kitchen

France, afternoon

On the week end, I definitively have problems to cope with my mood. I am sad and feeling lonely. And apparently, it doesn't even matter if yesterday I had a nice night out with one of the girls I met recently and I danced like crazy. Today, I still feel down.
Last night, I saw a girl fainting after drinking too much. She fainted so badly that I heard a laud BUM! when her head touched the floor. She lost knowledge. I don't know how it ended, I hope she is ok. I still don't get the need of getting stoned by alcohol or drugs to have fun. Where is the fun in that? I felt sorry and sad for her.

I had a nice chat with a friend yesterday about our youth. It seems that in some countries (I am Italian and she is from Colombia), much of life happens in the kitchen. My happiest memories of when I was younger are linked to the kitchen. I grew up in my mom's kitchen. I don't care about eating and I am a disaster in cooking, but my dream of my ideal family is strongly bind to a kitchen. I remember when my sister and I were trying to learn how to make home made pasta under my mom's instruction (and that was really funny, because as a perfectionist I was always trying to make the best looking pasta, while the one of my sister was always thick and hard to cook), when we were playing with a lot of weird ingredients (including some real food, as well as soap or anything white that could have looked like flour) and I was trying to poison my sister giving her to eat our artistic food, or when my school friends were coming to visit me to spend a lot of time in the kitchen again trying to create something.
The kitchen was the place to talk, to create, to laugh. I always loved to see my mom cooking, to see how from nothing she could make a pantagruelic meal. And I remember myself sitting on one of the kitchen furniture (being the table or whatever other thing) talking to her while she was cooking. The charm of the kitchen for me is linked to the social life happening in the kitchen. I like to smell the food (except cabbage I have to say), I like to look at it, I like the warm feeling of the kitchen. I remember that one of the first times I felt lonely abroad was when I walked by a house in Venezuela and I saw everyone in the kitchen, setting the table, cooking, laughing. I felt immediately home sick.

So, when yesterday I was talking to this friend of mine, recalling happy memories, we both tought of how nice it would be to have a nice kitchen with a large table, where family and friends can sit and talk and eat and laugh. A place where everyone could feel welcomed. If I will ever have kids, and if I will live with someone, I think that exactly this would be the reason to push me to learn how to cook and cook more. To take care of them, to make them feel home, to make them feel the joy of such an environment like the one I had when I was young in my mom's kitchen. It is something wonderful, and I wish everyone could experience that. And this is probably why the only thing I like to cook are cakes/pies. Because you need to share them with the others, because cakes are something that most of the people like and enjoy, because cakes are immediately associated with something joyful, party-like even if there is no a special occasion. I made a lot of cakes when I was in Germany and a bit also when I was in the USA, but here I didn't yet. I don't even have a proper oven and I don't know with whom to share them yet....

PS. This post is for my mom and for all the happy memories I have related to her cooking in the kitchen.
PPS. I can't wait to be home for Christmas. One of the more recent memories I have in my head now is my mom making waffles and my grandmother trying that strange food-creature.