A recent conversation brought to mind a memory from my paternal grandmother’s kitchen. We’re going back fifty years, without our modern electric conveniences. Grandmother was in her 70’s and had been given orders to sit down and rest while her daughters and daughters-in-law took over her kitchen. It was not fast food! It was a farm kitchen, so someone went out to the yard, gathered up a couple of chickens to begin chicken and dumplings.
As one was being cleaned, there was not only a fully formed egg ready to be laid, the line up of eggs-in-process confirmed this must be one of her best layers! I heard my aunt say “Don’t tell Mama!”
The kitchen was filled with ladies in various stages of meal-making, aged from we helpers in our pre-teens to my oldest aunt in her 50’s and we were all part of the conspiracy. And, all part of a memory made in the kitchen.
My Beloved Husband and I still work together in the kitchen. Thursday we baked a couple of carrot cakes. I gathered up a good recipe, made a couple of changes, grated carrots and measured some ingredients while Beloved Husband got out “his” mixer, prepared the cake pans, then mixed up the batter. It was quite a good time spent together with a marvelous outcome.
Families don’t do that often enough. At least most I know don’t, and I would encourage that to change. Time spent in the kitchen is good for the family’s nutritional and financial health as well as spiritual health. Time spent making and baking bread, shelling peas, snapping beans, canning tomatoes, sweetening the jellies can also be time spent talking to your loved ones and creating memories.
God told Joel to write:
Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. (Joel 1:3 KJV)
So what that you haven’t done this before – give it a try now. And if you’ve been doing it all along, praise! You’re ahead of those just getting started. Don’t allow the busy schedules that steal away family time to continue. There are memories and stories you know that no one else does, no one else can tell. God told Moses:
Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; (Deuteronomy 4:9 KJV)
Our job is always that of teacher, from the time our babies are born.
We've had many a sweet conversation over chopping and stirring and dicing. Hearts have been opened and troubles discussed over the simple kitchen tasks. I wouldn't trade it for anything!
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