// Kiko Alario Salom //
I sat down to research kitchens on Google Scholar, to see what I could find, and it was disheartening because I hit so many paywalls. I need to get journal access sorted out for myself ASAP, probably by liaising with a librarian. (Well, I did manage to find this somewhat fluffy article by Johnny Grey.) Having come up with nothing to quote, I am confronted with the daunting necessity of presenting my own experiences. Maybe even opinions?!
The kitchen is where cooking happens. The basic stuff of life is manipulated and even created in this domain. Traditionally food preparation has been regarded as "women's work", across many cultures, so I feel an instinctive fierceness about yeasty half-made bread, dripping whey, and simmering bone-broth. Personally, I mostly know how to fry things, although I can also make hollandaise sauce and brownies, two signature dishes of my mom's.
Within the kitchen, heritage is transmitted. My mother is always eager to help me decipher a recipe scrawled by someone who's dead now, and she demands that I watch when she cooks something that she wants me to cook for my hypothetical children. It takes many repetitions before I remember what I'm supposed to do, but I do like the idea of having cinnamon bread at holidays forever.
I like that the kitchen is a place of ritual and patterns. The cheese is always in the same compartment of the refrigerator, and I know which drawer holds the silverware. It is profoundly disorienting to navigate someone else's kitchen, the layout of which seems so nonsensical, as if designed to confound expectations.
The kitchen is where cooking happens. The basic stuff of life is manipulated and even created in this domain. Traditionally food preparation has been regarded as "women's work", across many cultures, so I feel an instinctive fierceness about yeasty half-made bread, dripping whey, and simmering bone-broth. Personally, I mostly know how to fry things, although I can also make hollandaise sauce and brownies, two signature dishes of my mom's.
Within the kitchen, heritage is transmitted. My mother is always eager to help me decipher a recipe scrawled by someone who's dead now, and she demands that I watch when she cooks something that she wants me to cook for my hypothetical children. It takes many repetitions before I remember what I'm supposed to do, but I do like the idea of having cinnamon bread at holidays forever.
I like that the kitchen is a place of ritual and patterns. The cheese is always in the same compartment of the refrigerator, and I know which drawer holds the silverware. It is profoundly disorienting to navigate someone else's kitchen, the layout of which seems so nonsensical, as if designed to confound expectations.
The most perfect of kitchens have yellow gingham drapes.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The kitchen is where we pass traditions from mother to daughter. Makeup is like that too.
True! My mother has a fabulous lipstick collection that my sister and I have poached with minimal authorization =P
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