new beginnings I can get.

Perhaps it’s just the terminology I struggle with. Resolutions seem so rigid. They resound with do’s and don’t's. By mid-February most of us Resolutes are engaged in some form of double think. That didn’t count because I was tired. It was a special occasion. I won’t do it from now on. New Year’s resolutions are hard to keep precisely because a year is long time to hold to an intention that’s stiffer than a starched collar. I need something more along the lines of a pair of jeans. Something that I can take with me through my days, good, bad, and bland. A list not about guilt but about ambition.

Yes, an ambition. That’s a much better word.

Glad I got that sorted out.

Here’s a peek at my home and hearth list of ambitions for the year:

1. Make fermentation a habit. So far I’ve only thought of fermenting foods as a way to preserve them. I’d this practice to become more integrated into my kitchen. Inherent to this practice is learning to make some kind of fermented beverage, be it kombucha, kefir, ginger beer, ect.
2. Learn to sew or knit proficiently. Like, actually be able to make useful things, not just row after row of stitching.
3. Relearn photography basics. Even though I took a photography class in high school, I can no longer remember exactly what’s meant by words like aperture and focal length. I’d like to reclaim this skill.
4. Make soap.
5. Learn to use more organ meat. Other than the occasional liver and onions for dinner (that I’m obligated to warn Mr. Quotidian about at least three days in advance, serve with dessert and sandwich that meal in between other more normal meals to make up for it) I don’t really know how to cook these parts of animals.
6. Make regular trips to the thrift store. I’ve known for awhile that effective thrifting is habitual thrifting. While there are magnificent treasures out there, they most often go to those who are familiar with the bins, shelves, and racks.
7. Learn more about traditional Southern food. Not the Crisco and food coloring South, but the way people cooked deep in the South’s history. Places to start my research are Anson Mills and Southern Foodways Alliance.

:: a beautiful day in the neighborhood ::

Baby-tidian and I encountered this scene on our morning walk. The draw was not roadkill as I had expected, but a busted open tray of raw ground beef.

Aside from making me desperately want to invest in a telephoto lens, moments like this also serve to remind me of my place. I am not all there is. I am not the only one who eats. I am not the be-all-end-all of creation. As startling as it is to come across it while surrounded by sidewalks, front doors, and mailboxes, the truth still stands that all death breeds life.

Still Life with Autumn

Living in the south, I  hibernate in the summer. The windows are shut tight. My limbs gets sluggish from being splayed in front of a fan for five months. Even the walls sweat here. My spirit wallows too, unable to rouse from its sticky sleep. Then summer snaps– sometimes all at once like a rubber band, and other times like a child clumsily learning to snap by rubbing his fingers together. Autumn gusts in. When the stagnant air becomes wind, I peel back the windows, inhale deeply, and begin life again. The fact that southern autumns persist well past Thanksgiving when much of the rest of the country is firmly in winter, I consider a restitution for the summer.

Fall seems to weak a word to contain this transformation. Although “fall” lends itself to some clever bulletin boards in classrooms and libraries, it only includes one aspect of this most delightful of seasons. And really, autumn is so much more than the falling leaves.

It is the smell of wood smoke unfurling across the evening air like a banner proclaiming allegiance to a new ruler. As the mosquitoes have slowly died off, we’ve been spending more evenings by the chimenea, watching the flames as if they were a drama.

Autumn is watching lettuces grow from nuggets the size of quarters to carpeting whole fields in the space of a fortnight.  I think autumn is secretly the farmer’s favorite. Even though there is still plenty to do, the pace is less dire. We find ourselves being able to stand back and admire the beauty of the farm, if only for a moment. Set against a background of velvety black earth is the iridescent wave of carrot tops, the sea of wine dark Rouge d’hiver lettuce, the dusty green crest of collards, and the dusky purple billow of Red Russian kale.

Autumn is pulling a carrot from the ground that you are positive is the archetype for all carrots. The mother carrot. The ideal of which all other carrots are just shadows. And then you take a step farther, pull out another carrot, and there it is again! The epitome of all carrots. And very soon you have a whole handful of orange perfection.

