KISS: Keep It Simple Summer
KISS: Keep It Simple Summer
Contentedness + simplicity for a perfect summer (and life?)
It’s summer and with that comes recovery time for me. Working in education is straight up grueling. During breaks I take days to re-learn how to respond (that I CAN respond) to my biological needs and find myself trying (and often failing) to balance rest with productivity in my personal life with reconnecting with friends I’ve put on the back burner for ten months. I often get that balance wrong and have a cry or three but I’m hoping that after my 12th year in education I can get it right more quickly this year.
This summer I plan to eat well and rest well too. For me, rest means doing less of course, but also is returning to the simple pleasures of moving through life because I have the time and energy to do so. I can take the time to make an actual cup of coffee instead of relying on instant espresso like I do during the school year. I can listen to an audiobook while weeding in my garden without a running to-do list in my head. I can make sourdough bread on a weekday. I can pull a couple cookbooks off the shelf to page through while I listen to the birds (and the squirrels - ugh - they are relentless). I can move at a leisurely pace in my house without feeling like I need to rush from completing one task to another. This is a gift that I treasure.
I am a content person who strives for a quiet life full of ease, pleasure, and *feeling*. I want to be deeply connected to whatever I’m doing, taking it in with all my senses, especially when I’m doing anything with food. I love the resistance of a lime as I’m squeezing it, or the stinky bubbles of a sourdough starter as I fold it into flour to make bread, or the snap of a leaf of lettuce that sprays me with moisture while I’m assembling a salad. These are the simple bits of ✨ magic ✨ that makes my life feel full and happy.
When I am buzzing about in the kitchen, I usually reach for a simple machine over an electronic, gadget-ized piece of equipment. It helps me feel more connected to the food. If you’ll think back to science class, remember that simple machines are any device for applying a force, like an inclined plane, wedge, lever, wheel and axis, screw, or pulley. BEFORE YOU TUNE OUT: these simple machines are all over your kitchen! Here are ones I can think of immediately: knife (wedge), pizza cutter (wheel & axle + wedge), jar lids (screw), bottle opener and shears (lever), and drawers (pulley or are they a wheel and axle?). All these things apply force and they make your life in the kitchen easier. They are not complex at all - when you chop things on a cutting board and then you tip it into a pan, you’re just making an inclined plane to get the stuff into the pan. This is *mechanically* easier than scooping up the stuff in your hands and transferring to the stove. We use simple machinery in the kitchen without thinking too much about it.
The food world is obsessed with making every single part of your kitchen complexly mechanized with a lot of electricity and gadgets that do SO MUCH. An electric Mr. Coffee programmable coffee maker is a lot more complex than a pour over cup of coffee or using an Aeropress for espresso, but it gives the illusion of being simple and is more convenient on the surface. Sure, it saves time but when I think about a machine like a Keurig, I also think of how often they break and are then just thrown away, or put in a closet with other machines that may only need a part or two replaced to be functional again. But who knows how to figure that out?! Oftentimes in our society, where companies are hungry for profit and we are hungry for consumption, the machine was made so cheaply that it’s not even worth the repair.
Maybe it’s grandma-ish of me, but I would rather have the simplest machine for the job most of the time. I want to see with my own eyes that there isn’t mold growing in my coffee apparatus, or use my muscles to feel the batter slap around in the bowl when stirring it up for a cake. When we are short on time, we often reach for a more complex machine that removes us from much of the process. While there is a time and place for this (shoutout to my beloved Crockpot), I think that we would all benefit from a little more connectedness to the simple process of cooking where and when we can. Plus, when you’re at your friend’s aunt’s cabin up north and there’s only two outlets in the whole kitchen, it’s meditative to toast your bread in a pan rather than plug in a toaster, or to take an extra few minutes to knead the dough by hand for the next morning’s cinnamon rolls - to apply force with your own body for a slightly more connected experience.
Things I Like
These words I’ve been reciting all week
That rhubarb shrub I posted about last week. I’m obsessing over it right now and trying to figure out how I can do it with different fruits.
These pants that are ON SALE
Looking at men’s crochet shirt patterns to figure out what I should make my husband after I finish my midi dress I’m making for myself
Finally turning over my closet for summer - all the clothes seem new since I haven’t seen them in months and I gave myself a chance to refold everything so things are looking gorge and organized!
I hope your summers are off to an easy start, full of yummies and time with loved ones.
May your week be gentle and may you eat well. 🌲🥣