I can’t help but geek out any time I see food that I think is “beautiful” or “comforting” or just plain “delicious”. I didn’t really appreciate food as an art until I had children. There is something to be said about home cooking. The love that goes into the dish is palpable. The time and patience that it takes to practice this art is character building. It is an ever evolving process, a micro-example of life itself, right there in your own kitchen. We, as humans, are constantly in a state of change, growth, struggle, and breakthrough. I can see this represented in my kitchen as well as inside of myself. Generations of cooking styles before me have shaped my own navigation through my kitchen, but something uniquely “me” is in there too.

Now, please do not think that I always cook meals for my family with this grand “existential huzzah”. Quite the opposite… many of my meals are flung together with the rushed frenzy of a working mother with two young children. Some of my dinners are even made in surly anger (gasp!). But, every once and a while I slow down… and think of what magic is laid out on the cutting board before me, or sizzling in the skillet beside me. There is beauty in that little moment.