Tale of Two Cooks

Both of our daughters married men who come to mind when I think of our God Who Feeds Us.  Take-bless-break-share: I’d like to look at that sequence that Jesus used in feeding the multitude on that bright day on the hill and feeding his friends on that last day in the upper room.

Jeff loves to cook.  In the suburban woods outside of Cleveland, a meal is something that forms in his mind and takes hold of him from there, using his skilled hands and alert eyes and instinctive nose to turn ingredients into the feast in his imagining. 

Take: I’ve had the marvelous experience of shopping for a meal with Jeff.  Whereas I’m one of these guys who looks at what we have and cooks from a waste-not-want-not mentality, Jeff aims as the perfectly satisfying meal, and starts with a trip to the market for the perfect ingredients.  While I cook from a perspective of conservation, he cooks from a perspective of satisfaction to those he's feeding.  He shops with a quiet, focused joy.

Bless: The three of us – Kathy, our daughter Margie and I – will sit at the table in the kitchen and catch up with each other while Jeff slices, grinds, mixes, marinates, his hands precise and efficient, the vessels of his rite the sharp knives and smooth cutting boards, the mortar and pestle, the heavy pots and pans.  The vapors rise like incense, filling us with the promise.

Break: Jeff’s meals are not passed around in big serving platters.  He prepares a plate for each of us, the part of the entrée that we like best, the size of the portion just right, the side foods arranged beautifully around the entrée.  The now-familiar scents of the spices and the ingredients emerge from the plates that he brings to each of us at the table.

Share: Jeff’s is always the last plate to be made up.  While he enjoys his food and our conversation, he checks with each of us to see how the food is, if it satisfies us as it did in his imagination.  He did not simply imagine, from the start, that the meals would be perfectly attractive and delicious.  He also imagined it being perfectly satisfying.

Meanwhile in the woods of Benzie County Michigan, it’s the Sunday Morning 360, Captain David in the Kitchen, With Amy and their daughters Nadia and Sonja slowly stirring.

Take: It’s all there, the flour, the butter, the farm-bought milk in the glass bottle, complete with the buttery ring around the inside of the collar.  It’s gotta be there, because it’s a long drive to town.

Bless: The kitchen is full of stuff like the house is full of life.  Dave’s cooking is a three-ring act of mixing the batter for pancakes, pouring batter into the pan, cleaning and setting the table while pancakes cook, trying to convince Puck the Dog that it’s not time to play.  “Hey guys, they’re coming up!” He calls to his three ladies, who shuffle out and take their places at the table. 

Break: As soon as their keesters hit the chair, David is putting their favorite sized pancakes on the plate and tossing it onto the table in front of them followed by a fork.  Amy forages in the fridge for their drink of choice, and pretty soon the little girls are wiggling with the energy of the pancakes and Grampa’s maple syrup, sugarhigh, sugarhigh, sugarhigh!

Share: Ya know, it’s a circus, and it doesn’t follow this four-part analysis.  The elements are all kind of mixed in.  But there is one element that has always felt to Kathy and me eerily like Mass.  As the wiggling torsos and swinging feet at the table increase in frequency, pretty soon all eyes are on David as he pours the last of the batter and makes the biggest pancake of all.  It’s not for him; he’s been nibbling at the stove as he cooked.  It’s for the 360.  Puck sits and watches intently, his tail shining the floor in a fan-shaped arc.  David turns from the stove, the big frying pan held in both hands, bobbing it up and down a little to be sure that the last big pancake is not stuck to the bottom.  He looks left and looks right as the audience taps their hands noisily on the tabletop; their traditional drum roll increasing in intensity until . . . UP goes the pan, flipped toward the ceiling, while David spins around 360 degrees, watching for the pancake over his shoulder and attempting to catch it in the pan.  Just as in church, there are prayers to be said at this holy moment.  But here in the woods of Benzie, the prayer to be said is determined by the outcome of the effort.  “AYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” is for the times it hits the pan, David smiling proudly, finally sitting down to eat it.  “AWWWWWWWW!” is for the times that it doesn’t land in the pan, and Puck finally gets a pancake. 

Eucharist is all around, if we watch for it.  And there is no shortage of priests, or sacred liturgies; there is only shortage of eyes to recognize them.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.