This is one of my happy places.
In the library, the corner where my desk sits. Of course I look out at all the books except the ones behind me, but it is easy to roll my chair around as needed. This corner houses my cookbook collection, or about half of my cookbook collection. The other half is downstairs in the breakfast nook. The wooden stool is not usually there, but I needed to access a high shelf.
I recently resorted all the cookbooks. I had thought about it for a while; I've been cooking a great deal the last few months -- exploring new recipes, revisiting old favorites, thinking about the way I want to eat now -- and in the process realizing that the way my cookbooks had been ordered recently wasn't really working for me. But shifting books, especially big heavy hardback books, is a job. It is a job made all the harder because the books are on two levels of the house and when I started I had only a rudimentary idea of which books would go upstairs and which would be downstairs. All I knew was that the previous method, straight alphabetical by author on each level was confusing. The books I used the most were downstairs; the remainder were upstairs. But then I would start using a book that was upstairs more, and a book that was downstairs less. When I wanted to cook Thai, or Spanish, or whatever, none of the books were together, and I like to compare recipes. Long ago, when I cooked a lot, I grouped books by category. It was time to go back.
Admittedly I never really stopped cooking, but I had grown a bit staid and stale. Then I bought a new mixer after contemplating it for about 3 years. I hadn't really done any baking in those three years, whereas I used to bake a great deal. Baking for one is problematic, and my church no longer has a coffee hour on Sunday, so I no longer have the excuse of baking things that I can take to church. Yet I miss the act of baking and making dessert. I actually miss making desserts more than I miss eating them.
So I bought the mixer above and started playing. This will be a good mixer when I get to bread, but I'm not there yet. I started with simple and familiar basics: choux pastry (which does not require a mixer at all) and meringues and pavlovas. I made choux puffs to make tiny appetizer sized lobster rolls, then I made cream-puffs, where the mixer was required for the pastry cream, and savory puffs filled with pimento cheese, and salmon mousse. I made multiple batches of pavlovas with spring berries. I made a batch of cupcakes and then I stopped baking for a while. I'm not worried, I will start up again, probably as the weather cools. But the mixer, and the baking, shifted my brain from the utilitarian "I need to eat" setting to "let's play in the kitchen" mode. I'm still playing.
It seems like I've been doing everything except writing. I play in the kitchen. I work in the garden, mostly weeding, but I went through a period where my early mornings were all spent wrestling with chicken wire as the rabbits were feasting on my vegetable beds and my flowers. I've been sewing, slowly but steadily, learning new things as I go, but also making things I am happy with and happy to wear. Knitting. Reading. Occasionally seeing friends.
All of this makes for a very full and happy life, but it is not necessarily an interesting life to write about. What would I say? "I cooked dinner, I am working on a muslin, I knit four rows of lace?" Who cares? I've been reading, but mostly reading genre fiction which I have thoroughly enjoyed but I don't really have anything to say about the books, nor do I need to say anything.
Mostly I've just been wondering what the purpose of a blog is in this world where the internet and social media in particular sometimes feels like it has become too commercialized, to politicized, too fraught. I was an innocent when I started this blog. I am terrible about throwing away pieces of paper. I've lost a lot of things. I thought of this blog as a journal I couldn't throw away only to regret it later. A part of me wants to go back to those innocent days. That may not be possible. But it seems that writing here fills a role, provides some outlet that I still need. Throwing words out into the digital void is different than writing a journal. It is not better. It is not worse. It is different and I write differently. I also see myself differently, and learn about myself in different ways.
Somehow, a post Lisa wrote in 2011 came up on my feed. That post is here. I don't know why, I think I just needed a little kick. So I think I will post a picture from my kitchen window. If I am standing at the sink, this is the view from my window. But the entire outside wall of my kitchen is windows. I neglected to put in upper cabinets because I wanted the view. In the house before this house, the condo I lived in when I first moved to Knoxville, there was no kitchen window. The kitchen was in the center of the house, there was no view to the outside. I hated it. In retrospect perhaps that contributed to why I lost interest in cooking. George died. I had only to cook for myself. I felt claustrophobic in that kitchen.
It has taken me a while to settle fully into this new house; there were reasons, but I am here now. My kitchen is another one of my happy places. I watch the robins while my coffee brews in the morning. At the moment my big fancy espresso machine needs a bit of fiddling and I don't have the patience for it, so the drip coffee maker is out. Apparently this is a happy place for my orchid as well. No complaints here.