Unless We are Sharing, We are Not Cooks
As a teenager in Minnesota, I watched my mother struggle to make the bias-cut binding for a Tyrolean-style jacket she was sewing, worrying she would waste expensive Pendleton wool by cutting it wrong. She called the next-door neighbor, Sonia Kleppe, who also sewed, and they puzzled over the diagrams, sewing books, and their collective memories until they came up with a plan of action. I still own that jacket, 40 years later, and I wear it every winter.
As a young editor in offices that were going through the very difficult birth of the computer age, I tried to solve glitches first by reading line-by-line the code in my machine, and in the one next to me, to see if something was out of order in the program that wasn’t working. Colleagues chimed in with what they had found worked, and without calling the self-important dean of technology who rolled in days later with cronies and behaved as if he was a god, we were soon all humming along with our floppy drives intact.
In any check-out, despite technology or because of it, a cashier might call out to a co-worker for a price or a SKU so that the line keeps moving. Two mechanics over a car engine seem to tinker endlessly until the ignition fires. And when the three guys building my kitchen ran out of drywall on a corner that wasn’t load-bearing and would be later covered by cabinets, one of them suggested a spleen and plaster to fill the gap, which kept the project on track.
Magicians are said to keep their cards close and so, I’m afraid, do experts, so afraid of being toppled, or wizards, being found out as the “man behind the curtain.” But computing in general and the Internet specifically has taught us that no one can know everything. No one should try. My favorite bosses were ones who hired to their lack, who understood that building a team was not an ideal but a necessity. Words such as “collaboration” and “cooperation” are not just for the playground.
To bring it back to my kitchen, I learned after breaking my wrist in the spring of 2014 that I was not going to be able to will myself back to work. I simply had to accept help. Our beloved daughters of Podunk, the tea room I owned back then, showed up according to the times they’d signed up for, and found print-outs of all the recipes—heretofore located only in my head and a few scattered cookbooks—they would need taped to the back wall. I told them to snap photos for their phones so that they, too, could share the information. I have seen our cheddar biscuits make an appearance on Instagram, and at a wedding in the southwest, and this year saw a picture of a Christmas tree decorated entirely with our gingerbread. It must have smelled heavenly—pine and spice!
And I learned from them, too. Sally invented homemade Pop-Tarts for Podunk, long before I saw them packaged at Starbucks; she was also rigorous about turning every batch in the oven halfway through the baking process, leading to uniformly golden results; for a couple who had just tied the knot at City Hall she provided a tiered wedding cake on short notice, and it was splendidly arrayed with artful garnishes of raspberry and icing.
Ethan, who has lived in a few countries for weeks at a time, and who just moved to Honolulu, brought delicious flavors of coconut and lime to our buttercream frosting, and knew how to tame a crowded room of hungry diners into tidy tables of happy tea-drinkers; he often offered them anecdotes about his adventures, which he had chronicled on his blog, The Tea Gastronomer; he made newcomers feel welcome and sure of their menu choices. Lizzie brought new systems for organizing Podunk, and a sketch of a layout to improve our tea-blending process that I hope she uses in any future venture of her own. She also brought an appreciation for the food and knowledge of fine dining that continues to influence me now; she introduced me to a restaurant years ago that I haunt to this day.
Sharing information is not the provence of cooks alone, but it’s not an accident that the conversation has burst out of the kitchen and into places of business, that the word “foodie” has come into wide use, that the Internet is abundant with blogs, recipes, tips, and tweaks for every level of chef. Sharing is how we all learn, and then we build new recipes from old ones according to current food trends, seasonal ingredients, and conversations we’ve just had!
From an early age, I learned because I hung around kitchens when I was little. When my mother asked me to chop carrots one day, we talked as we worked, about the angle of the carrot, how to peel them, what size would cook along with the other ingredients in the dish. It wasn’t long after that that I was allowed to roll out the cookies, as well as to frost them. And then, if I cleaned up afterward, I was allowed to try certain recipes myself.
So many years later, Podunk was a way for one family to share its sensibility about tea and cooking. This website will attempt to recreate those times for readers. And these recipes are how I’d explain them to you if we were standing in your kitchen together. Kitchens are where you’ll find me, washing dishes, offering a hand, or sipping wine along with the cook. Feel free to ask questions or chime in with suggestions. Write me if you need help (elspeth@thelittlenewyorkkitchen.com).
Let’s go to the kitchen. May your home always be filled with the scent of baking!
