Kitchen - the heart of the home

 

This week, and next, we are having a new kitchen installed at The Manse.

The first part of this process was ripping out the old one, which was done with impressive efficiency on Bank Holiday Monday.  It was odd to see the room in which we have spent so many hours over the last ten years reduced to a shell, its insides now nothing more than a pile of rubbish awaiting collection on the front lawn!

Various workmen have visited us since: electricians, plumbers, gas engineers and as I write the plasterer is hard at work.  During this time, we have ‘decamped’ our usual kitchen activities to the Utility Room, grateful for the continuing good weather and our liking for salads and barbeques!

I’ve learnt that kitchens come in all shapes and sizes and even have names: the ‘Single File’, ‘Double File’, ‘U kitchen, or ‘Island kitchen’.  All I really know is that ours is going to be a ‘white’ kitchen.

But, truth to tell on day four of our re-vamp we are already missing it and appreciating once again that in so many ways it is the heart of the home.  So, we are looking forward to putting the tins back onto their shelves and finding new places for the crockery and saucepans.  And, as my brother said to me this week, it will be exciting to see numbers once again actually on the cooker dials – perhaps it will improve my culinary efforts.

In the bible food, if not kitchens, holds an important place.  There are many stories of meals being prepared, ingredients sought, and conversations held around a meal table.  Jesus visited homes as a dinner guest, once specifically saying that the conversation was even more important than the food (a lesson for all of us with a Martha tendency!)

I note from our own church’s life that we too place some emphasis on eating together, be that at LunchBreak, Tea at Three or our occasional church lunches after morning service. 

Well, now we are a house without a kitchen, and it definitely feels as if something very important is missing.  Food, conversation, fellowship – all make life better.

As the much-loved American food writer Julia Childs once said: A party without food is just a meeting.