Cooking reminds me of home.
It makes me think of the main cabin at Woodland, steamy from pots cooking and heavy with the smells of fresh food being prepared. People outside and the smoke from the grill hot against the smell of the water. Family clustered inside and everyone underfoot, offering to cut watermelon or make punch or wash a dish. All of us together, licking spoons and sneaking fruit and pulling the plates from the peeling cupboards painted brown. The slap of the back door banging closed and people rushing up to get in line as we cram into the cabin that's our home for a week.
Or of days spent cutting and coring apples at grandma's house, hands sticky from the juices running sweet. The kitchen muggy and windows open and wearing old-tshirts covered in apple stains. Gripping your knife tightly and slicing through the apples swiftly, pausing to toss the peels in the round wooden bowl as seeds scatter across the table. Apples bobbing in the sink and sitting in boxes and bags reminding you that your work isn't done. And the smell. The overwhelming, unchanging scent of apples, ripe and rich, picked just minutes before from the backyard.
Sometimes, we'd make bread. When I was so little that my head barely reached as tall as my momma's waist, my hands small and willing to knead the sticky dough heavy with the smell of bread. We'd have flour on our faces and our clothes and I'd stand on chairs in the kitchen, watching my mom give that dough a piece of her mind. Hearing the bread machine whir and waiting impatiently for it to be done. All of us hanging around the kitchen until the loaf was cut, heat steaming fast as butter melted on the warm bread in your hands. It was the best bread that I ever ate, because it was fresh and it was homemade and it was my momma's.
A few nights in the summer were for strawberry shortcake, when the evening was lazy and the light golden, we'd sit outside with plates on our laps and forks in our hands. The homemade shortcake still hot, drizzled with the strawberries, and if we were lucky, some raspberries from the garden. Fresh whipped cream piled high on top as we dug into dessert made dinner. Neighbors calling and the sound of games being played and sitting on the deck, legs dangling off the edge as sun streamed soft and day turned to dusk, with strawberries staining our fingers.
Cooking makes me think of memories. Of days and moments and things that may seem inconsequential to some people, but are special because they're mine. Home.
