An ode to the humble kitchen
keeping a kitchen running is my super-power. that, and breastfeeding.
They say, “The kitchen is the heart of the home,” and I know this well. I don’t need a decorative wall hanging to tell me. I do, however, have a small trivet hanging above my sink that reads,
“No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best”
The funny thing about it hanging here is that in this single-wide trailer, it’s the only indoor space that I have to serve my guests.
Never have I felt this more, that the kitchen is the heart of the home and the place where people want to gather. While I wait for a house square-footage that fits our family size better and make plans for the future kitchen of our new home, I’m here in this kitchen.
This is the kitchen
This is the kitchen where the oatmeal pot is full, where the cold brew in its gallon jar greets me in the morning, where the sourdough bubbles right out of the bowl.
It’s the place we pray before meals and learn hymns together. It’s the place where I hope my young children will learn table manners. The kitchen table is for multiplication, cursive, and business meetings, sometimes all in the same morning.
It’s the place where I’m learning how to draw, practicing while babies nap in the afternoon.
There’s a lot of beauty here, in the fresh salad and roasted chicken for supper, in the different shades of brown and white eggs collected from the coop, in the sunset shining through the windows.
It was the place for my child to curl up in my lap with a puke bucket just last night. The linoleum floor seemed like the better place to be than the carpeted bedrooms. We snuggled close to the washer and dryer because my kitchen is also home to the laundry room.
My kitchen, and maybe yours too, is the place for fly tape and a fridge cluttered with monster sketches and grocery lists. You wouldn’t see a kitchen like mine featured in a magazine, or YouTube video. It’s not what you would call…aesthetically pleasing.
It’s homey.
And when I think about it, my favorite kitchens I’ve spent time in have been a lot like this: cluttered, loud with conversation, a little messy, and mismatched. Wedding invites and old Christmas cards hang crooked on the fridge, and faded recipes are propped up near the sink. Band-Aids are stuck-on, crackers are passed out. The sauce is splattered, and coffee is sipped.
At the end of a long day, I hope for the last of the flies to find their way to the fly ribbons above my table. I pray that no more kids wander through the kitchen for another glass of water, and that no one else gets the pukes. I sit at my “writing desk” which is…you guessed it, my kitchen table.
I thank God for kitchens, even this little kitchen, because it’s the place where I hope to change the world— one pot of oatmeal at a time.
Catherine Pfenning
Beautiful!
God bless you as you build up and nurture people (your children and others God sends) using your kitchen!
I love my kitchen. Right now our dishwasher has been broken for over two weeks, and we host a weekly open invite dinner that brings in about twenty people every week. I don't specifically love cooking, but I love providing food and an environment for community building for the people God sends through my door. Catching up on the dishes though...!
Catching up on the dishes with a one year old who, when briefly unsupervised, climbs a chair, climbs onto the dining room table (a card table), and drops pens in the flower vase. Or draws on books. Or climbs onto and falls off the couch. The repair man comes back today with a part and I pray soon we'll have a dishwasher again! 🙏