If the room where the family gathers, the room where guests are entertained, the room you likely spend most of your evenings in is the living room, the kitchen is surely the loving room. When you cook delicious meals for your family (or for yourself, if you’re living solo), you’re surely expressing your love. (And if you cook for just yourself? Well, I certainly hope you love yourself!)
A cookbook that was around in my childhood had emblazoned on its cover, “The way to a man’s heart,” and surely you’ve heard the expression, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Mothers often express their love for their children by cooking their favorite meals. Hostesses with a flair for cooking enjoy lavishing their guests with delectable treats. It doesn’t have to be a fancy, formal dinner. If this is a close friend, you might even serve her at the kitchen table. But the food is carefully prepared to treat her tastebuds.
And regardless of whom you’re serving—a spouse, a love interest, a whole family, a casual guest, or eight people at a formally set table—it all starts in the loving room. The room where you pour out your love through your fingertips and add a dash of salt, sugar, spices, or all of these, along with a heaping helping of love.
I not only cook to love; I love to cook. To me the most fun is whomping up a “kitchen concoction”—a dish that comes not out of a recipe but straight out of my head. Some of the best of these wind up in one or another of my cookbooks. But I collect so many yummily tempting recipes that I just have to try, that most nights I follow a recipe rather than devising something.
By nature I’m a creative person, as witness my writing, and cooking appeals to my creative side. That’s especially true when I’m whomping up some concoction, but even when following a recipe, I’m still creating.
Who do you love? (I hope you’ll include yourself on the list!) Who do you love to cook for?
If you’re insecure about your cooking skills, or they’re totally non-existent, I recommend you get a copy of my book Lost in the Kitchen?
If on the other hand you’re a reasonably accomplished cook and would like to begin to devise your own dishes, but you don’t know quite how, there’s my Develop Your Own Recipes.
If it’s plain and simple cookbooks you’re after, Roundtable/GreatReads publishes several of my cookbooks in addition to the two “cooking books” I mentioned above.
But whether you’re cooking from my recipes or someone else’s or getting creative on your own, remember that when you cook you’re showing love—even if it’s simply love for yourself.
Your kitchen is your loving room. Who would you like to show love to today?