in celebration of messes

I’m an avid reader of food blogs and old cookbooks. I wish I could claim a learned or scholarly interest in either, but I think I just love them as both instruction and cultural artifact.  Reading about how someone prepares a meal is oddly intimate, inviting you into someone’s way of seeing the world (“cook until tender” or “thumb-sized”) and using their body (“knead gently” or “taste, and adjust seasoning”).

I think that’s what I like most about cooking these days: it unabashedly connects me to the physical. As a poet and PhD student, most of my life is spent in my head, on the page, on the screen. I love playing in the kitchen where the text of a recipe is never the ending point, it’s just an invitation to the physical.

There’s an unbelievable array of cookbooks and foodie blogs these days, testifying to both a greater appreciation for the role of food in general, and our American palate’s delightful expansion into other cuisines.  The one thing I’ve been longing for, however, is a blog that admitted, well, FAILURES. I don’t wish anyone to fail in the kitchen (or elsewhere, of course), but I can’t help wondering how so many people came to their skills in the kitchen.  How is it that each dish is not only photographed impeccably, but comes together brilliantly the first time?  This is craft, of course, and something that should be touted proudly, if not shouted from the rooftops. But I wish we could admit more of the missteps it took to get there, to revel a bit in the messes.

In a class with Chris Ransick, a Denver poet, we considered this idea in relation to our own poetry.  He encouraged us to accept the “wabi” in each of our poem, or the subtle flaw that made it uniquely handcrafted. My friend Roger pointed me toward this page on the “wabi sabi” that captures this sentiment nicely:

“Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.” (from “Noble Harbor.”)

In this blog, I’d like to celebrate the successes and the failures in the kitchen (and elsewhere!)—the finished product, and the wabi-sabi.  A recent night of cooking found just that, a delightful sauteed mushroom dish with garlic and fresh herbs:

Before these little babies hit our mouths, however, we lost a brave egg in the process of making potstickers:

(You know it’s love when you ask him to pose by a broken egg, and he obliges instantly.)  Look forward to sharing more adventures and messes in our wabi sabi kitchen.