Stoves, Suds, and Smiles

This morning was one of those mornings . . . one that, for whatever reason, everything seemed amusing or pleasurable. Let me rewind.

This last weekend was nutsy: to have surgery or not to have surgery? For those who do not know, the navicular bone and cartilage in my right foot is weird and quite painful, as I discovered in the midst of training for a 25K run in late March. For that and a variety of other trivial reasons, I have been ridiculously cynical of late. Perhaps I was looking for the positive to counteract my moodiness.

Home cooking and baking. Okay, so it helps living at home and mooching off the padres cooking supplies, not so discretely hinting at purchases, volunteering to forge the way through the grocery stores . . . Nonetheless, soaking beans to make hummus, concocting spice combinations for fish, watching steam rocket from the combination of toasted steel-cut oats and buttermilk, the smell of fresh pugliese bread, experimenting with granola . . . there is a simple joy in kitchen creations.

Made by hand . . . and cleaned. Cleaning can be the horror of baking and cooking. An elaborate pizza with homemade dough, various cheeses, tomatoes, spinach, skillet cooked mushrooms and onions, fresh basil, and another with pesto and chicken, and the random brie and pear pizza . . . all are delicious, but the precariously stacked dishes are daunting. But the truth of the matter? I do enjoy the dishes. Steaming hot water and suds, a fresh wash cloth, and the consistent scouring and scrubbing is incredibly calming. And the end product—a drain-tray full of sparkling clean dishes—is so satisfying. The dishes are not always as cute as I have made them out to be; they can be the source of much frustration, the last straw, or simply a general nuisance. But for whatever reason this morning, I looked at the dishes dripping dry and the dirty blender and smiled.

Granola. Yes, my dear Michiganders, Midwesterners, Southerners, and New Englanders, this is soo California. Yogurt and granola. But my little made-at-SLV ceramic bowl with Trader Joe’s non-fat vanilla yogurt, my homemade granola with its latest twist, and local strawberries (maybe not Gizdich, but still pretty darn good) was a lovely sight, a fabulous meal, and a reminder of the itty-bitty, perhaps silly things that make life wonderful.