Blog two! – The Kitchen and Me

Everything in my mother’s kitchen has its place. I do jokingly question her sometimes around possibly having OCD when it comes to tidiness and the benches being clear. We have lived in this home now for 8 years or there abouts. Mum had an interior designer help her with the layout, colour and the practical aspects of the kitchen. It seems a little bizarre that, that much effort went into designing this one part of the home, however thinking about it, it is the central hub of our home. With a large breakfast bar, used as a working space whether it be cooking, serving a buffet style dinner, or the place in which many conversations accompanied by coffee and sweet treats are had and large by folding windows above the sink that open onto the deck, used to pass meat and veggies through to the BBQ or as a means to monitor outdoor cricket games spotting the sixes or wide’s.

When I am baking I have an automatic tendency to just get what I need. Half the time I don’t even realise that I do it. Everything is in arms reach of the large working space just to the right of the oven. Measuring cups and whisks are kept in the same draw which is just to my left, mixing bowls are under the sink to the right of me and though I could never understand why, the glass bowls I use for the microwave are in the same draw as the plastic containers under the whisks and measuring cups. Even though to me this is an odd place for them, this is where they have remained and if they are not there when I go to use them; it can send me in to a flurry of panic. It is human nature to develop habits and ways of doing things, even if we may not agree.

“And immediately we start to cloak the proceedings with a system of rules. We insist on special place and times for eating, on specific equipment, on stylized decoration, on predictable sequence among the foods eaten, on limitation of movement, and on body propriety”

VisserM. (1992). The rituals of dinner. London: Viking, The Penguin Group