Kitchen Parties

Some families will enjoy up-coming national holidays around a big table enjoying favourite food and each other’s company. The dinner table used to prepare kids for the real life, especially the workplace.

• They learnt the art of conversation, to listen and to be heard.

• They learnt how to use knives and forks which they will need when they entertainment clients, later on in life.

• They learnt how to pray for the food, in families that believe in that.

• They learnt table manners of ‘please pass me the peas’ and other etiquette.

• They learnt the importance of cleaning up and wearing fresh clothes before dinner

All this happened in the dining room but it doesn’t have to be if you have a good-sized kitchen. That is why they are called country kitchens or eat-in kitchens.

http://nonqaba-cinemamytake.blogspot.ca/2017/02/comfort-food-as-regret-food.html

Save the Kitchen

The proliferation of television cooking shows, cooking blogs and colorful recipes by brands to promote cheese, olive oil, flour and other products has not improved the kitchen’s status.

It is still a lonely place with a lonely woman. Sure, it had a face-lift with marble counter tops, copper pans hanging from the ceiling, set of Japanese knives, digital coffee-makers, a touch screen microwave oven in its special shelf, and the steel gas stove, but ‘lonely’ is still its middle name.

Social networking aggravates matters. We now ‘see’ each other online.

Kitchen Parties

Start kitchen parties. Like any club, membership is exclusive. Only hungry people need apply. Start with people who have the same key to the main door.

I’ll never forget a scene from the movie Friday where the mother prepared a nice breakfast for herself. Ice Cube, who played her son couldn’t believe it. When he told her that there was no milk for his cereal she said, ‘Use water.’

Vision and Mission

Companies hang their vision and mission statement on the wall, but how many employees know it by heart? Forget CEO’s. They have too much on their minds. Kitchen parties have the following mission.

To reclaim the kitchen as a family room

To teach non-cookers how to cook

To catch up on each other’s lives

To become better listeners

To renew the love

Kitchen for 2

• Discuss the Kitchen for 2 (K2) concept with your live-in partner. This includes boys and girls of legal driving age. Once a week, these two people will prepare dinner together and eat in the kitchen, no matter how small.

• Do not ask partners to sign the kitchen mission but they should be upfront. If Johnny Be Good (JBG) says ‘Mom, cooking is boring. I’ll rather be online. I don’t want to miss all the trending.’ Tell him you’re cool with that and ask him to watch the movie Friday.

• People you live with have their favourite food. Ask them what they want to cook for Kitchen for 2. Expect them to say macaroni and cheese because they think it will be easy.

• Prepare a shopping list and attach a budget, even if it’s $50. The two people will take turns paying for groceries. What the other person doesn’t know is that you need fresh cream for the macaroni and cheese. You also need lettuce and lettuce bridesmaids for the salad,

• Cellphones are prohibited in the kitchen. You don’t want food burning or the pasta ending up like oatmeal.

• Someone will boil the macaroni, drain it and leave to cool. Someone must pre-heat the oven, cook some onions and tomatoes in olive oil then mix this will the macaroni.

• Someone will beat an egg, add some fresh cream, grate cheese to fill a coffee mug, add half of that to egg mixture and blend it with the macaroni. Sprinkle the remaining half on top of it.

• Someone will bake this in an oven proof dish while someone lays the table for two in the kitchen.

• When the baked pasta is ready, the two people will make the salad.

• Clearing the table and washing dishes is a joint effort.

• Do you want to take this to the next level, Kitchen for 4?

Kitchen for 4

• Lessons learnt from K2 will come in handy in Kitchen for 4 (K4). We need a kitchen with a table and chairs or a counter top with 4 bar stools. Does your kitchen have a breakfast nook? It all depends on the type of sit-down arrangement in your kitchen.

• Some rules are like bank holidays. They never change. Cellphones are not allowed in the kitchen.

• The formula is the same. Meet to decide the menu. Write down shopping list. Attach a budget. Who will pay for what? Hit the grocery store. Buy red or white wine. Decide who will host the Kitchen for 4. Does the host have real knives and forks? Plastic take-away cutlery is forbidden.

• The pre-kitchen meeting is important because we want to stress the kitchen party mission. No on-lookers please. Everybody must work in that kitchen. This is also the time to discuss division of labour. Non-cookers are encouraged to do more.

• It’s not Halloween but get a pumpkin. Non-cookers have never diced a pumpkin in their whole life can you believe it? Chop into small pieces. Boil. Drain water into a coffee cup. You will drink that later. Mash with a pinch of nutmeg. Add one tablespoon of raisins. Place on serving dish.

• Kitchen sink? Cooking and dirty dishes are twins. Someone is washing dishes (preferably experienced cooks). Keep that kitchen sink empty.

• Peel potatoes. Boil. Drain. Mash with butter. Place in a serving dish and garnish with chopped leeks.

• Cut onions into rings. Keep your eye on the non-cooker, he might cut his finger not the onions. In a wide pan, sauté onions in olive oil for 5 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and cook for 10.

• Add 4 salmon steaks. Cook for 5. Flip them and switch off the burner. They are still cooking although heat is off. You can cook the fish longer but it dries up.

• Kitchen for 4 menu: salmon with raisins, pumpkin and mashed potatoes.

• Red or white wine? Good wine period.

• Another bottle of wine? The host should confiscate car keys and prepare the guest bedroom. No drinking and driving thanks very much.

Kitchen for 6

1. Oops! That would be a headache.

2. Maybe not. Learn from K4 mistakes.

3. Stick to the kitchen party mission.

4. Get a bigger kitchen.

5. Listen more.

Rewards

• Sharing of work and personal problems

• Discovering hidden talents of friends and family

• Laughter in the kitchen

• The disappearance of the Hollywood line, “Honey what’s for dinner?”

• Replace it with, ‘Honey, when is our next K2?’