Today, I will be exploring the topic of cultivating a deeper connection to the kitchen and some tools and resources to inspire you. A kitchen is a place of refuge for me as it satiates my internal and external cravings. It’s one form of working my muscle of creativity and expressing myself through different dishes, teas, ferments, stews, and long table dinners. You can often find me multitasking between cooking one meal, tasting another, soaking grains for the next meal, all the while wading through the kitchen in my velvet slippers and dancing to some old album. It is truly a sight to see ut something that I have learned to cultivate over the years. Like every other relationship, the kitchen works if you work it, and it desires affection, space, attention, and cocreation. There is the kitchen and then there’s you, but there is also this space between you and the kitchen and that is where the magic truly happens. Nobody really questions how a few eggs, oil, flour, water, and spices become a cake, it’s alchemy and essentially you are the midwife that gets to bring this to life. You can spend years afraid to step foot into the kitchen for fear of messing up or the vast pressure to create something exquisitely magical so you neglect the one place we all have the potential to excel. These next words may sound funny, but begin by giving your kitchen a name for just today. I like to call mine Gertrude, maybe a homage to my great-grandma and her love of baking, so go ahead think of a name and introduce yourself. Greet your pots and pans with a firm handshake, and begin. We are all born fluent in the language of the kitchen yet sometimes we just need to be reminded how simple it truly is.