An Inhabited Kitchen

Today has been and will be ordinary.

Breakfast was a big coffee and eventually a cinnamon raisin English muffin with butter.
Lunch was a brownie that I made last night, shared with my dog, Duke. I know chocolate is not good for a dog-he didn't have much and not much of a lunch for me, but probably early dinner.
Dinner will be leftovers and salad.

By the way, try cooking brownies the same way that you cook cornbread in a cast iron skillet works just perfectly. I love cast iron.

I re-read one of my very favorite and most inspiring cookbooks, The New Laurel's Kitchen.
I had first seen the cookbook in my aunt and uncles apartment in 1979. They were vegetarian and it is a vegetarian cookbook. I am not vegetarian. I do, however, love the philosophy of this book, and the recipes are nutritious and wonderful and we are all entitled to healthy eating.
Around 1991 or '92 I read the book entirely - the beginning of this book I feel like I can read over and over again and I read it again today. Inspired once more at plain old simplicity and the restorative qualities of cooking.

My favorite of all is that a home is a 'place' not a 'station' and if we want this 'we must be there'. Bingo. One of my favorite things that I have learned in my lifetime. I know it sounds very cliche but whatever. With this, of course, we must give priority to the kitchen and the work we do there can heal and restore us. Also, saying that the time it takes to prepare good wholesome food is as healthful and healing as the food itself. The value of an 'Inhabited Kitchen'. I love this book and I recommend it to anyone that cooks. You can actually feel the positive energy from the book. You will look at chopping and stirring with a whole different perspective. It is not jumping through hoops to get to the main dish, it is creating the seperateness of each ingredient to pull together to make the entire meal. Like the pieces of a quilt.