On Cooking

The most basic of topics.

Reminder: tickets are now on sale for my still life photography workshop with Indigo & Violet Studio on May 2. Learn more about the event and snag your seat here.

Welcome to the Tuesday post for all subscribers, which is once again a deviation from the afore-promised topic. It’s worth it; I promise! On Friday, all subscribers will receive a recipe for one of my favorite childhood desserts: Oh Henry Bars. As always, if you’d like to check out the photos I take in my work as a food and product photographer, you can do that (and consider hiring me!) here.

As you know (which feels like the way I have started every newsletter for the last quarter?), MY KITCHEN IS NOW DONE. No more complaining. There is only wonder, delight, relief, ecstasy every time I remember this fact. No longer is my refrigerator shoved into the corner where my cats' food dishes typically live. No longer is the trash can being used as a poor attempt at a cat door for a construction zone. No longer are my pantry “essentials” stacked precariously on shelves around the family room. We are back, baby, and it’s better than ever!

I don’t yet know whether I’ll do a big, exciting kitchen remodel reveal type of post (do you want that?), so instead I’m going to describe my weekend full of project cooking for you in gratuitous detail. After all, what is a kitchen but a room for cooking adventures?

My love language is spending long, meandering days at my stove, cooking something complicated for people I want to feed. Sometimes there are themes to these meals; sometimes they are simple exercises in using up as many loose ends as I can without veering into smorgasbord territory.

This weekend was full of that, and on both nights, I fell into bed, exhausted, feeling a kind of tired that I hadn’t felt since my last marathon cooking days. It’s a kind of tired that I can’t fully explain, but I liken it to the full, warm feeling you get after eating soup on a winter’s night. You couldn’t bear to eat another bite, but you’re so happy you ate what you did.

On Saturday, I went to the grocery store with a shopping list that called out for Italia. I spent my day at the stove, making spaghetti and meatballs. Real spaghetti and meatballs, with a long-simmered red sauce where red-pepper laced pork and beef meatballs luxuriated in the pot with the tomatoes for hours. Ribbons of homemade pasta, kneaded for the full ten minutes on my new butcher block counters, stained bright yellow with good farm eggs. Snowcaps of Parmigiano Reggiano on top, turning orange as slowly as a sunset.

On Sunday, I didn’t buy any groceries. I spent my day at the stove, making a warm, storm-proof chicken soup. I put the bones of a rotisserie chicken into a pot with what felt like too many carrots, ten cloves of garlic, grated ginger, and Pink Salt Kitchen’s Nam Prik Pao and let it simmer for years. On the burner across the way, I cooked a plain pot of Rancho Gordo beans. When the meat had melted from the bones, I took them out and replaced them with the leftovers of the salad from the night before. More Parmigiano Reggiano. Parsley. Fresh sourdough from the bakery down the street.

I love that this new kitchen had its first big weekend with two wildly different meals: both big, splashy, get-the-Dutch-oven-out productions, but as unalike as anything I typically cook. As I shifted my feet back and forth on the new tile, I felt myself coming back to Earth, breathing more deeply than I had allowed myself to while I microwaved various packages during the reno. It’s good to be back.

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See you back here on Friday for dessert! In the meantime, forward this to a friend and tell them to subscribe if you please!