The Deleted Scenes - Kitchen Contentment
I usually write about land use, but sometimes I write about the inside of our homes too. And sometimes I write about the inside of our home. This was my kitchen counter a few nights ago: I was making pesto—an herbal Italian sauce made of basil, nuts, garlic, grated cheese, and olive oil—blended into a paste in a food processor. You don’t really cook it; you just boil and drain pasta, reserve a little of the pasta water, and stir in the pesto sauce. The classic, fancy version uses pine nuts, which have a unique, hard-to-describe flavor that works perfectly with the other ingredients. My mother, and later I, usually used walnuts, for a similar flavor profile at a much lower price. But as you can see, I’m using pistachios here. I like how their green hue enhances the green color of the sauce, and I actually think it comes out closer in taste to the pine nut version. My wife and I buy packaged pesto-marinated chicken thighs at Wegmans, which are very tasty and convenient. But there’s not enough sauce in the package to serve it with pasta, so I get rid of the convenience and make fresh pesto to go with it. Apparently, in Italy, you don’t really serve pasta with chicken, or meatballs for that matter. You’d have a pasta course and a meat or fish course at the same meal, but not usually in the same dish. (At least that’s what I’ve read, and also what I saw when we visited Italy a few years ago for our honeymoon.) But just like Americanized Chinese food is its own distinct cuisine, so is Italian American food, whether it’s “red sauce” Italian food or something like this. Cooking is one of my favorite things, and despite occasionally using it for “content,” as I am here, it’s something I mostly just do for my wife and I, because I enjoy it. Our kitchen isn’t a bad size, but it could be larger given the frequency and intensity with which we use it. If there’s any through-line with cooking and writing, I guess it’s that it’s the closest we can get to creation. As the seasons change, the kitchen really becomes the center of the home. Sometimes we think it’s tacky or uncool to do what everyone else is doing; ordering pumpkin spice this and that, making soups and other “hearty autumn meals” or whatnot. I think it’s cool to be part of something with so many other people. Seasonal things remind of being a kid at Christmastime, and that’s a feeling that becomes harder to capture, or summon, as you get older. Reading the Trader Joe’s flyer for October and trying all the pumpkin-themed products makes me feel it again. Sometimes when I’m working away in the kitchen, I remember the homemade baby food my mother used to make for me: stewed and pureed carrots in homemade chicken broth, stuff like that. She used to have me help her with dinner (but often she would also declare “it’s time for the amateur to leave the kitchen.”) Some habits, like pouring something out of a measuring cup from as high up as possible, I’ve never really outgrown. But I learned to love cooking from all of that, and I even look forward to reliving those moments from my childhood with my own kids one day—experiencing being a child from the other side, as it were. Turning those moments into a family tradition. Most of all, I appreciate that I’m able to take pleasure in the repetitive but edifying work of making a home. As I get older, I realize how important that is. I had a piece in The Bulwark recently, on daydreaming about having to stock shelves on the graveyard shift and stuff like that. How people my age want stability but are also drawn to variety, even drama. Here’s a long bit from that:
Let me assure you this isn’t some coded cry for help or something. When I write like this, I’m sort of recounting the mood of my peers and not being strictly autobiographical. And one thing I pledge to never do, in any case, is to use private disagreements in my family life as fodder for content. I know the tone of that excerpt is a little bleak, but what I really feel is gratitude. Gratitude that I have a stable life about which I can occasionally feel bored. Gratitude for my wife, and my home. And gratitude that at the age of 29, I can work all day mostly on my own terms, head into our little kitchen, and have one of the best damn nights of my life making homemade pesto, picking a wine to pair, and being content right now with what I have. Related Reading: Plant-Based Patties, Italian Peasant Style Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 400 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You’re a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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