Kitchen Stories

Paige’s Kitchen

The working title for the book about my sister, Paige and her kitchen, is called Hungry Family. With a partner, two children and another child on the way, there is always cooking or eating going on in her New Hampshire kitchen. On most days, consumption and creation happen simultaneously.  On longer visits, I enjoy the transition from visitor to adjunct family member.

On Saint Patrick’s Day, Paige gave me full reign of her kitchen while she caught up with family on the other side of the house. I listened to Irish-Afro music, made Pad Thai and drank box wine. Cooking in my sister’s kitchen makes me feel essential and loved. Everyone eats like they’re starving and nothing is ever wasted with two compost buckets, one for the chickens and one for the garden.

Paige’s kitchen is my happy place, mostly because it’s her happy place. She cooks the food she craves and makes enough for everyone. It’s hard to believe that she doesn’t cater to her children’s taste but a combination of shrewd shopping and planning create options for everyone. Monday is soup night. She alternates making soup with another family and drops off on nights she cooks. Tuesday is Taco. Wednesday: Salad and Samis. Thursday: Pasta. Friday: Pie. Saturday: Meat and Veg and Sunday: Beans!

On this particular day, the last week before the Spring Equinox, two feet of snow accumulated in 24 hours. 

The power blinked off at 7:30 Tuesday morning and stayed off until Thursday. In situations like this, Paige resorts to using a Coleman camp oven. Her partner Blaine kept the generator running intermittently through the day so the fridge would stay cool and the electric water pump had power.  In situations like this, the cold weather has its own benefits and challenges. The unheated sun porch keeps things colder than the intermittent fridge and they can always melt snow for water. Lucky to have the warmth of a wood stove, it occupies the center of the kitchen, built into an original brick fireplace that dates from house’s inception in the 1800’s.

When I asked Paige what her favorite kitchen tools are, she touched the valves of her three pressure cookers she keeps on top of the stove. She loves to use her pressure cookers to expedite beans or meat she pulls from the freezer. She buys beef and pork directly from farmers she knows. She cans the vegetables she grows in her garden to extend eating beyond the growing season. One of her favorite pots belonged to her partner pre-family, a simple metal camp pot with a red insulated handle. They use it to reheat coffee all morning.

Right now her garden is still slumbering under a blanket of snow but there are signs of spring if you know how to look for them. 

My sister, in her 40th week of pregnancy, reaches for the branch of a hazelnut sapling, “This is the flower she says, it’s small but I know what to look for.”

Amy’s Kitchen

She’s a confident decorator, moving forward with a style that combines Post-Colonial kitchen with a Hollywood bathroom in deep greens and gold. Like most of my thrifting friends, she has the innate ability to conjure up pieces when she needs them.

A dark wood dining table with drop leaf sides? The listing appears on Facebook marketplace within days. If you’re driving with Amy be prepared to break for curbside treasures. She will rescue a piece of architectural molding or a useful shelf. One’s person’s trash is another person’s treasure!

When I asked Amy if I could photograph the inside of her fridge she said: of course! She’s proud of the organized bounty which she said would disappear within the week. While everyone is feeling the higher prices at the grocery store, Amy saves by menu planning and no-fuss lunches. While she may forgo novelty items for herself, she makes sure there’s a constant stream of sunflower butter sandwiches for her son. She’s a wonderful mother and a generous friend. She’s well-read and well-mannered and her stories will make you laugh so hard you’ll spit out your wine. Not to worry, at Amy’s house, there’s always more wine and everything else. She plans for it so you can just come as you are.

Rose’s Kitchen

I have known Rose for years. She’s someone I admired from afar. Painter, mother, wife. Rose is independent in a way that defines her space and the way she structures family time. Her kitchen took its current shape 5 years ago when she and her husband Drew removed a wall and added a breakfast counter. This is where Rose’s friends keep her company while she cooks. She’s a wonderful baker. Last night it was melted goat cheese, potato and onion on puff pastry, a family favorite called Surprise tartin.

The Chambers stove, found in the classifieds of the Times Picayune, cools down in one corner of the kitchen. It shines like a newly detailed car. A collection of cast iron and steel hangs on a sturdy pot rack against the original brick. The house built in the late 1800’s used to be a home for nuns. No ghosts: I asked. Rose loves her kitchen especially the sweet shelves Drew made above her farmhouse sink. Sometimes she misses the way a table in the middle of the kitchen forced guests to maneuver around the fray of cooking. Even as I watched her dress the salad she shrugged off the theater of it. Saying “look at me posing for the picture” and I realized I was at the breakfast bar.

My favorite part of the evening was watching Rose’s family eat her tart with such enthusiasm they nearly finished it before she made it to the table. It was a compliment to the chef and they kept saying, “that was so good” even when the dinner was over. Both Rose and Drew get 2 free nights a week from cooking or childcare. Tonight was Drew’s night off. He lingered, to eat another piece of tart. Rose and I stayed and talked after Drew left. Rose pointed at my shirt, “If I did another kitchen it would be that color: golden rod.” As a painter, color is everything to Rose.