Autumn is letting your feet luxuriate in last warm days before slippers, socks, and blankets come rolling in like a northern front. I refuse to bundle up for the first few weeks of cold weather, relishing the new sensation of cold. Gradually though, all the blankets that’ve loitered around all summer find their usefulness again. The scarves are unpacked and hung by the door. Knowing the location of one’s slippers becomes a condition of getting out of bed.

Autumn is having finally said goodbye to the bright summer vegetables. It is making room on my plate for the deep green of fall. My psyche seems to be tapping into some deep ancestral craving for fresh green before winter sets in. Kale bulks up everything from soups to garlicky white beans to scrambled eggs.  Bok choy is a mild mannered partner for sassy curries. Collards sing back up to all manner of main dishes. My sink is continually full of chopped greens of some shade or other.

Autumn is relishing the warmth of the oven as you pass rather than going out of your way to avoid it. I’ve started making my own bread again, something I gladly pay someone else to to do in the summer. We’ve even fired up the oven for such unnecessary things as chocolate chip cookies. (Yes, organic carrots next to chocolate chip cookies is how we roll.)

Autumn is waking up to a find tendrils of frost on the leaves under you feet. No matter how strongly the news predicts a frost, it always surprises me to walk out with my morning basket of laundry and find that I can see my breath.

Autumn is that nap where you fall asleep wishing you had a blanket and wind up dreaming about snow tombs and giant cats. You guys get those too, right? This might be the first autumn that I’ve been both free to take afternoon naps and able to decide where I take them. Baby-tidian and I have taken our share of al fresco naps, whether in our yard in on the I Spy quilt or at the farm in hammocks.

If summer is wicker and peaches and winter is cable knit and hot chocolate, then autumn is copper and pears. Kettles start to whistle and the musk of apples and pears permeates our house. Each year we buy more apples than the last. This year we are up to three bushels, but that still doesn’t seem to be enough for preserved applesauce, juice and cider experiments, a stash of dried apples, and wanton eating out of hand. So perhaps next year it will be up to four.

Autumn is never long enough.  Like a school kid dreaming of summer vacation I spend the whole rest of the year pinning for it. But, on this second day of December,  perhaps it is time to let it go. There are good things ahead.

Every Leaf’s a Flower

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf’s a flower.” — Albert Camus

I think I once faked being sick in order to stay home and watch out my bedroom window as the leaves drifted to the ground.  Or maybe I just planned to and then chickened out at the last minute. I don’t remember.

This year I don’t have to play hookie to watch the leaves fall. Not only have Baby-tidian and I enjoyed many walks through our crunchy leaf strewn neighborhood, we’ve spent countless minutes watching out our windows as leaves have transformed the cement dead zone of our driveway into a sea as vibrant as any coral reef.

I always forget how falling leaves makes one appreciate negative space. We tend to scamper about with our eyes fixed where we are headed, whether that’s the front door, the coffee shop window, or our car at the other end of the parking lot. What stands between us and our goal is just empty space to be gotten through. Leaves falling through it changes the way I see that empty space. It’s like lining a blank hallway with pictures. With a big gust of wind, I’m suddenly aware of the depth of the space I inhabit. There is value and beauty in the getting there.

Autumn also gives a blessed relief from the monotony of summer and winter. I love lush landscapes as much as the next person. And I’m a sucker for the pristine harmony of a fresh snow. But it’s fortifying to see trees bursting out of their verdant uniformity like a woman kicking off her slick high heels and stretching her bare feet. Where there was once a fire, now there are flames.

I find myself collecting these newly emancipated leaves. I’ll pluck one off a tree in the grocery store parking lot or stoop to pick another off the ground as I fumble for my keys at the door. I’ll find these leaves days/weeks/months later in my pockets or forgotten corners of tables in various states of crumbly decay.  Here’s a peek at my stash from this year:

Some are the color of Venetian glass while others sport the texture of a leather handbag. They evoke both the setting sun and night’s inkiness. They tell stories of swans, and rivers, and turkey tails. Of age, and beauty, and playfulness.

A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything.

A time for persevering

and a time for idleness.

A time for cool baths

and  a time for warm towels.

A time for naps

and a time for… er… more naps.

A time for sun

and a time for shade.

There is a time for fire

and a time for ice.

A season  for every purpose under heaven.

Even if that season is endless summer.

A Knuckle Sandwich

I want to eat his baby knuckles that dimple in rather than sticking out.