What draws me to cooking ‘from scratch’ is likely the same thing that draws me to the people (and animals) I love most; delicious imperfection.
My oldest daughter’s pigeon-toed gait, my youngest’s knock-knees, my husbands scarred hands, my dogs’ Heinz 57 pedigree and matching appearance (with the exception of The Schnauzer, of course, she’s purebred — just wonky anyway, which is exactly why we picked her); there’s something captivating, something beautiful, about the simple imperfections in the world.
This past weekend we spent the day in the kitchen making homemade ravioli. Fresh, herbed ricotta hung from the spout over the sink, draining; sheets of whole wheat pasta covered the top of our wooden drying rack; shells of eggs from my favorite hen filled the compost bowl on the counter; all of the above reminded me of why we have made the decisions we have made, of why we are making more everyday.
I was reminded of why we traded in perfectly formed cuts of meat wrapped in neat packages for bags of feed, feathers and chicken poop when the latter results in a much more imperfect product. I was reminded why a carton of pre-weighed eggs will never trump an oddly shaped, oddly sized egg laid in my own backyard and why a carrot covered in the dirt I cultivated is so much sweeter than any of those machine-shaped, bite-sized in a store.
But perhaps even better than all of that, I was reminded why the work we will put in this year to make our next imperfect decisions possible will be the very things I will spend an afternoon wholly appreciating a year from now. And that? Makes the daunting tasks ahead much less terrifying, much more do-able and, frankly, a lot more exciting.
