Cooking

I've been cooking a lot lately. Partially because doing this amazing year long program in Europe has blown to shreds what paltry savings I'd managed to amass in the past few years, and partially because one of the really lovely things about Europe is how ubiquitous dinner parties are. In New York if you invite someone you're not sleeping with over for dinner they cast you a long sideways glance, like, huh? You want me to schlep where, for what? Maybe it's fear of intimacy that makes New Yorkers not want to invite people into our spaces, or just that those spaces are so damn cramped to begin with. Either way here in Eurolandia, it seems so commonplace that I've felt liberated to really dive in and listen to my Italian grandmother who always seems to be hovering over me saying, make delicious food with your own hands. Save for a sandwich or two during a grad school class trip, weeks will go by without eating anything cooked by someone else.

Cooking has lots of benefits we all know about, it's healthier, you save bucketloads of money (two collegues in my program who live down the street from me in Manchester said they survived 5 days on 7 pounds for both of them, through some seriously smart budgeting and cooking.) I always imagined cooking most of your meals isolating, since it seems, at least in New York, eating out with people is one of the biggest social events for friends. But the wild truth of the matter is that during this year away, cooking has been one of the greatest connectors for me with people I love- every time I whip all random stray veggies in the fridge into a delicious pasta I feel like I've spent the evening in my mother's kitchen. And I know that whenever I make the super simple, delicious hummus my lovely friend Robert has just shown me how to make, I'll feel he's right next to me giggling and gossiping with a fantastically insightful question about what makes wonderful cities what they are.