Kitchens and departures

Veggies from my garden in Asheville were cooked in Mt. Gretna, PA this evening.

As I left Asheville yesterday, my gardening companion reminded me to take a photo — of what I was bringing.  A couple of paintings bought in New Brunswick a couple of years (they really now belong in our house in LeBic) , a bin with my bicycle helmet, CD’s, and various extra things, bags of important info about our Quebec house and contacts, French language books (of course!), art supplies (maybe I’ll get back to drawing and watercolor?), 

Equally important were my extra clothes and luggage.  Normally, for international travel, I use my Kelty backpack — perfect for trooping through airports, etc.  On shorter jaunts, I love to use my 35+ year old leather duffel bag, bought in Florence back when I was in Germany for a year after graduate school.  The tapestry bag dates from that time, too. I use it for my laptop bag, but our joint laptop is now in Quebec, so it’s full of other important things —like my passport and charging equipment for my iDevices.

As I write this, a mama robin is feeding her 4 nestlings in a nest that’s on the porch of my HomeExchange house in historic Mt. Gretna, PA.  What fun!

But I also wanted to write about kitchens, too, as I’ve experienced so many over the last couple of HomeExchange years. Departing from Asheville,  I had brought along frozen wild salmon, chard and kale from the garden, and some onions, garlic and sweet peppers,  to cook dinner for a planned overnight with good friends in SW Virginia.  But she wasn’t feeling well (it must have been pretty bad for her to want to forgo my visit) and so I continued north, with my salmon and veggies cooled with ice from LaQuinta today.  

I cooked all of the veggies this evening, after having salmon for lunch and dinner.  Hmm, there’s more for tomorrow, but Heidi and Steve from Wild Salmon in Asheville catch these sockeyes themselves, so I’m determined to not let them not be enjoyed, even if I probably wouldn’t have cooked tonight, given my druthers.

But it’s a wonderful place in a great historic setting, so it also found me musing about kitchens.  

Our HomeExchange places have been so interesting to experience.  Sometimes they’re second homes, but usually they’re primary residences.  And it’s all so fascinating (from an anthropological perspective, I suppose), to see what sorts of things we have in our cupboards, shelves, and pantries, not to mention what our cooking utensils, pots and pans, prep space, and knives are like.

I’m currently in a second home (in a historic neighborhood) where my HomeExchange hosts live only 40 minutes away — that’s a really different context than most.  They use this place for their retreat, as well as as a rental and HomeExchange venue, so the kitchen is FULL of all sorts of things.  

Whether or not people are cooks — well, that’s always interesting to see the clues.  How do they allocate countertop space?  Do they have lots of gadgets?  How many sets of dishes are around?  What are the actual saucepans, etc. like?

When we started with HomeExchange, I looked at all of my kitchen things with fresh eyes — gone was the tired non-stick wok pan in favor of new All-Clad stainless steel (check), gone were the older tatty potholders and dishtowels (check), and I’d already recycled all the old plastic containers in favor of glass with plastic lids, anyway.  How refreshing for my kitchen, after all!