Head to the Kitchen: It’s Time for Meditation

—by Jill Cadwell

It’s another busy day chock full of… everything! The alarm clock rings too early, the kids need to be brought places, the job will require full attention and energy for the eight-hour workday. It’s exactly the kind of day that should come with a built-in getaway. And it can—if you think of your kitchen as your meditation room. Making dinner (instead of having to make dinner) or baking a batch of cookies after the kids have gone to bed can be your re-centering time, your fulfilling “om” in an otherwise hectic day.

I like to think of meditation as the act of mental deliberation, of focusing on one thing in full awareness rather than multi-tasking or thinking about many things at once. This is precisely how my friend Cullen meditates as she cooks. She says cooking is the one time she can really clear her mind of all else and simply focus on her craft. With many years of experience and a large garden on her hobby farm, no doubt my friend and her family regularly enjoy the benefits of her meditative cooking. Cooking requires one to be cognitively and physically engaged enough to pay close attention and work with one’s body, but neither in such a way that they are draining. On the contrary, the experience is rejuvenating.

My friend Larry (a devout ELCA Lutheran) says he prays when he cooks, a type of meditative thought for the wellbeing of those he loves. His actions of cutting onions or throwing red pepper slices into the stir fry are accompanied by images of his passionate daughters, his active and beautiful wife, or his shrewd sons. While he asks that they be protected by God’s love, he puts love into action with his careful and kind cooking. The food is prepared with love and when the family gathers for dinner, one can feel the extra ingredient.

For me, cooking is always a meditation of gratitude, when I recall memories of women who’ve taught me to cook. I am alone in the light of the crackling yellow fluorescent bulb, but my Greatgrandma Nellie, Grandma Cadwell, mom, and sister join me in memory.

I think of Nellie, whom I never knew, but whom Grandma C. always describes as “a saint.” As I stir up thick cookie dough, I know my ample upper arms are from her, a buxom farm woman, and I hope a bit of my good-natured spirit is from her, too.

As I combine dark Karo syrup with powdered sugar to make candy, I am transported back to my childhood in Grandma C.’s kitchen where she taught me to make tootsie rolls, salted nut rolls, chocolate chip cereal cookies, and finger Jello. We would read recipes out of church cookbooks or off hand-printed index cards, perched on the wooden recipe holder Grandpa made.

And I am never without the technical skills my mom taught me, for she was once a Home Economics teacher and always a great cook. “You measure shortening in water through water displacement. It gives you a more accurate measurement than scooping it out of a dry measuring cup,” she’d say, or “Don’t tap the flour into the measuring cup more than once, or you’ll make it too dense, and it’ll weigh down your cookies.”

Sometimes I come across her handwritten notes in my recipes: “yeast is very touchy, so be sure to use wristtemperature water.” Or I find that one of mom’s recipes has been altered by my sister, Amy, also an excellent cook. I know that any sugar reductions or applesauce alternatives are my sister’s doing; she likes to make things healthier.

At other times, cooking provides the time and space when I can be alone and part of something greater at the same time. I close the kitchen door, preheat the oven, and make pies or cookies to my heart’s content. In between fetching the flour or beating the eggs, spooning cookies onto the sheet or washing the mixing bowl, I’m not concerned about things outside the kitchen.

But in the spaces between, I find myself wondering, Did great-grandma Nellie ever resent her domestic role or did she always love being in the kitchen? Did mom ever bake to blow off steam from an argument like I do?

I start to imagine women from other cultures cooking up some baingan bartha, pork egg rolls, or tamales. So many women all over the world have had this exact satisfying feeling of cooking, I realize. These thoughts connect me to a long history of women in the kitchen. I feel as if I know us, like I understand other women, even if I’ve never met them. I feel a shared affinity with my kind. Sometimes we cook because we love it; sometimes we cook because we must; sometimes we cook because our loved one has a hankerin’ for brownies at midnight; but often we cook to be at one with ourselves and to re-center.

In my kitchen, as in billions of others, cooking is about so much more than food. It’s about memories and thinking of others, about focus on the craft and quieting of all else, about well-wishing and enjoyment, about gratitude for the earth that provided the food, the body that can create the meals, and people who taught us how to do so. As I work with my hands and remember with my heart, cooking becomes a kind of prayer and meditation, a feeling of gratitude and an offering of love.

So after your next hectic or stressful day, remember: the kitchen is inviting you to your next meditation. Whether you go there to be quiet and focus, to feel connected to others who share your experience, or to give thanks and pray for others, don’t go just to cook. Go to enjoy the Zen-like state that awaits.

[Jill Cadwell is interested in how personal feelings often derive from universal experiences; this essay illustrates some connections between the two.]