I’m in the midst of writing my masters thesis right now.  It’s a rambling collection of essays about one of my great loves, cooking paraphernalia.  I’ve always been attracted to the tools of cooking, even before I was allowed to turn the stove on by myself.  When I was seven, my grandmother gave me a little baking kit for kids, that including a mini rolling pin, a toaster oven-sized cookie sheet, several small tart pans and a full-sized wooden spoon.  I carried that wooden spoon with me everywhere, always begging my mom to let me stir whatever was on the stove with it.  Occasionally she let me, as long as I let her scrub it with the rough side of the sponge first.  I still have the spoon, it’s now one of many in the crock in the kitchen.

When I was 20-years-old, I came to Philly for a semester in the big city.  It was a break from dorm living and the responsibility of being an RA.  I rented an apartment in Queen Village with two other girls from my program and we set about creating a little temporary home for ourselves in that two-bedroom apartment (I slept in the dining room).  Just around that time, my cousin Angie was giving up her house at the shore and needed to find a home for much of the kitchen equipment that had stocked the house.  Much of what I acquired from her then was once a part of my great-aunt Doris’s kitchen collection.  It was all old, scarred and carried (figurative) layers of food memory.  I was in heaven.  I kept nearly everything she gave me, shipping it back out to Oregon when my semester in Philly was up and then sending it back out to Philadelphia a year and a half later when I moved here for good.  Nearly everyday now, in the course of cooking my meals, I use something that once belonged to Aunt Doris.  I never fail to be pleased by that.