This summer has been challenging – well the whole year really, with our terrible news aobut having to move, and then the death of my precious Amidala…another year where Alex has been gone much more than home and I am literally aching from head to toe with the burden of doing two jobs.  My hope of a regular helper fell through, and it’s a battle to get anyone to cut the grass, as it has been for over a decade now. Today, my hands and feet literally ache, ont *just* my usual joint pain and sore back. I’m so exhausted! But  when I reflect on 2015, with all that happened in that transformative year, 2016 seems pretty light. So, crazy as it sounds, even though I am overworked and very  sore – I have to make room for what keeps my heart light and my spirits high. And that can mean different things at different times – working on Materia Medica under the silver maple, with a bottle of spicy cider, or binge watching some fantasy tv series (I’m on Round Three of Fringe… and never tire of GoT) or just spending time with the garden, the birds, the forest. All pretty reliable methods of helping me stay positive – but truth be told, there is not anything as reliable and as invigorating to me, when I need a break from it all, than cooking.

And, I might add, not for dogs or birds, although I think the need to keep Korky supplied with fresh veggies and bird bread has re-ignited my passion for food.
This, by the way, is Korky. Isn’t he amazing? He’s even funnier and more amazing in real life, but then he also clams up and won’t say much around new people, till he gets to know you. With me, the conversation is nonstop, except when he’s sleeping.

With my dogs, I often make a week’s worth of food and freeze – if I have time I make two weeks. Then I add steamed fresh veggies and garden herbs plus their extras and oils daily.. Korky doesn’t seem to like foods I freeze , like the popular CHOP or Grainbake recipes.. the exception is  bird bread, and trust me, bird bread is THE best thing on the face of the earth, fresh from the oven OR freezer. SO I am spending time in the kitchen more these days, and with a dire need tot feel as well as I can, my own diet has to be important along with the animals. But there is so much more to the  magic of cooking – the peace, contentment and satisfaction it brings – then simply meeting nutrient requirements and getting all the antioxidants one can.

For some of us, cooking feeds the soul, and in my case, reconnects me with my happiest, most grounded and peaceful Self.

So, despite having nowhere near enough time to accomplish all that I am called to do in a day, I am insistently doing more cooking for myself and partner (the infamous HouseViking of Facebook fame). Because it makes me happy, and we have to eat anyway, so why not enjoy?

My earliest memory of this cosmic draw to the  kitchen, came courtesy of my Nana, who reminded me a few years ago (this Nana who lived to be 99 and was one of the stalwart Scottish ancestors to whom I owe a specific debt of obstinacy, erudition and strength) that often, as a child of 8, 9, 10 who came to visit her over the summer, I would decide, at about 8 pm, I needed to bake a cake. And she had learned to  allow this little eccentricity, mostly because the  products of my inspiration were, pretty delicious. ..and even the failures brought me so much joy. The deal was, if I started baking I had to do the clean up too – no dishes left overnight in THAT kitchen! and I always did. I don’t recall the recipes, but apparently they were mostly taken from the side of a Fry’s cocoa can, or a cereal box. I wish I remember it all more clearly. But, 50 years later , and with possibly more sophisticated taste – – I still often turn to the kitchen to work through sorrow, to calm my heart, to just have fun. And, these past few years in the midst of stress, striving, turmoil and growing presence online (that requires a LOT of maintenance..) I haven’t been cooking nearly enough.

That’s all about to change.

First in a series of my adventures in the kitchen. And no – not dog food recipes. You have to check that other blog, for those.
Stay tuned.