Winter Moon of the Long Nights
When Kate and I were first married, back in the early 1990’s, we lived on Edgcumbe Road in St. Paul. The house had a wonderful kitchen including an indoor grill with a rotisserie. I shopped at the Lund’s on Ford Parkway and cooked every afternoon, often watching Oprah as I did. I came to enjoy the regular work involved with making meals.
Cooking has a necessary mindful quality since temperatures, ingredients, points of adding this or that require attention. Knowing when a dish has finished cooking does, too. Over the last few weeks I’ve gone back to this daily, or almost daily, cooking and find I’m enjoying it even more. There’s a calm that settles over me when I start cooking. It’s familiar, creative.
I’ve begun experimenting in an odd way, for me. I follow recipes. Not always, but more than I used to. Thinking up ways to change a dish, to pair odd foods is fun, but right now I’m choosing to learn a wider variety of cooking techniques and that means following recipes. So, if it’s 4:30 p.m. MST, you can imagine me in the kitchen here on Shadow Mountain, a recipe propped against the wall, rattling pots and pans and wondering why I chose this recipe when I didn’t have any onions.
BTW: stopped watching Oprah a long, long time ago.
