The life force is alive and thriving in my kitchen, and probably in yours, too. The green force is especially prevalent these spring days, bringing refreshment and kind of a rebirth that is impossible to describe.
However, a woman's kitchen (or a man's!) is a highly individual room. This is clear when one considers arrangement, decor, equipment and, especially, size (usually dictated by circumstances), right down to the calendar on the wall, whether a free real estate token, Snoopy comics, English roses or sports greats.
Spring is in action no more than two feet away from my desk on a card table by the window. Edge to edge, it's full of seedlings for my mix of tomatoes and eggplants and a few start-ahead herbs and lettuces. Green stuff.
Yet it is the other adornments that personalize a kitchen, some useful items metamorphosed into kitchen art. There is a pair of kitchen towels on the wall by the door, a gift from an editor. They're made of rather rough linen and are out-size and hand-painted with vegetables -- tomatoes as large as a basketball on one, and celery as large as a fallen tree branch on the other. I think of my circumstances when they arrived -- a new food writer -- and of her kindness in remembering me.
The wall in back of my computer and the side of the fridge form a corner that is my pep place, a visual cheer board like the one I always had near my desk when I was teaching. Some days were darker than others in school with good kids in trouble, and the board always brought optimism forward ... like spring does.
There's an artful poster -- a blast of color -- from conferences on my pep wall, along with family photos, a great "Recipe" for a peace-filled life that I'd like to have the Record-Eagle print some day. It's long; it's wonderful. An emergency phone list is up there, too, and I mention that below the state police are the numbers of my emergency friends.
My late Aunt Ruth, a large woman with an even larger eccentric personality, gave me odd gifts through childhood, a silk taffeta comforter to play with, inside or out (with a note attached, warning my mother not to take it from me), a child-sized roll-top desk and, when I was about 6, a wrought-iron trivet. It reads, "A merry heart doeth good like medicine." I thought it was folklore until recently when I found out that advice is from the Bible -- Proverbs. I've never used it as a trivet, it's art.
Now we get to serious things like my late mother-in-law and kitchen witches. I have two kitchen witches; they supposedly bring good cooking and health to a kitchen. One, a 10-inch witch, is folk-crafted. She gets dusty easily, and I've given her new dresses and aprons twice, and new hair from stressed cotton batting once. I care for her.
He-Who-Must-Be-Fed's mom was also a witch in her kitchen. I was married three years before I knew where she put dirty dishes when clearing after a feast. She sneaked them into the oven. Her best secret was a superb butcher whom she openly courted, and I still find that a good butcher is a cook's best friend.
The other kitchen witch lives in a garlic braid. The tiny witch is only over an inch long, her broom thinner than a toothpick, her head, a small wooden bead. Fabian Haidekker, one of the most brilliant, accomplished and beloved foreign exchange students ever to go through the Traverse area gave me the tiny folk person, and I treasure her. Fabian was already a world-class citizen when he arrived, boyish and handsome with a mop of black curly hair. Then when his father was tragically killed in a bicycle accident back home in Leipzig, Fabian flew to Germany. After the funeral, he returned to northern Michigan. Life force, resilience.
I think of his joyous personality, his young-and-growing strength, and his love of life. Then I remember the meals with foreign exchange students on the deck, I think of guests that have poked at the foreign dishes on their plates and those who have wolfed new foods down.
There are many things that personalize my kitchen, a small thing like a bottle of orange oil that I use in everything from pastries to salad dressings and personal habits, too. I keep my very favorite recipes taped inside the cupboard doors, always there, always near. Home is where the heart is, and the kitchen is the heart of the home, beating strong.
Sandwich Slaw (A cupboard door recipe)
2 c. cabbage, thinly shredded
2 T. onion, diced
2 T. rice vinegar
2 T. mayonnaise
2 t. sugar
1/2 t. black pepper
1/2 t. salt
Mix all together thoroughly, and add slaw to sandwiches as desired.
-- Unknown, hand-written on an old, battered index card
Sally Ketchum is a northern Michigan journalist who writes in many genres, and her work usually touches on food. She can be reached at ketchum1985@gmail.com.
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