Eating flowers + cooking through the chaos.
Full disclosure: my kitchen has been ripped apart all week. The walls taped, the cabinets and range covered with plastic, buckets of paint, particleboard debris, and buckets with concrete hardening at various paces in tiny buckets scattered all over the floor. In place of my usual recipe development tasks, I’ve been painting, patiently awaiting a sink installation (worth it,) and most recently skim-coating and sealing countertops with concrete. There is nothing more unsettling for me than having the kitchen unavailable or in a state of disarray. Despite the obvious answer of eating take out and many many nut butter sandwiches, I am nothing if not determined (read: stubborn) and so despite it all, I cooked.
With countertops out of commission, I set up the tiny folding table we keep in the van to act as a nerve center for various small appliances on rotation, a cutting board, and our bowls when I finally had everything ready for assembly. Boiling water with the kettle for brown rice ramen while we grilled vegetables and chicken outside. Making jars on jars of chia-buckwheat porridge for breakfast, using the Instant Pot for lentils to make tacos…the list goes on. And so did our usual lovely but simple meals, albeit with a bit more dedication.
When everything was dry enough to start removing some of the plastic from the range. So I carefully peeled away the tape, vacuumed up the concrete dust, and pulled out a few ingredients from the fridge to make myself a simple little lunch. To my great pleasure, the squash blossoms I bought at the farmers market last Saturday were thriving in the fridge in their little plastic bag, and I couldn’t wait to enjoy them in a way that wouldn’t involve frying or baking them (because heat, plastic, moisture, oil, paint, and drying concrete really don’t mix.)
Inspired by one of my favorite women in food – Aran Goyoaga – I made myself a little open-faced omelet. There are few things more satisfying than eating something eggy with toast, especially when it’s a goat-cheese stuffed squash blossom sprinkled with chives and everything about this dish – from the ease of making it with practically no equipment in a culinary war zone to the way it made the most of all the things nature is giving us to eat right now – that hit the spot with me. Aran is from the Basque Country, and so she had used her market bounty of summer squash, chives, blossoms, and eggs to make a Spanish-style tortilla, and I didn’t go quite that far, but I did fall in love with this simple, summery dish enough that I mixed up an omelet a few more times as the kitchen was getting back to its usual pace. And…if I’m honest, it will be a few more days, which means I have plenty more excuses to buy more squash blossoms and make more omelets.
I’m feeling excited, refreshed, and still enthusiastic about the little home projects. My brain and body still feel ready to rock, and I credit these make-shift kitchen meals for that. I can’t imagine what we would have felt like if we’d eaten burgers, or take-out salads, or Mexican take out from that place we love that makes great queso all week. I’m reminded now, as ever, that it’s worth it to cook. That cooking is one of the great gifts we give ourselves, even when it feels challenging and fussy. If we want to feel well, we must cook — even just a little bit. And it doesn’t require much (a small table, a knife, a little fire, and some bowls) to make delicious, worthwhile, powerful meals happen…wherever we are, whatever the kitchen looks like.
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