Togetherness

This is not the first time I think about the people I am with, rather than working in the steaming hot kitchen. As easy as it would be to cook with someone, more often this activity is reserved for one. The chef, the owner, the host, the mother. A single unit always rules the hearth of the house and maybe there are no other ways but for the one to take on the responsibility. I had seen many people owning to the expectations of the good cooks, chefs, owners, and mothers but hardly ever at the same time. Last week I was invited not to be a stranger, take charge, help, to play a part.

To

One evening during the spring holiday I arrived at the house of a friend's friend, a stranger, who embraced me like their own.

Their house is a collection of floors and buildings blended in by the concrete enveloping staircases, hallways, and doors to more doors under one roof. Five flats between two parts of one building. With many rooms shared generously between the inhabitants of the house. It is a single entity that nurtures many separate families into one. Maybe it's belonging to the same family tree or common spaces under and over the same roof that made them closer. Still to be learned.

The gardens scatter around the front, back, sides, and everywhere they can possibly host life. There is no shortage of things happening in and out of the green. Inside the green are chicken coops - small to large with all colourful, loud and volatile ranges of birds. Woodshed, BBQ net, garage and stream, compost bins and garlic bulbs, bushes, leaves and stems picking in every direction. A space to sit, to set, to eat among many things invisible to the uninitiated.

I walked around the space on my first day looking at so many things that remind me of my own free-range childhood. The greenery, the fence, the grass, the sound of food making birds, and me wondering what it all means.

In my first hour there I came to the person who worked next to the chickens where I think it is the most fun to observe life and a little drama. Conversation flew. People in their natural habitat. We moved freely without leaving the company of a freshly met stranger. It is then that I realised that the first step in being together is next to each other.

Gather

By dinner time we had spent enough time chatting that the conversation could flow freely, brushing up on old and new topics that were sprawling around, to the sides, covering more ground, rooting deeper. We shared a beer and talked nonsense laughing. The fire seemed like a good idea. What better place to spend time with friendly faces than the night? When it’s no longer necessary to be - working, watching, waiting.

The dinner was BBQ fried meats made out of plants. How did we get here? Sharing utensils. My beliefs are part of the conversation. The values are unhinged. Should I enforce the iron fist rule of no animal product with the liberty of my heart or encourage a friendly space above the red glowing coal with a brush of cross-contaminated cruelty? We will never know who was more right when we shared the space and compromised.

After ketchup with aromatic spices - happy faces and spread-out bellies. We rested by the cracking sounds and dim light, spilling drinks by accident, listening to the new voices. Warmth rested souls and bones.

Under the blanket of the night, every star glows brighter, invisible in our own cracking sun.

This was the first of many times we sat together. Agreed beforehand or not, coming over at the same time to the same place, eating, listening or sharing. Opening little doors to the worries of the heart, comfort of the souls alike and spaces of the mind.

Ask me what made those spaces so welcoming. My answer will be - an open kitchen - pumping smells, heat, noises, food, thoughts and people through and through. With the dishwasher working tirelessly. Life is only true in motion, the kitchen got plenty of that.

Around

I went for a run one day to see the surrounding areas, to move and sweat. That’s what makes me feel good no matter the steep hills and gravel. On the unknown road in the unexplored forest, I run.

I wish I could go back to see how far I can get this time around. It is hard to grasp how far I can get without feeling sick or breaking a leg in the newly discovered places.

On the way back I drank cold clean fresh spring water which according to one anecdote is so good it is worth taking to a nearby country by a literal ton.

Later, going to the forest with the locals, I found out that what I saw and knew about this place was nothing. The second trip introduced me to more hidden paths, secret areas and wildlife. All I was to do is listen and lose myself in the mix.

The same happened before and after the dinner. People making food involved a lot of mental power - recipe recollection, improvisation, measures, all while speaking to me. The process is a fascinating find for any explorer. Being in the cooking zones is a historic event. On one occasion I saw how the herbs and spices are prepared for the soup, the selection of basic seasoning, followed by the chosen bunch to make a spicy heartwarming flavour.

