The Kitchen...

I like to cook. I love to eat good food. Food that is prepare well. Food Channel type food. I like the preparation, the design, the eating. What I love the most about cooking is being with cooks. I love the conversation. It is a small world but it is global. Every where has cooks, even the third world. That says something. Even where there is poverty someone's cookin'.

My grandmother Biaselli was a great cook. She would fix an incredible Thanksgiving meal. (Any meal was incredible but since she lived in Philadelphia and I live on the west coast, I only got out there for holidays.) It would last for two days. Thursday night was the Traditional, turkey and such. But Friday would be the South Philly Italian feast. That is where I discovered pepperoni loaf. A cinnamon roll type meal, where instead of cinnamon and sugar rolled into the middle, you put in an egg-provolone cheese-garlic-basil-pepperoni mixture. Let bake in a loaf then cut into slices. Maybe include a bowl of tomato gravy for dipping. We also had Braciola, a rolled stuffed flank steak cooked in tomato sauce, not to forget all the sausages, ravioli, spaghetti, bread, wine, antipasti, and incredible desserts...

But the best ingredients of any Italian meal is the conversation in the kitchen and then around the table. In the kitchen the conversation is a bit quieter, more intimate. "How are things?" type conversations. Relationship conversation. Not for the public but for the kitchen. Now the Italian dinner table is a different story. It is at full volume! Passion. Intensity. Laughter and opinions fly. Pillaging of the serving dishes is expected. You attack, get your plate full, then you eat and talk. Lots of laughing. Lots of arguments. Life. Forks with ravioli on the end pointed in accusation. Good theater.

Then back in to the kitchen to do the dishes. More conversation and the intimacy is back. Washing and drying, standing right next to each other at the sink kind of conversation. Topics that started before the meal or hinted about over the cheesecake. In the old days the kitchen was occupied by the women of the family. Now it is a combination of both sexes. Same conversations though. Even men can get intimate in the kitchen (don't go there). Lives shared between participants. It is more than the food that nourishes.

The kitchen...

Right Jamie? Right Dan?