Alice Waters

I have fallen in love with cooking again. I have met Alice Waters.

I had heard of her. I have spotted cookbooks among the collections that line the bookstore shelves.  I had heard her name spoken within conversations. Her name always spoken with respect, awe and interest.

But I rarely have time to cook anymore. I steam and eat and run. My years of standing at the stove over a kettle of homemade soup have gone by as children left the nest. Gone is the yogurt maker, the weekly tray of granola, the morning pot of oatmeal standing ready for bowls and added fruit and toppings. Now it’s just me. Now it’s organic coffee, interesting wine and steamed everything. On a treat night, it’s organic frozen pizza.

But then I met Alice waters.

I gave myself the gift of Masterclass last year. Listening to lessons from the stream of creative artists was a wonderful way to learn and inject something into what might have been a long boring night in the studio. I have learned a lot and been inspired by the artists there.

Then I met Alice waters.

Meeting her in a class online is very different then attempting to know her through her cookbooks. Her entire style of earthy, gentleness draws you in and befriends you. She is not simply cooking something. She perpetuates and nourishes a connection between people and food. She is not simply combining ingredients. She transforms them in a way that makes them the best of what they can be. She isn’t simply serving dinner. She is nourishing people in a way that brings community to the table. Preparing a meal, to Alice Waters, carries from thoughtful purchase of ingredients, to the kitchen for creative transformation of those ingredients, to a table where community blossoms in shared nourishment.

I wanted to be that. I now aspired to be that.

I wanted to share in that deeper connection with the food I eat. I wanted to embrace ingredients as if it they were children to raise lovingly into something they never knew they could be. I wanted to nourish and tend to guests, not just hand them supper.

Alice Waters has a deep, kind, thoughtful connection that embraces people with nourishment. She made me yearn for the same. She brought me back home to the kitchen.

Thank you Alice Waters and thank you Masterclass for bringing her into my home.