In the conversation, I learned about the passion for good food but also the lack of family cooking collaborations. A story unlike my own.

Seasoning went in the soup while I was finishing my favourite bruschettas. Later described as an “excuse to dip something in the soup”. At the table, after the first spoonful, I realised how traditions and customs gave birth to this soup. The seasoning mix was familiar to me from the taste of the breakfast sausage. While one part of the table crunched the bread, others carefully examined the soup. The result was the love of the crunch and a hot spicy gooey dish that didn’t meet everyone’s expectations. At the end of the day, soup is not a traditional breakfast sausage.

In just five days I made a “homemade” version of the curry ketchup and tasted it with a plant-beef hamburger patty. I saw a little onion carefully sliced to cover the surface of a bread covered with meat, covered with seasoning at the table, layer by layer. I answered questions about the making of the creamy sauce and flavours. Fed the family. Ate with the family. Felt alive again.

On the kitchen island, a child sat and helped make egg-shaped pastries for Easter. The same place where I fried bread, mushrooms and onion, explored new shelves and buttons, and listened about Sunday brunch day-drinking. All while laughing, tasting and meeting more people. The same place where I felt at home while dodging the kid who didn't care for the work wanting to play fairy tales.

If the kitchen is not the heart of the house why does it make it come alive?

Empty Spaces

Between my journey through the lives of people, my own bemusing range of feelings and kitchen business, I felt that the holidays will never stop. In the space between dinner and the next sunrise, there was always something big, temporarily. The motion of the unknown never left me, I didn't know what was inside many parts of the house, I didn't see everyone who lived there, and the thoughts and feelings of people escaped my keen eye for detail. I knew that I am a stranger in the space of others yet I have never been made aware of that. I was given beer, adjusted for my taste preferences. The food, the hidden restrooms, guest room, kitchen and all the outside were always available to me. Like the city sprawling far and wide packed with people of all sizes, this secluded paradise accepted strangers with their stories.

It is in the moments of absolute boredom, in the holiday mood without plans, that I discovered - empty spaces are waiting to be filled with people and their inner beings. My hiking friend would say "A stranger is just a friend you haven't met". Empty spaces help to discover what's in one’s heart. Desires and fears. It is why people move places no matter the cost. Going somewhere eager to spend time outside of the home, taking on adventures, traveling and inviting others to join them.

A week before I spent time in the big house in the valley, I sat with a hiking friend, reading his journal written on a three-month solo-walk trip through wild New Zealand. He didn't remember where he had been and the details of each day but the journal did. With every new capital letter word, I read he remembered a capital moment in his journey - a person, a place, the feeling. I was in someone else's past yet present, as close as it gets, reading and listening to the authentic self, and I couldn't believe how far we have got. I gasped for more stories, for the pictures of places I’d never been to, for more words and his passion. He looked at me with the glow of a person who has done something true.

Late at night, a cold empty room under construction hosted a meeting with an inflatable mattress, a traveler and a guest who was insatiable for the conversation.

When I remembered little bits of the story sitting in the sun in the garden I thought of the story unfolding, the people and the house around me - construction of the bathroom, the tomato seedling popping out of the ground, the chickens getting accustomed to one another and people growing other lives.

…

Together comes from the words “to” and “gather”. In this sense being together is a physical process of being closer, as well as doing things with each other. What can possibly be better than gathering in the kitchen? It is a place with never enough space no matter how much of it you've got. It’s intense, with people moving around all the time. It is shared as no one in the big house ever owns the kitchen. It is a perfect collaborative working space. It's hot, loud, steamy and bubbly, sparking-sparkling, boiling, freezing, cutting, washing, mixing, frying - magical. The kitchen is a place to be. Perfect to make coffee in the cold morning and end the day with a comforting soup, sharing it with the family. It’s where we smell, taste and touch food, but also in the best way possible - each other's hearts.

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This piece was first written, edited and published in April 2022 on my website - eatxperiment.space by your's truly TheFoodGuy