Tellers of Stories

I'm not a very sentimental person when it comes to material possessions. In general, I feel fairly indifferent to "stuff," whether it comes or when it goes.

This week, though, I had a minor fail in the kitchen that made me look a little more closely at some things I've owned the past two or three decades.

I was cooking a new recipe, one whose creator predicted it would take five minutes to prep but instead took closer to an hour. As I got to the final stage and began placing the prepped food onto my most-used large stoneware bar pan, three of its four corners instantly snapped off, leaving openings for hot liquid to flow down the front of me, over the top of the stove, through the tiny cracks along the sides of the oven, across the floor.

After many years in the kitchen, I'm not new to cooking fails. Nor the loss of kitchen instruments. I took the incident in stride as best I could.

What affected me most was the loss of a piece of my kitchen kit that has served and fed my family nearly since its inception.

I've been reading a book titled A Thousand Feasts, written by English author Nigel Slater and printed in Great Britain. I picked up this book at a local bookshop on my travels last month and was thrilled when I later discovered I had purchased an autographed copy.

What I've enjoyed so much about Slater's book are his stories of the roles food and cooking have played throughout his life. His thoughts about the often overlooked details he treasures most around his own kitchen and those he's visited.

One passage held particular significance this week:

"Each of these stains and cracks, scorch marks and chips carries a certain beauty. They are tellers of stories, the diary entries made by food and knives and pans, by heat and acid and pigment. . . . Scars on our kitchen kit, like those on our bodies, are a sign of a life lived and something to be cherished." —pages 202-203

Following the incident in my own kitchen, I started noticing the beauty in the scars on my tools, the things I've taken for granted.

That broken pan's surface was well worn from years of providing nourishment that helped sustain my family. Its marks reflected the love offered on it during those years. The built-up seasoning proved decades of dedicated use.

"The older and more weathered your pan, the more chances of success. . . . A surface that cannot be copied by manufacture, only by steady, regular application of heat and food." —Slater, page 249

Nowadays we often replace things at the first signs of weathering. Instead of seeing the beauty in the scars, we see them as ugly. As showing inferiority. As needing to be disposed of rather than treasured as the markings of devoted sustenance.

That pan's disposal wasn't by choice. And the farewell wasn't so fond. With its disposal went evidence of some of my family's stories, such as

• the smiles that appeared as melted, gooey treats came out of the oven on the slab of stone;
• the aroma of pumpkin seeds roasting on it after the kids carved their Halloween jack-o'-lanterns; and
• the conversations spoken as the five of us gathered for dinner around the kitchen table while that pan sat at the center.

Of course I still hold those memories. But seeing the physical diary entries brought some extra comfort into my kitchen.

Reading Slater's words has helped me take notice of and cherish the markings on my possessions, the memories left behind from a life lived.

Do you have a well-worn piece of equipment in your own kitchen collection, a teller of stories when you look more closely at its scars?

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