What's That Smell in the Kitchen?

Lieke van der Vorst

What's That Smell In the Kitchen?

All over America women are burning dinners.
It's lamb chops in Peoria; it's haddock
in Providence; it's steak in Chicago;
tofu delight in Big Sur; red
rice and beans in Dallas.
All over America women are burning
food they're supposed to bring with calico
smile on platters glittering like wax.
Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined
but spewing out missiles of hot fat.
Carbonized despair presses like a clinker
from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.
If she wants to grill anything, it's
her husband over a slow fire.
If she wants to serve him anything
it's a dead rat with a bomb in its belly
ticking like the heart of an insomniac.
Her life is cooked and digested
nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.
Look, she says, once I was roast duck
on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.
Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.

Marge Piercy


Cooking and food are such rich topics for thought and conversation. All of life can be discussed in terms of food.  After all, what is more personal than preparing the meal that sustains a human being? But then there's the cook. Does she add to the flavour? Is her mood or intent an ingredient of the sauce? You better believe it. Cooking can be love, but it can be battle just as well.  Be good to the cook.

The Kitchen

Margaret Olley, "Proteas in the Kitchen"

The Kitchen

I love the sunshine in the kitchen,

The glory of the light awakens

All the familiar textures of pot and china.

This is the home of the house,

The centre of its warmth,

The articulation of its love,

In the rise of bread, the crust of pie,

And the richness of gravy.

It is the place of your caring,

Fleshed out in the daily details,

Too small to be noted one by one,

But each constructing the heart of the house.

Your delight in us is incarnated here,

And this is the place of our true receiving.

Here we come hungry, thirsty, and in our need,

To meet the kindness of your hands.

And your friends came,

Finding a warmth they sought and a love they craved.

Not a pretentious place,

A good cause or a moral crusade.

If you will, another Nazareth,

Hidden in the wilderness of the world,

Where kindness feeds a poor Christ and his friends,

And bids them come in from the dark.

Tim Marks

This poem calls up all sorts of things for me - the sound of pots and pans moving on the stove in the kitchen as my mother made supper, the warmth and scent of food, the comfort of knowing someone who loved me was preparing a meal. Even as a young child I remember thinking that the work my mother did in our kitchen was the core to the apple, the center of our lives. "The kindness of your hands..." I love that. The daily details, these are the things on which love is built. The essence of sharing and recieving flows from this place, and from these hands. And to be sitting in my own kitchen, myself a mother, typing with these hands - what a privilege. The place at the heart of the world and life is mine now - how strange.