The past three and a half years have been a transition. For the first time, I’m living alone. For the first time since my early 20s, I don’t own the home I’m living in; I’m on my third extension of a one-year lease. These years have not been easy. But the home I’m renting has kitchen windows that frame a nightly sunset. I’ve spent most of my nights here at that time with a glass of wine, enjoying a colorful buzz while making dinner.
The kitchen is not gourmet. The countertop is Formica; the cabinets country-style oak; the floor shockingly cold, unheated tile; and the stove banged-up and electric with dirty, crooked burners. Still, the kitchen is spacious. And it hosts a large pantry for which I’ve curated an ingredient collection for new and nostalgic recipes.
My kitchen nights, while unsettled, have given me some peace. I’ve set flowers on the table, lit incense and candles, watched the sunset. I’ve tried to watch meteor showers, though under a main thoroughfare backyard streetlight. While muffler-missing motorcycles, bass-heavy car stereo systems, and rescuing ambulances hurtle past. I’ve counted the still seconds when they don’t. I’ve said a prayer for each ambulance patient. I’ve played jazz guitar and piano on my kitchen speaker, adjusting the atmosphere. I’ve tried to not just get by. Some nights, I thrive.
Cooking-wise, I’ve found some new interests. Something about making the house smell like someone — other than me — has been in the kitchen for days, I’ve become fond of braised dishes. I’ve learned I can transform inexpensive stew meat or a roast into something soulful and decadent. Good company here: In his Les Halles cookbook, Anthony Bourdain wrote, “I urge you to buy the cheapest, toughest — but best quality — beef you can get. Then challenge yourself to make something delightful out of it. Experiment. Try. Fail. Try again.” The metaphor is not absent.
I’ve craved new flavors. I’ve made Mediterranean dishes as the house warms against the setting sun. I’ve turned quick sauté ingredients into a long-cooked dish. Italian, French, and Mexican dishes have become stir-fries, a chicken piccata variation one favorite. I’ve explored vegan recipes, and wholly un-vegan, scrumptious, messy-faced, roots and blues barbecued brisket-style ones.
My dinner plate has been the subject of photos — across from an empty second chair and the open patio door, the day-end palette. I’ve talked to myself a lot. Last night, as I watched the movie, The Martian, I realized how much my solo conversations have fueled my (far less significant) alone time. Astronaut Mark Watney’s expressions of failure and prowess, teasing self-jabs, and reliance and commentary on music for companionship resonated as much as they could with any person on a people-packed planet.
During dinner, I’ve occasionally cried, as on the first night that my mom, who’s been ashes in an urn since 2012, finally found rest in the Idaho foothills. I’ve also laughed, sometimes while watching tv during dinner, sometimes at my floppy-pawed cat Eddie or my zipping kitten Chili, and sometimes at ideas that parade about in my head when I pay attention to them. Some nights I sit, quiet, and read a cookbook while eating my supper, trying to dream up the next.
I have hand-written, typed, and made binders of recipes, and organized the photos from my nights here. I’d like to share them. When looking through my food-related photos, however, the joy I thought I’d captured turned into embarrassment. Instead of a golden-brown baked casserole or a sun-swelled, backyard-ripened tomato, I noticed a crummy rusted stove burner or a vanilla countertop, a tree-less backyard with a giant metal streetlight. That reconsideration hammers everything home.
I want to share — not culinary skills nor a gorgeous, intentional kitchen, though I look forward to a kitchen that’s more my own. While this first entry is food-based, this won’t be a food blog. Food to me is many types of nourishment. Music, art, photography, poetry, literature, humor, writing, exercise, cookbooks, travel, nutrition, and philosophy — at least — all feed.
I’m not an expert on any one. If I’m adept at anything, it’s making the most enticing combination I can. This blog, then, will be a general celebration — of what I’m doing with any situation, any borrowed home, of finding my way home, of what I make and what I savor.
If I don’t speak because I’m not yet where I want to be, I miss out on connection. The moments I’ve relished so far should have sooner taught me this. We’re each of us sometimes in transition, alone on a borrowed planet. As Martian Mark Watney says, “You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”
When I moved into this kitchen, I didn’t have one pot to cook in. As much as was possible, I’d not wanted to disrupt my old home, the beloved person still living there. My move was not hostile but a painful uprooting to grow in a different direction. Besides, my cookware at the time was magnificent: serious, heavy, ceramic, and top-of-the-line; not suitable for a rusted, small, slanted stove.
The first night, I drove, in tears, to the grocery store to get my first by-and-for-myself groceries. When I got home, I burned a frozen pizza. I burned a lousy, godforsaken, cardboard-and-freezer-burn-flavored pizza in an oven that, based on the amount of crusted soot inside, had already burned a lot. It had not been well cared for. It was not joyful. It was not how I wanted to live.
Within five days, I unpacked most of what I’d brought with me. I determined what I’d need to replace. I bought a basic, twenty-something skillet and small Dutch oven, a sleeve of three sunflowers. Instead of to-get-by frozen pizza, I bought some to-thrive produce, a first pantry ingredient collection, and some spices and herbs. I started a spice cabinet.
That night I made homemade tacos. I ate my dinner appreciating my backyard sunset, at a table with the sunflowers and a candle in a candle holder I had painted in my previous home. I now notice in the photo that the candle was not yet lit. I was completely by myself. Not even accompanied by a pet. But I savored my homemade, intentional dinner on my transitional planet. That was the first night of a better way to begin — wherever I’ve been, wherever I am, where I am headed.
-Laura Scheffler Morgan, 1-23-19
Transition. Tacos, April 2015
Transition. Tacos, April 2015
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