Next year Rose is going away to graduate school. She has already started training her family for her absence. Her daughter makes dinner 3 nights a week. Rose is looking forward to making smaller meals for herself. Open to all the possibilities: juice, raw diet, ramen. She will eat so she can paint and for a brief period of her life she will eat mostly alone. These nights on the porch are sweet and familiar and fleeting.

Loey’s Potholder Collection

New Orleans will be a little less bright when Loey moves. Loey paints miniatures, still lifes, and landscapes with imbedded figures. Her figures, sometimes represented as animals, have deeply human needs. They eat pizza, they play basketball, and they sit around tables. Some of her newer work includes sculptures: an infinity rainbow backboard or a rock painted in a prism of gem tones in front of a painting of the same rock. I went to her colorful shotgun apartment this weekend to say goodbye and see her oven mitt collection. She shares her passionate collection with her Mom, Linda, who does communications at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Linda made the potholder with the face and the intricate stitching that resembles Sashiko.

I already knew Loey was an artist but I was excited to see Linda’s work. I found so much inspiration in her obsessive stitching. Loey’s reaction to her Mom: she’s the best! Loey’s kitchen features retro oak cabinets with glass doors that show off a pantry of dry goods. In her hanging wire baskets, a baseball shares equal space with an onion. There’s a big stock pot on the stove that suggests serious cooking and Pyrex tea kettles propped on the other two burners. When Loey leaves this place, she will take her collections with her.

She offered me the hand towel she made to honor the house that sells raccoon meat and turtles. You know the one, with the hand painted signs in the Ninth Ward? I went home with an Aloe plant pulled from the soil in front of her home instead. Loey makes new work almost every day but she will never forget what she gives away. She honored New Orleans by seeing it. And now she needs to leave, to keep growing, to see more.

ANTON’S KITCHEN

The Brooklyn Kitchen. We had a night and two scraps of day. Having a friend to crash with made the New York City trip possible. I was traveling with my little sister, and my eight year old niece. An ambitious plan to see a few fabric stores in the garment district, propelled us into the summer heat with our overnight bags on our shoulders. By the time we arrived at Anton’s apartment in Fort Hamilton, we were grateful for the perch. He lives in one of the bedrooms on the second floor of a brownstone. He shares the space with a family downstairs: a mom, a dad and a toddler who can do stairs. The little one toddled up the long flight to visit us in the morning.

There’s a few more tenants upstairs. One of the bedrooms is occupied by a woman who is spending the summer in Greece. She works in commercial kitchens so cleanliness is important to her. In her absence, Anton does his best to maintain order and water her plants. He’s busy himself, back in graduate school after working for fifteen years. The three of us slept on a very comfortable futon and woke up at exactly the same time taking turns to use the vintage pink clad toilet. There was a vent in the wall where we could hear the family downstairs. They were waking up too.

Anton made a classic breakfast from our college days: toasted pita and scramble. Thrifty to his core, he ate the eggs my niece couldn’t finish. We listened to a French record while we sketched out the day. There was a friend with a car and a dream to see the ocean. Some of us had bathing suits, some of us didn’t. It was ok, we were on our way to Coney Island where anything goes.

rabeetah’s Kitchen

Rabeetah shared: I do not have a strong sense of color. It’s hard to believe, walking through her Bywater home, bathed in yellow light. In the years I’ve known Rabeetah, she’s revealed a disarmingly honest approach to life. She ordered the chicken coop online. She doesn’t love the James Dean book end. She does know how to cook Pakistani recipes she learned from her chef mother. As a first generation American, her mother had to be creative with the food and equipment available to her. Rabeetah and I met when she came to Seasoned in search of unique tools to augment her robust collection. Her spice caddy is called a masala dabba (translates to box of spices in Urdu). It contains freshly ground cumin (she grinds herself), cumin seeds, coriander seeds, kashmiri chili pepper, and of course turmeric.

Rabeetah wrote: Every shirt I have is stained with turmeric. I don’t mind, I like to think it's stained with gold. The day I took pictures, chicken tandoori masala fragranced the open kitchen. Classic closed cabinets framed a refrigerator on one side of the room, and a stackable washer and dryer fit on the other side. The oven occupied a wall of its own. Rabeetah uses every bit of space to store her spices and heavy pots even the floor when necessary. Her partner, Max went to high school with Rabeetah but they did not get together until college. They like to say that they are each other’s salt, something that makes everything taste a little better and more like itself. In New Orleans, they have become a family with Cashew their dog and four chickens. Rabeetah has worked in education for seven years, and is taking a step back to write. She’s working on short stories that deal with the combined cultures of her parents and herself. And she works at Seasoned on Thursdays. Come see us and you may end up in a story.