Ode to La Cocina

Instead of giving a rundown of my weekend, which thus far has been chock full of boring errands and prepartions for my teaching gigs, I instead want to talk about a subject near and dear to me, my humble Buenos Aires old school kitchen.

Of course, it's not my kitchen. It's the guest kitchen of my hosts, Argelia and Guillermo Moabre (great folks by the way). I fell in love with this kitchen the first time I stepped foot in it. No, it would never win an HGTV award for kitchen of the year, let alone kitchen of the BC year. Nevertheless, it is a truly enchanting place.

The kitchen is a long galley style rectangle of concrete with three very old windows which do little more than let faint light in through their cloudy glass. The door is heavy steel with an opaque window of its own. The walls are tiled in a floral/wheat design. One table with a humble cloth sits next to the door. On it sit a basket of assorted jellies, a bottle of malbec wine, a few granny smith apples, and instant coffee.
Against the opposite wall are two gas burners on a tile table. They stand alone as the only method of warming or preparing food.

Next to the burners is a large laundry room style tub for cleaning dishes. On top of it leaning against the wall rests an old cutting board and above it are dish drying racks.

The refrigerator is half sized and on top of it sits a microwave, new this year and very out of place.

A hot water heater stands out in the corner and next to it sits a large piece of granite on top of a cabinet filled with pots, pans, silver ware and utensils in rickety drawers. Above this screwed into the wall are two metal cabinets filled with plates, bowels, and platters.

The kitchen feels authentic and basic. It's the type of room that's clearly not meant to impress, but instead to be a functional space in which to prepare and enjoy nourishment. It's not connected to a heating or cooling source and is therefore at the mercy of the elements, but it has cross ventilation and stove burners to buffer it from the seasons. To me, it symbolizes getting back to basics, removing myself from the modern era, taking a step back in time, and enjoying silence to cook, enjoy food, think, read, and write. In the middle of a hustle and bustle South American City, this 100 year-old kitchen feels as though it should be located in the Argentine Pampas or the rustic hills of Campo Basso, Italy. The lights are dim and in the winter it is chilly and sometimes cold, but preparing meals and spending time here gives you the sense that you don't need much more, that life can be easy and simple again. I like to think that this is the type of kitchen that Thoreau or Emerson would have been drawn to, or where my goat herding ancestors once huddled over a mug of hot tea or twirled plates of steaming pasta before heading back outside to the mountains to work.