I'm just about out the door this morning, on my way to participating in a community canning project. I'm really looking forward to spending the day with a group of fellow canning geeks. We're making pickles! It's got me to thinking about having fun in the kitchen, something that I take for granted but isn't necessarily true for everyone.
How about you? Are you having fun in your kitchen today?
Last week I posted about saying yes to a friend's offer to help and what I discovered from that experience. Later, the friend wrote me and said 'but it was also really fun.' And it was. I had forgotten to write about the fun.
In our history and throughout many cultures, cooking is seldom a solitary event. Resources are shared among the tribe, the extended family, the neighbors. And with that sharing and abundance arrises an opportunity for enjoyment, camaraderie, playfulness.
The kitchen can be a place of worry and fret, or the boring routine of obligation, or the showcase for a monster ego. But sometimes, perhaps more often than not, it can be just plain old fun. Measuring and mixing and chopping and splashing about are almost primal activities. There's a reason most children play with mud pies and sandbox concoctions!
Sometimes, enjoyment is just happening with out our noticing and by taking a moment to check in, we can discover that -surprise!- we're actually having fun. Bonus!
Tell us how you have fun in the kitchen. Does it help to have someone with you?
(Image: Dana Velden)
© 2010 Apartment Therapy
I think cooking with friends (or for friends while they hang out and watch) or even being in the kitchen chatting while a friend cooks for me, is a really great way to spend an evening. It is one of those intimate experiences that is complete in that it usually ends with me laying my head on the pillow that night feeling complete, and fully satisfied. There isn't much else in life that gives me that.
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I enjoy cooking but I don't really think of it as "fun" most of the time. It's more like an odd form of meditation, I guess. You can't really be thinking of anything but what you're doing while you're chopping. At least, not if you want to keep your fingers! It's so relaxing to be forced to focus on one single task or specificly related set of tasks for fifteen minutes or a couple hours.
Cooking with others present is nice, though when they're trying to help it's stressful. My kitchen does NOT have enough room for helpers.
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A timely topic! A friend and I have plans to get together to co-cook a dinner and this is an event we're both looking forward to. It's not a big production, there'll be just Sandra and me in the kitchen and dinner will be for 3 - Sandra's husband will join us for the bounty.
Talking about food and the exchange of recipes is what originally cemented our friendship years ago and we don't see nearly enough of each other.
This little co-cook project will give us the enjoyment of planning it and and the shared fun of cooking together. We already know we're a good team in the kitchen so this will be a big treat for us.
Foodelf.
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