Joyful Cooking

Mindfulness comes naturally for me in the kitchen.  It hasn’t always been that way, but with decades of cooking experience, I can relax and enjoy the experience and process.  My cooking in earnest began as a young teenager.  My working mother would leave the recipe and the ingredients handy and I would prepare supper for my family.  With a little confidence, I began scouring cookbooks and my mother’s recipe card files.  I began baking bread, desserts, and other dishes beyond the ordinary meat and potatoes.  It was great fun to experiment and my mother gave me free rein of the kitchen.

Side by side, I cooked with my mother, my grandmother and my great aunt since I was a little one. It was those early experiences and the trust my mother had in my abilities that set the course for a lifetime of joy in the kitchen. 

Tonight feeling the weight of my favorite knife in my left hand and taking note of the uniformity of the bits of onion actually made me smile.  Slices of green and red pepper were added to the mix along with crushed garlic, sea salt, and gingered grated carrots.  What a colorful mix.  Another smile. Tapping the egg cradled in the palm of my hand along the edge of a large soup cup, my thumbs broke through the shell and the egg released in a plop. In went a splash of homemade kefir. torn multi-grain bread pieces, some fresh parmesan,  a slurp of ketchup, and a little soy mixed all together with ground beef.  Meat loaf.  A simple dish from my youth, remade with much joy and intention.  The meat mixture pressed into the cast iron enamel baking dish is a symphony of texture, color and flavor and a testimony that even the simplest of culinary dishes can bring much pleasure and joy.

My love of cooking has bound me to my grandfather, a man I never knew.  This man was a gifted chef.  Even as a young girl in the kitchen, I would somehow attribute my culinary success with genetics.  When my son began working in restaurants and eventually became a chef, my mother often reminded me that, “He got his talent and passion for cooking from his great-grandfather.”  This all may or may not be true. What I know to be true is, that the act of creating nourishment for those you love, helps create bonds in the kitchen and around the dining room table.  Something that is hard to duplicate anywhere else.  No wonder I am a joyful cook.