Blog

Thirty years of marriage and we're down to our last three original dinner plates. Beginning with twelve in 1981, by the turn of the century it was The Final Four. Then, last week, one more slipped from my grasp.

It's just the everyday stuff, of course, not the company china. So much less of a tragedy one would think. But as I stood there holding the crisply broken pieces back in place one last time before placing them in the trash, I realized what a lifetime of family experiences had been layered over the surface of this common pottery. For me, the memories were etched into the fragments as palpably as the delicate crackling in the glaze of my mother's favorite teapot that gives it such character. Or the fine lines emerging on my face.

It's the everyday experiences, conducted around those everyday dishes, that build up to make a life. The kind of below-the-radar accumulation that doesn't even seem precious until you're looking back and you realize that it underpins all the "significant" outcomes you thought were taking place around the good china.

As a cook, you might find comfort in these thoughts, not only in the context of family life, but also in that of environmental awareness. The foundation for stewardship of the land is not made up of legislation, but of countless gestures of small individual significance that build widespread understanding of our inescapable connection to and dependence upon this land.

Like this week's harvest of fresh, local produce. Just as surely as you gain a satisfying moment from the act of cooking with the seasons, you're transferring a tiny sense of wonder to all who come in contact with the process: the grandchild apprentice who will never forget the aroma of fresh-picked blackberries simmering in sugar, your college-bound son discovering the dish of apple cobbler you tucked into a corner of his trunk before he pulled out of the driveway, all the friends who sit at your table.

And so, every time you choose to step into the kitchen and wrestle a peck of Oregon berries (or peaches, or pears or tomatoes) into edible offerings, you've banked one more coin in the Oregon Trust. Which is why I say, to nourish these lands so that they will continue to inspire and sustain us is accomplished one unremarkable step at a time. Just as the layering on of routine experiences within a family ultimately defines that family, celebrating the season's bounty can be considered about as ordinary as your first set of dishes.