Ashley and I have been competent—if not always keen—cooks for most of our adult lives. Necessity breeds invention, because when you choose to set up house twenty miles from the nearest place to buy groceries, let alone order a pizza, you’re relegating yourself to a life in which, if you want to eat, you’re going to be a cook. No Domino's delivery guys, much less Waitr, Uber Eats, or the other food delivery giants of the smartphone-enabled service economy are schlepping out to the end of our rural Louisiana laneway. So, deprived of the glittering array of international dining options that awaits just a click (and a small convenience fee) away for the rest of America’s diners, we do what my wife’s forebears have been doing since this house was built around 120 years ago: we cook for ourselves.
Excepting the occasional barbecue or creek camping excursion, most cooking happens where you’d expect: in the kitchen. The people who built this house during the pre-electrified dawn of the twentieth century, sensibly recognized that if they wanted their home to remain standing more than a year or two, it would be a good idea to place the kitchen a few feet away in its own building. That way, when it inevitably caught fire they would stand a chance of preserving the main house. As it happens the kitchen building never did burn down, and sometime during the nineteen-twenties, presumably coinciding with the arrival of electricity, the decision was taken to connect it to the main house by enclosing a bit of porch and knocking out a wall. And voilà, the tidy floorplan of the original four-room dogtrot farmhouse evolved into one that requires the use of the adjective “rambling” to be properly described. Still, now that they could get coffee on wet mornings without rushing about in the rain, I imagine that the people who lived here didn’t worry too much about that.
By the time I showed up the kitchen had existed in its attached state for the best part of ninety years, and it was definitely showing its age. Not that nothing had been done over the years. The kitchen had “benefited” from the attentions of generations of home handymen, who had cobbled together a motley collection of one-off countertop, floor covering, and wall paneling solutions, apparently using whatever cast-off building materials they could find in the barn. The result was a room that was dark, slightly lopsided, and almost completely homemade. What little natural light found its way through the tiny windows was absorbed by a murky combination of cypress wainscoting, seventies wallpaper, and mission brown vinyl floor tiles. So on all but the brightest of days, most culinary activity took place in a kind of twilight zone, and since the floor dropped by three inches from the threshold to the middle of the room—legacy of its former life as a porch—you had to watch your footing as well. Freezing cold in winter, airlessly hot in summer, with dodgy plumbing, homespun electrics, and ill-fitting windows that rattled like a banshee’s teeth when the wind blew, by rights our kitchen should have been a disaster for a group of people without any take-out choices.
But in spite of its shortcomings, our kitchen had one wonderful, redeeming feature—a huge, honey-colored cypress dining table large enough for ten that more than made up for its other shortcomings. Warm and welcoming, with simple wooden benches either side, this table has always had a magical power of attraction that draws people to sit down, settle in, talk, laugh, move closer together, and find things in common. It’s a natural gathering point, the start and finish line for every day in the life of our family, and the spot where everyone ends up at parties—no matter how many lights we string up in the yard. So when after about fifteen years Ashley and I finally felt ready to redo our kitchen, we knew where to start: at the table, and work outwards from there.
That was five years ago. During several interminable months in which we tested the outer limits of what one can prepare with a barbecue grill and a toaster oven, the contractor took the room down to its rough-hewn studs before going back with broad casement windows, handsome countertops, an oven you can open without banging your hand on the fridge, and a hardwood floor that is actually level. When the project was done we could hardly believe the difference one room could make. Of course, that all-important table continues to hold center stage, playing that same role as a welcoming landmark around which to build a family life based on shared time, good conversation, and hopefully, a decent meal now and then. Now though, we can see what we’re eating. Blessed be the builders!
