Cooking Up Chaos: The Conundrum of Creativity

It is a rare moment in my house when the kitchen counters are completely clear, nary a dirty dish in site, the floors gleaming.  And usually if they are, it is due to a heroic attempt on my husband's part over the weekend or an evening when I am out at a volunteer meeting.  Oh, I try to get it close, but I never quite seal the deal -- there is always a stack of school papers on the corner of the counter, or some unfinished art project nearby, or a small child insisting on yet another meal or snack, dirtying up yet another set of dishes faster than I can manage to keep them all clean.  It takes JavaDad and having two kids asleep to get the kitchen in perfect order.

And yet, JavaDad knows his work is short-lived, because as soon as the kitchen reaches perfection, it inspires me.  It inspires me to... cook!  Most of the time I am merely in "survival cooking mode" -- eking out a passably nutritious dinner each night on the fly and assembling lunches that are healthy but not terribly creative.  Breakfast is very basic -- cereal, milk, maybe some fruit.  But give me a gleaming kitchen and... my husband swears he hears the theme song to Jaws as I approach... I come into the kitchen with grand cooking plans.  Nothing simple, it seems I always need to pull out virtually every pot and pan and appliance to whip out something homemade.  I wish I were one of those disciplined cooks who cleaned up after herself as she went, I keep thinking I am -- I am almost certain I am putting things away as I go, but when I look back, I realize I have left a trail of disaster much like the tornadoes I used to cover in my reporter days.  How come Rachel Ray's tv kitchen never looks like that?

Tonight's mess, I mean creation, was sweet potato and butternut squash pie -- after all, we still had both ingredients in our kitchen from our farm CSA, sounded like a great way to use them up -- in a way that my husband might actually eat them!  Which meant peeling the sweet potatoes, getting out the cutting board and knives, a pot to boil the sweet potatoes, a cookie sheet to roast the butternut squash, a few mixing bowls, the mixer to mix everything together, various measuring implements, some pie pans, and so on.  Naturally while putting the marshmallows on top of the pies, I spilled some on the cookie sheets, and they made a very sugary mess on those.  That's gonna be fun to clean!

And yet, the satisfaction on everyone's face of having a homemade pie was worth all the mess.

The kids and I make lots of messes in the kitchen together.  And lots of memories.  And during Thanksgiving and Christmas, my husband and I become our own cooking team, with him playing sous chef to my crazed holiday chef, trying to get out a multi-dish Southern-style meal out on the table in a single oven kitchen.  I whirl, I create, I make messes.  In the moment, the messes are invisible to me.  Afterward, they are overwhelming.  And certainly not conducive to more creativity.

It's a quirk I'm still working on.  A flaw I am trying not to pass on to my children -- I'm training them better than I have trained myself.  I try to teach them to clean up after themselves, to put things away as soon as they are done using them, and to have a place for everything and everything in its place.

But in the meantime, just know that if you are coming to my house, you can expect a spotless kitchen, or great cooking, but not both simultaneously. 

This is an original DC Metro Moms Blog post.  When J.J. Newby aka JavaMom isn't cooking up chaos in the kitchen, she's brewing up content at Caffeine And A Prayer.