A Few Of My Favorite Things

Over the summer, I started a list of some of my favorite things. The idea was to rewrite the Sound of Music song into something a little more personal. My roommate and I had already reworked If I Only Had A Brain into a little job-search ditty somewhere along the lines of, "With the money I'd be makin' / I'd be bringin' home the bacon / If I only had a job." But once we were both not-particularly-gainfully employed, it felt like time for a another re-imagined classic movie song, this time with a little genuine optimism and appreciation thrown in. I have a habit of over-using superlatives, so all I really had to do was to start paying attention to exactly what it was I was already saying were my favorite things. I never did finish putting everything into lyrics; instead I've had this list on my computer for the past few months:

Favorites: Google maps, vikings, Doctor Who, butter, iced coffee, the way British people say literally, boots, pie
Not favorites: spiders, blood tests, crooked knives

This isn't a comprehensive list by any means, but it is a nice reminder of the little things that make me smile. So I decided to go through my kitchen with a similar mindset:

The cookbooks:

I honestly don't use cookbooks as much as I could since I tend to make things up as I go along, but I still find their actual physical presence comforting. If I ever run out of ideas or am unsure of anything, I can go ask Julia or Mollie, and they will be there to patiently offer advice.

Cookbooks also make me happy because each time another one comes into my life, there's a story behind it. All the books pictured above were gifts. Moosewood used to belong to my grandmother, Baking with Julia was a birthday present from a friend who knows how much I admire Julia Child, and Original Schwäbisch was given to me by a very sweet class of German fifth graders who wanted to send me home with a bit of local flavor.  There are other books that didn't make it into this picture too: there's the scrapbook of recipes that my friends put together for my 21st birthday, as well as my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking that I bought for myself at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Each and every one of these books makes me smile because not only are they a symbol of the potential joy included in all those recipes, they are also a reminder of the people or circumstances who brought them into my life.

The purple-Cuisinart-drawer:

This one doesn't get any kind of in-depth analysis or sentimentalization. I just like that I have multiple purple appliances, and that they have their own drawer.

The Shakespearean insults mug:

I have some issues with this mug (mostly that I think "quintessence of dust" has very little to do with insults and much more to do with Hamlet's struggle to assign any kind of meaning or significance to the world after his father's death and his mother's betrayal), but let's not go down that road. The point remains that I find something immensely satisfying in curling up with a nice calming cup of tea that just happens to be held in a mug covered in insults that are both absurd and absurdly clever.

The dutch oven:

This beauty came into my life as a graduation present (thanks mom and dad!) and I love it to little bits. It's versatile, it cleans up like a dream, and it's a pretty color.


Since I've already outed myself as a Doctor Who fan, I may as well say that the attitude I have towards most of my cooking ware in alarmingly similar to the Doctor's attitude towards the TARDIS. For those non-Whovians out there, a). Netflix is your friend, and b). these two pictures just about sum it up:

Equal parts mad scientist...

...and excessively affectionate.

Thankfully, nothing has exploded in my kitchen yet, but there's just enough chaos in mis-flipped eggs and overzealous blenders to keep things interesting. And I would be lying if I said I'd never called my skillet baby.


So these are a few of my favorite things. And when when those spiders or blood tests or crooked knives come along, I simply remember - and then I don't feel so bad.