Kitchen Daily

"All these, though are relatively important. There are only three things I need, to make my kitchen a pleasant one as long as it is clean. First, I need space enough to get a good simple for six people. Then, I need a window or two, for clear air and a sight of things growing. Most of all I need to be let alone. I need peace." – Fisher, from "Sing of Dinner in a Dish"




Squash is Peace


There was sitting at the end of deep green granite countertop a fine salmon sandwich that I made two hours ago – it was a fine slab of salmon from a night ago (salmon saves for a day so well!), two cut pieces of a Tuscan rubbed cowmilk cheese and a few shreds of arugula and micro greens. My daughter must have passed on the sandwich and let it set as she headed out the door. I was tempted to take it for myself. I had exactly the same sandwich for lunch and therefore knew that it would work just dandy as a substitute for what I would choose to cook otherwise.

But it was Friday night, I was alone, the sun still shone out onto the concrete courtyard that lay right outside the sliding glass door in which, only a few steps across, hung on the side of the garage facing me, a stone mural of the sun still held a slight turquoise gleam at its sunray tips. What had tempted me to wrap the sandwich and begin to unpack the refrigerated ingredients was not appetite, but a very basic need to get some work done in the kitchen.

Have you had this feeling come over you? Sometimes I am left to wonder after a particularly fast and anxious day or, for that matter, a long relatively dull day, how else are urban moderns really ever supposed to get our hands dirty, so to speak, in our days? I can't imagine anyone really imagining that six hours of clicking away at the keyboard, or soaking our eyes over our laptop screens, or thumbing our texts, is considered real work, right? I prod at this question because I am one of them, cuddling up to my own screen as a brother, a lover, a business partner, daily.

I've noticed that at the witching hour of each of these days the draw to immerse inside the even larger screen of the TV is as enticing as the Homer's water sirens, singing to me 'come, sit down along the couch, have the phone next to you, watch till your heart's desire.' These siren songs cannot be an exclusive wooing as evidenced by the glimmering lights that shine through in blues and flashing reds along a good portion of the neighborhood down the street.

One must silence the siren, pack away the phone, and seek out a little sliver of peace as a kind of dreaming resistence. Hence, the packing away of the salmon sandwich into the refrigerator – an easy leftover for the following lunch, pour juicy pale ale (yes, Three Sheeps calls it this), and begin to unpack ingredients for what looks to be a promising recipe for Butternut Squash and Black Bean Chili, a nice vegetarian option for my daughter who I hope might come to the dinner table tomorrow night, see this fine bowl of chili towering with the slender pita chips, and wonder when I found time to make it.