revised: who is in your kitchen?

We all have kitchen stories…

I remember...

Cold winter day and the whole family is packed in my aunt's kitchen. It is a combination of a kitchen and a living room. Boiling tea is steaming the windows and fried tomatoes smell so yummy!!! We gather around the table and enjoy the beautiful simplicity and coziness of our breakfast...

It is a stone outdoor kitchen surrounded by olive trees...in a quiet night you can even hear the sound of the waves. But usually it is quite vivacious, this space, with people cooking, chatting, drinking tea, laughing, exchanging stories and recipes...the kitchen of Axladitsa* is a marvelous playground and a learning space: it is an open invitation to co-create, participate and be with each other. This is where the community gathers to cook for each other with joy and creativity, to nourish our bodies and spirit!

Borl** has a spacious and cool kitchen; it is a castle kitchen after all. It once fed kings, knights, and even Parsifal. I remember cooking together with a bunch of people from all over the world, what delicious wonders we were able to create together, between peeling, frying, singing, baking, telling jokes... I always find great comfort, joy and solidarity in a kitchen community who cares for its food and who can cook, clean, do the dishes with lightness and playfulness...
I always loved those scenes in movies where a whole lot of people gather together around a big table, eat, chat, laugh, sing, celebrate life! It always seemed to me as such an authentic community act; life at its best! I was lucky enough in my later years to be in the company of people who loved cooking and good food as much as I do. I had the chance to co-create delicious and healthy meals with ingredients of diversity, love and friendship: bringing in my Turkish and Mediterranean heritage, jazzing it up with some Indian spices, adding some Greek wisdom and hospitality, cooking with Danish innovation and humor and eating with uttermost universal joy!
Kitchen is actually very symbolic. It is perhaps the most important part of our homes. To understand the dynamics in a family, organization or a community, it is enough to take a look in their kitchen. Our kitchens say a lot about our lives. The form, the colors, the smells, the food, and the people.

so who is in your kitchen?

You got a kitchen and there is no one there? That means you don’t know your food, you don’t touch it, you don’t feel it, you don’t enjoy a thousand odors and flavors that burst during cooking, you don’t know the feel-good of nourishing your body with fresh and healthy food...while you are busy with everything else, you are missing a great joy of life.That’s a sad and lonely kitchen.Go back in there! Start peeling, cutting, boiling, steaming, mixing, smelling, tasting! Not only you will feed yourself, you will also explore your senses, your creativity, a dormant part of yourself...and don’t stay there alone too long: invite friends, neighbors, family members to be there with you.

Is it always your mum in the kitchen? And nobody else is allowed? She likes her order (control) and hygiene? Is it her property and you don’t feel welcome there? None of the family members feel passion and responsibility about preparing food, as long as the mum is in the kitchen?And perhaps, are you that mum? Are your children and husband afraid to walk in to the kitchen not to disturb the order of your pots and pans? Or not to get on your nerves?I've got bad news: that's an oppressed kitchen.Open the doors of your kitchen, invite your family and joy back in there! Let go of control, it can be a lot of fun!

Who else is in the kitchen? Is it the same person or same few people cooking and cleaning all the time? Are they all women? No man in the kitchen? Are you a man whose mum/wife/girlfriend made you believe that your only respons/ability is to eat (consume) and not to engage with cooking and cleaning up (production)? You need to wake up mate! The way you treat food, kitchen and women is the way you treat the world: if you are in consumption but never in the production, you are ignorant and arrogant and we surely need less of those in the world. I am personally tired of seeing kitchens slaving women and serving men.
Diverse your kitchen! Crowd your kitchen! Invite more men into the kitchen! Cook together, if we can cook together, we can be together, we can work together, we can live together!

Kitchen is a sacred space and women have been always more naturally inclined to work with the food because of the nourishing quality of their deep feminine nature. Surely there are many cultures where men are also participating in the kitchen yet there is this isolated, abandoned feeling accumulated in our kitchens over the thousands of years of where women have been “obliged”, “supposed” and “expected” to cook, feed and clean up. This sense of isolation is now even more present in urban communities where wo/men are cut off from the earth, with no connection to the land and food production. Food has merely become “packaged, sterile ingredients” that we put together hurriedly or “ready-made products” to consume without relationship in anonymous places. Especially in so-called “developed” parts of the world, we have locked ourselves into a tight component of the giant machine-system we created: food is produced somewhere, prepared elsewhere and consumed no-where-close-to-the-heart. What kind of civilization are we talking about if we are disconnected from the earth and food that sustain us, nourish us and connect us to life? This is a valid sign of how we are disempowering ourselves, our communities and robbing ourselves of the right and chance of living sustainable and healthy lives.

Recently one of the fundamental questions I am asking myself is “is the way I eat sustainable for my body and for the Earth?” In exploration of this question, I joined forces with a dear friend, Vanessa Reid, to craft and co-create the Conscious Kitchen. An inquiry into how we can feed ourselves sustainably gave birth to a set of practices around food which take into consideration both the health of our bodies and the Earth. In November 2007, we met at Axladitsa, invited by Maria Skordialou and Sarah Whiteley, to initiate the Conscious Kitchen. Axladitsa’s beautiful, spacious outdoor kitchen became a chaordic playground of conversations and cooking, a group o of us happily mapping out the evolution of Conscious Kitchen, food emerging out of co-creation in abundance. We paid attention to where our food comes from (local vs. transported from far), how it was grown (organic, wild), how it was prepared (whole vs. processed, packaged), how we eat (with awareness, gratitude and joy), how much waste we create and how we deal with our waste (composting organic materials, recycling and up-cycling non-organic materials), how much energy and resource we use in the kitchen (gas, water, electricity, etc.). Our small intercultural community gathered around a real sense of joy and togetherness in the kitchen, sharing stories and enjoying the delicious food. Our last day, Kyria Athina, a neighbor of Axladitsa, who came to cook with us a local dish, summarized the essence of our experience very well. She said, after we cooked and while we were eating together, “the food is good but the real good thing is paréa***”

So, this is the role I am called and need to step in today, not as an obligation but as a conscious choice, grounding myself firmly in the deep feminine nature, finding my power in my connection with the earth and community, and inviting people to relationship with one another, with earth and its elements. I will continue co-creating and co-hosting the Conscious Kitchen with Vanessa, Maria, Sarah and others.

I believe, at this point in time women will be the callers of earth guardianship in communities which would restore our relationships to one another, to our kitchens and to the earth.
It is time to reclaim the kitchen as the community space of inspiration and joy, solidarity and union, cooperation and co-creation!

It is time to join the paréa!

“I have once fallen in love in a sunlit kitchen while preparing sushi. It was unexpected, full of laughter and joy! The warmth, aromas and flavors became an invitation for love...I just believe all magic is possible in a kitchen”

*Axladitsa-Avatakia is a place of learning in South Pelion, Greece – a living systems container where the local community and an emerging trans-local community of guardians, and other friends are engaging in a field of learning - where living and creating from wholeness, being in authentic / right relationship within the web of life and honoring our connection to the earth is at the core. http://www.axladitsa.org/
**Borl is a medieval castle in Slovenia.
***“Paréa” is a greek word that signifies a group of family members, friends and/or guests who gather together to eat good food, drink good wine and simply share each other’s company.