The Sensory Home Chef

All baking and cooking is a theatrical adventure you put on for yourself. A performance. An act of love that is mysterious, sensory and nourishing. Create your own cozy. Just like you do with writing. Leave breadcrumbs for your reader and your eater. Baking bread and making soup is like creating your own best friend! It need not involve expensive ingredients. Most tools dishes pots and pans and gadgets can be found at the Salvation Army or yard sales. Onions potatoes beans breads. The world has been nourishing itself for millennia. There's no room for snobbery in my kitchen!

In college I baked bread and lived on raw onion & mayo sandwiches, apples and stove top popcorn. I lived next to Value Land supermarket. Then later I discovered how to cook brown rice and beans in a pressure cooker simultaneously. I made onion soup, and little by little I added to my repertoire. I made hummus, I sauteed veggies, I tried to find foods that were not painful to my tummy, expensive or scary. I was motivated by health and economy. I wanted good smells in my house.

When I was hired as a prep chef I learned on the job and I had a lot of fun. I liked my job much more than college because we had camaraderie in the kitchen. I loved being on my feet all day with Alice In Wonderland pots and pans and number ten cans. I felt like I was in a dance troupe with my favorite older brothers. John (Birt) and Bruce were kind to me even when I added red chili flakes to the spinach pies without asking. They could've fired me but instead they explained that the regulars expect consistency. On Saturday mornings I'd make 12 pecan pies, trays of dark chocolate puddings and buckets of tabbouleh and hummus. I'd make marinades for chicken breasts, and macaroni salad in a bowl the size of a wading pool! For cheesecakes I'd unfurl a cinderblock of cream cheese and use a dozen eggs and a tub of sour cream. I loved it!