Kitchens on the Road: Gifts of Time and Taste
© Leda Meredith
I spent the last six weeks in Europe, teaching dance and choreographing. Across the street from me was a community garden with unbelievably healthy, lush vegetables. I studied it for things I want to do with our community garden back home in Brooklyn, NY.
Much happened while I was away, and I came home to a shockingly altered skyline.
But some things don't change. I hope you won't think me heartless if I paraphrase what food writer M.K. Fisher wrote in 1941: we need to eat in order to live, so we might as well enjoy it.
What follows is the introduction to a small cookbook I made for the directors who were my hosts during September 2001. I made it as a thank you gift for their support during a strange and difficult time, and in response to their request for the recipes of the meals I'd cooked for them. A link to the mini-cookbook is included at the end of the article.
Food and dance are cousins: they can both create a fit body, but more than that they can nourish the soul. They bring people together. They are ways to share an experience, to communicate something about what you love and are fascinated by in this world. They are ways to create surprises and delights. Dances and good meals take time to make and time to enjoy-and I believe time is an essential ingredient that is too often forgotten.
Some years ago I stopped collecting souvenirs such as the little objects that ended up dusty on a shelf long after I'd returned home. Instead I started looking for souvenirs that would continue to have a life, to become a part of my daily life, when I got home. An olive wood pepper grinder from Firenze, a cookbook from Ireland, a gold tea filter from Switzerland...
Sometime after that, I also stopped looking for things to buy as gifts for my hosts when I traveled, and started looking for things to do for them, share with them, things made from my own inspiration rather than bought from some store's idea of what would sell.
I started to cook on the road the way I cook at home. Well, maybe not exactly the way I cook at home. There is always an adventure waiting when one travels. In the kitchen, that translates into ingredients that are not available at home, or not as fresh, or as cheap, or as good. Suddenly at the supermarket I am confronted by the double cream that is mentioned in so many old recipes but is nowhere available in the U.S. Surely I have to try something with it? And what about the wild mushrooms, an overpriced gourmet item back home, here appearing by the basketful?
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