The Kitchen
My mother is a good cook. Just yesterday I was talking with my best friend from college, and he was reminiscing about putting his feet under my mother’s table with a spread of vegetables and cornbread set before him. My mother will be 91 in a couple of weeks, and she is legally blind from macular degeneration. However, that does not stop her from cooking. Granted she is not on the high point of her cooking career, but she still has the touch. While I was staying with her a few weeks ago, she cooked a three-layer chocolate cake for me. It was not perfectly iced, but it still tasted good. She can’t read, but she bends over the stove with her lighted magnifying glass and figures out how to set the oven temperature.
When Cheryl and I were first married, I was actually concerned because Cheryl had declared that she could not cook—but she was eager to learn. That meant that I was going to be the guinea pig!
There were some challenges in the early years, but today Cheryl literally has a world-wide reputation as an outstanding cook. Through the years as family and friends have bragged on Cheryl’s cooking, I have made this statement: “I taught Cheryl everything she knows about cooking.” As a follow up to that declaration, I am quick to add that through the years she would often ask me, “Would you get a clean spoon and taste this?” or “What does this soup need” or “Do you think I need to add more lemon juice in the guacamole?”
She loves to be in the kitchen. When we designed our home, I made more decisions in planning the layout, but when it came to the kitchen, that was Cheryl’s domain.
Over the past eleven days, I have been in charge of the kitchen. Cheryl has been recovering from the coronavirus, and I have been the chief cook and dish washer. And, boy, am I ready to relinquish this duty to the master cook of the house.
I have tried to keep the meals as simple as possible. Granted I have picked up more than a couple of meals from restaurants, but I have prepared chicken salad, taco soup and of course bacon and eggs and other simpler meals. I had a hankering for some potato soup, but a look in the pantry revealed two small potatoes—not enough for the potato and onion soup that I wanted to make. I had already talked up the potato soup with Cheryl, so I had to come up with another kind of soup.
A glance in the fridge solved my dilemma. The recent grocery store pickup included a container of fresh mushrooms. I looked on the web for a recipe for mushroom and onion soup. After settling on one and making some adjustments for missing ingredients or deciding to substitute this for that, I served the soup to my two COVID patients. They liked it. I was happy.
Christmas is a special holiday, and it is ALWAYS highlighted with good food. I had to do something special. After some deliberation over Cheryl’s famous recipe file box (that has its own frequent flier account), I decided on comfort food. We had chicken and dumplings, candied sweet potatoes and green beans. I was in the kitchen for hours. I am so slow, and I was nervous about making the dumplings. How much do I roll out the dumplings? Would I get the temperature of the broth just right before dropping the dumplings in the pot? Don’t let the dumplings scorch while simmering. Keep the sweet potatoes simmering while getting the green beans going and watching the temperature of the broth. Oh, when will Cheryl get back in her kitchen?!?
I love the kitchen, but I love it when the chief cook is on duty. During visits from our family and friends, we often gather around the large kitchen island instead of the more spacious family room. Kitchens bring families together. Sadly, except for me, our kitchen has been empty during this holiday season.
I don’t know exactly what the “new normal” will look like, but I surely hope it includes more fun time around the kitchen island watching Nana cook.
“She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her.” Proverbs 31:27-28