kitchen bliss & an Italian foodie

This beautiful clip from Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie (from their episode about Italian home cooks) has special meaning to me:



Here's the story...

During the horrors of construction last year, when I wasn't camped out at the local Starbucks doing my work (normally, I work from home), or out facilitating a meeting or doing a training, I spent a lot of time in escapist activities -- including many hours curled in a fetal position on the futon we had moved temporarily into our dining room, watching TV shows on hulu on my laptop.

Picture the scene: Holes in the walls and ceilings. Construction equipment and supplies strewn everywhere. My piano packed in a giant box in the living room, and right next to it, the toilet and sink that had been temporarily removed from the downstairs bathroom during the demolition work in there. And a thick coating of white drywall dust over every surface that didn't get rescued by a drop cloth.

The chaos and filth extended into the kitchen. Although we left our old cabinets and countertops in place, we did enough work in that room (new window, recessed lighting, etc., etc.) that it wasn't a place where you would want to cook things that you were then actually going to put in your MOUTH.

So, what a blessed relief it was to finally get back in my kitchen at the end of the summer.

I remember the first simple meal I prepared in there after the kitchen was put back together -- a frittata and a salad of multi-colored tomatoes, cucumber, basil, and peaches that I had brought home from the farmer's market. As I was slicing the various ingredients, I watched the next episode of this "Diary of a Foodie" show I had just discovered.

As I watched Angela Scutari picking ingredients from her garden and turning them into simple but transcendent food in her kitchen, the relief and pleasure of being back in my own kitchen combined with the impact of what I was watching, and I suddenly burst into tears.

Now, I return to this video frequently, as a reminder to myself not to take for granted the simple delight of slicing a sweet, ripe tomato in my humble kitchen.