There's an article from last week's New York Times that's drawing a lot of attention, at least in the circles I travel in. It's called The Joy of Quiet and in it, writer Pico Iyer very eloquently describes his search for quiet and stillness and how now, more than ever, people are seeking out places where their technology can't follow them in order to find a bit of peace. What strikes me, though, is this idea that we have to go somewhere far away, to a hermitage or a monastery or move to rural Japan, to experience the quiet and focus we all crave. I think we simply have to go to the kitchen. More

We are entering into a quiet time, the winter solstice, when the northern part of the world has its longest night of the year. A time of deep sleep and darkness, of underground burrowing and profound stillness. Of spare landscapes and bare branches and the thin light of a sun setting well before dinner. The stillness and cold are so complete, we sometimes are a little afraid of it, so we brighten the corners and laugh loudly and heap our tables with grand, life-affirming, belly-warming feasts. More

The dishes washed, rinsed, piled up to dry. The carrots and onions peeled, chopped, measured, cooked. The soup stirred and seasoned, tasted and seasoned again, and left on the back of the stove, barely simmering but not forgotten. The table wiped down, the floor swept, the groceries stowed in the cupboards. Dishcloths washed and folded and stacked and placed in the drawer, next to the clean and sorted silverware.

Stovetop splatters polished away, the garbage taken out, a chicken left to thaw in the refrigerator. Feeding the bread starter, lining up the dish soap and the sponge on the edge of sink, filling the kettle for tomorrow's first cup of tea. A clean cup on the countertop, waiting.
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The other day I was prepping a butternut squash for dinner, an activity that requires a fair amount of attention because it involves cutting through something quite hard and potentially slippery with a (hopefully) very sharp knife. This is not a day-dreamy kind of undertaking, like shelling peas or kneading bread dough. There was the squash strategy to consider, too. To peel or not to peel? (I usually try not to peel.) Peel first and then chop? (Depends on the variety.) How can I get nice, even cubes especially when negotiating the hollowed out seed area? (I can't.) More

I had a pie disaster on Thursday morning. (Yes, that would be Thanksgiving morning and yes, my job, my one and only job, was to bring the dessert.) My crust, which was a new recipe, would not roll out. It was super sticky and wouldn't get firm, even after being left overnight in the refrigerator.

Luckily I had a few tricks up my sleeve. More

Today was supposed to be the day that I did something with the quince which was ripening so beautifully on my kitchen table. The weather cooperated and produced a chilly autumnal day and eventually the rain came which grayed the sky and bared the branches of the trees outside my kitchen window. It was a perfect day to stay at home, peeling and slicing the fruit, mixing it with sugar and leaving it to sit for a while in a big clay bowl until it wept out it's own sweet cooking liquid and was ready for the stove. It was the kind of day to have something to tend to in the kitchen where it's quiet and warm. More

I have a friend who is not that into food. She mostly sees it as fuel, with an occasional concern for some minor preferences (no ketchup, eggs boiled hard, dark German beer.) For her, the act of eating falls into the category of basic maintenance, like brushing her teeth or taking a shower, a not very exciting but necessary activity, the kind of thing that can be occasionally skipped if no one is watching. Don't worry, she has plenty of other passions. Food just isn't one of them.

I love my friend, and I believe she is as happy and fulfilled as any human being can expect to be these days. But there's no way I would switch places with her. I cannot imagine my life without my love of food and the many amazing things that happen while standing in front of a stove. More

Modern thinking says we're not supposed to eat to appease emotions (anger, sadness, boredom, anxiety) and I suppose there's some wisdom there. Difficult emotions need to be dealt with, aired and examined, given a twirl and a whirl, not stuffed beneath a bellyful of ice cream. But today I went ahead and did it anyway. I took my anxious, melancholy self out of the house and set out to a favorite place, a little cafe on Grand Avenue in Oakland, CA where they serve a handful of delicious things cooked in the wood-fired oven from the pizza place next door. I went out and got myself some lunch not so much because I was hungry (I was) but because I wanted to feel better.
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We all have at least one thing we're fussy about when it comes to cooking and the food we eat. It could be at that we never eat runny egg yolks, or that a certain sponge is only used for the counters and another sponge is only used for the dishes. Maybe we always roast our chicken in a particular way, or we cannot abide mushrooms in any way, shape or form. Perhaps we never cook (really cook) because we can't tolerate a messy kitchen, or we have to pull out our measuring stick every time we dice a carrot. Finicky, fastidious, punctilious. Persnickety. Is this you? More

Here in the Bay Area, whenever it gets hot and sunny in mid-October people shake their heads and start muttering about earthquake weather. The scientists tell us there's no such thing, but the old-timers just shrug and keep on muttering. They've seen it before, specifically the Loma Prieta quake of '89. It doesn't help matters that there have been three (or is it four?) earthquakes here in the past few days, small ones but strong enough to be felt by a lot of people. An aftershock gently rattled me last night just as I was falling asleep, leaving me to gnaw on my adrenaline for a few hours before I could finally drift off.
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