A College Dorm Kitchen

A College Dorm Kitchen

            The kitchen where I’m making dinner is a college dorm kitchen. When they replaced the dorm’s vending machines with a stovetop, it became a “kitchen” in a very rudimentary sense. It contains a chipped white stove sticky with Ramen residue, an ancient microwave I never dared open, and technically enough room to accommodate two students embarking on their first culinary exploits (or, more often, disasters.) Despite my complaints, it was this cramped closet that became my haven during my first year of college.

As an intended English major with a passion for good food, I often intertwine cooking and writing in a similar manner to Jane Kramer, the author of “The Reporter’s Kitchen.” Both are creative endeavors, with aspects that are formulaic but also individual-specific. There are structures for writing good essays and recipes for baking good cakes. However, it is only personal style, creativity, and boldness that can create something truly extraordinary. When speaking about reviewing a book of poems, Kramer writes “while whatever I did say wasn’t going to be the last word on the poetics of domestic violence, it would be my word.” Although my written works and culinary creations in college are hardly internationally acclaimed, they are still unique to me. My works reflect my own personal flavor, if you’ll pardon the bad pun.

This flavor started developing from an early age, thanks to my mother, although I’ll never admit that to her. I can see her in our kitchen, unruly red hair curling out of her clip onto the nape of her neck, and in our office typing away steadily on her ancient computer. She bought me my first notebook and taught me how to make words out of pencil-scratches on paper. She let me make measurements in glass cups and put cupcakes wrappers in tins far before I should have even been allowed in the kitchen.  I learned to cook and write and eat and read; I was both creator and consumer, and in this way I could shake the world, or at least make a really delicious blueberry crumble. To a college freshmen, the world is raw and fresh, brimming with new possibilities. My tiny dorm kitchen was a slice of home, and also an opportunity for new experiences.

My kitchen was not, however, a pantry for old memories and recipes to be stored on dusty shelves. Kramer writes that “some dishes just don’t travel, no matter how obvious or easy they seem,” and I soon learned the truth of this statement. Great cooking, like great writing, is dynamic, constantly evolving. There is always another revision, a better word, a fresher ingredient, to be thrown into the pot. I could never recreate that garden pizza I had in San Francisco with it’s lingering flavors of rich brown soil and heavy-laden grape vines and veggies so fresh they’d just jumped off their vines. Which isn’t to say I couldn’t make my own garden pizza, and some damn good pizza at that, I may add. Cooking is not a recreation, but a re-imagination. It is taking the old recipes apart and creating a slightly different dish. In the same vein, writing is not, or should not, be a recreation of something already said. The same topic or event is processed and pondered upon quite differently by two unique minds. As a writer, I am constantly going back and revising, changing, deleting, and starting afresh old works. I myself am often surprised by the end product (which may or may not be the case with this very essay).