Get Back in the Kitchen Where You Belong
Turns out, there's a purpose behind all those hours spent pouring into the simple preparation and preservation of food.
The most common adjectives found in online recipes are quick, fast, and easy. We want dinner on the table in under 30 minutes, and we don’t want to put in much effort. We want cake mix hacks, no knead bread, pre-chopped garlic, spice mixes in convenient, pre-measured packets. We complain about the length of time most doctors spend with their patients in this era of insurance dictated medicine, but when we set about making a “home cooked meal,” we can’t be bothered to scrub our own potatoes, and pick up a bag that assures us it has been “triple washed” instead.
If food is medicine…
If we are truly trying to tame the dragon of our budget in this awful economy…
If our tables are where we gather…
We need to get back in to the kitchen because, homemaking friends, we belong there.
It’s a terribly unpopular thing to say. One simply doesn’t imply that a woman’s place in the kitchen. And in truth, I’m not. I’m saying someone’s place is in the kitchen, and it’s not the corporations we’ve allowed to set up shop there. It’s the job of an invested individual, someone who loves the people who will be nourished by the work of his or her hands, to be unashamed and productive in the single most necessary space in a home. If you are blessed to be a wife and mother whose work is inside her home rather that out, that’s you.
My Mamaw’s life revolved around the rhythms of her kitchen. Cooking daily meals, yes. But also processing and preserving. She made food for the table, her own convenience foods, and the bulk of the medicines needed for the family— all on her own stovetop. She had plenty of other things to do (I’ve made two posts about her daily schedule: here and here), but she didn’t cut corners on the hours spent every week standing at those laminate countertops. She didn’t begrudge them, either.
Something earlier generations understood intimately that ours have lost is that you can have your quick, your fast, and your easy, sure. But you’re going to sacrifice something in the pursuit of it. Maybe it’s worth it in some areas. Maybe quick is fine when it comes to an oil change in your car. But when it comes to picking out the beef that’s going into the growing bodies around your table, do you want quick? Or do you want best?
Women my age and younger weren’t raised to associate the feel of a well-kneaded ball of dough with accomplishment. They weren’t taught that a batch of homegrown tomatoes you’d coaxed up from the soil, plucked hornworms from, and carried to the sink still warm from the sun tastes far better than the ones you can get for $1.98 a pound at WalMart, regardless of season. They were told to seek freedom from all of that, to never let anyone (especially a man!) shackle them to something as basic and mindless as food preparation.
But it turns out it isn’t so basic, is it? It’s not nearly as mindless as were were told, is it? Because if it was, we wouldn’t have dozens of recipes for “quick” alfredo, or an entire section in the dairy case of our local shop dedicated to pre-boiled, peeled eggs alongside slushy cartons of them raw, already shelled and ready for pouring. We wouldn’t have kids with obesity and heart disease. We wouldn’t have a ultra processed food industry expected to net profits of $175.92 billion this year while small local farms have to explain why their naturally raised broiler hens cost more than the ones at the chain grocer.
I’m not saying that the learning curve isn’t steep. It is. Most women tying on aprons today were never taught the things that they should have been. They weren’t told how to measure flour the right way, let alone how to get the most of of a lean food budget. They have no idea how to break down a whole chicken, or even how to use most cuts of meat that aren’t found on styrofoam trays and labeled, “boneless, skinless.” They’re not just fighting against a lack of knowledge, but a prejudice, too. Tell most of your former high school classmates that you spent your afternoon canning the blakberries you foraged from an empty lot into jam, and the first question you’ll likely encounter is, “why?” As in, “why bother?” but also, “why are you acting like a useless housewife when you could be out making money?”
Here’s what I want to say: it’s not your fault. You were robbed. You were sold a bill of goods that didn’t prepare you for your calling. But also, what you do from here is what matters. You can continue on in the course upon which you were set, or you can choose otherwise. You can gain the knowledge. You can acquire the skills. You can invest the time in the last place you thought you’d find yourself when you got that BA: a kitchen.
And then, you can watch a transformation. Your husband is going to drop a few pounds around the middle. Your kids are going to lose the late-afternoon whine. You’re going to visit your doctor a whole lot less frequently. You’re going to start seeing God’s hand in the smallest of things, like the perfect, beautiful balance of tart and sweet in a blueberry. But also:
You are going to gain a confidence and a purpose that you never, ever imagined.
Spending time in the kitchen reveals something to us and about us as women. It unwraps our deepest desires to nurture. It brings out our creativity. It challenges us to step into a challenge and not just succeed, but lay claim to it, piece by piece. A woman who doesn’t need a recipe to make the best pot roast you’ve ever tasted is a woman who has no need to fear the economy. A woman gratefully accepts the box of sprouting sweet potatoes from the farmer, knowing there are quarts to be put up and pies to be made is a woman who knows that she can fill bellies and nourish bodies without the help of Kraft or Nestle or Coca-Cola. There is freedom in the kitchen, friends!
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!—Psalm 90:17
If you’re reading this today and are inspired to find resources that might help you take up your place in the kitchen, I invite you to join me and a host of others in an online conference called Revive the Table. Here you’ll find folks who have wisdom to share, as well as encouragement and practical tips that will bless you and your family. It’s true— an in-person mentor is best. But so many of us weren’t given that gift. If that’s you, invest in a little self-education this spring. Learn how to order a quarter beef from a local farm (this is a GREAT use of part of your tax return!). Find out how real people managed sourdough before it became a bougie IG trend. Learn how to maximize your hands-on cooking time, understanding that it will never be fast enough for the masses, but it will be so much better for your body!
A final word before I leave this topic for now: last night, my soon-to-be 10 year-old little boy described a very elaborate cake he’d seen in a display window on a city walk a few months back. He told me how pretty it was, and how its bright colors caught his eye. I said, “I guess I need to buy you a big cake this year!” His eyes got wide and he said, “Oh, no— that’s not my favorite cake! Let’s make the chocolate one that we make together. The one I made almost by myself last time? Let’s do that one, ok? That’s my favorite.”
The boy is ready to be in the kitchen, to craft something that makes his palate and his heart happy. A decade of “here, you put the flour in,” and “this is how you crack and egg” has shown him that the dazzling colors and pretty presentation doesn’t mean a thing. That’s a win right there, friends— a victory won simply by being in the kitchen.
In Christ,
Heather
I am a Mennonite housewife. Recently a non Mennonite friend told me his work colleagues talk about how oppressed Mennonite women must be. I said, What did you tell them about that?
He said, I told them they have it made! They’re not out here stressing like you are to work a job. They get to stay home and cook and keep house. They aren’t oppressed, they have it made.
(He lives with my amazing sister who is truly a queen in her home.)
Most Mennonite girls graduate between ages 14-16 and spend the years between graduation and entering the work force learning how to do all the homey, domestic things that today’s women struggle to learn on their own. It is such a blessing to carry these skills along in your pocket for the future. The majority of Mennonite girls become wives and mothers. The homemaking skills they learn in their mid teens from their own mothers are more of an asset to them then they realize while they are acquiring them.
I just want to bless and encourage all you ladies out there who are taking initiative to learn these skills. I know there will be many women in heaven who have never sewed a dress or canned a peach. These skills are not essential to the saving of our souls. But they do aid in living frugally and creating beauty and peace in our homes.
I may have pulled over to the side of the road and asked my kids to pick blackberries on our way to town a few times. So worth it! It was reassuring when an older couple stopped and shared how they too did this in the very same spot with their own kids! They were so pleased to see younger families doing this again. Yay!