Breakfast In America

At the height of the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union, and Richard Nixon, the vice president of the United States, exchanged words at the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow. Known as the "Kitchen Debate", it took place in the kitchen of a suburban model house, cut in half so it could be easily viewed. An unlikely place to make history, to say the least, but on July 24th 1959 Dick and Nik did just that. The impromptu debate (through interpreters) was the first high-level meeting between Soviet and American leaders in four years. The two political heavy-weights of the century argued for their respective ideologies.

My kitchen experiences never included world leaders, but they were just as historical to me. I have written about gnocchi before. My grandmother's kitchen was the place to be, relatives milling around, eagerly waiting until it was time to sit at the table. Forget restaurants; after all, what restaurant experience can compare with eating something good made by someone you can hug? Cooking delivers its most enduring gifts when it is savored in an intimate, ancient and familiar setting, prepared by a cook and with love.

The kitchens of my grandmothers and my mother were the social center of the house, long before people transformed kitchens into showpieces gleaming with shiny granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances.

The family recipes. Whether they are yellowed with age, stained, marked and remarked, hand-written or typed, newspaper clippings, on cards, in books or on-line, they are a bountiful plethora of memories. I recently made one of my mother's recipes; despite the years and the miles, she was with us while we ate and, just for a moment, I was a child in her kitchen, sitting at the speckled white table under the window, watching her cook up another memory.