City Girl, Country Heart

I live in New York City. Well, Brooklyn. And I do love it sometimes. I mean, it’s a great town, right? It’s got so much to give, and you just have to reach out and grab it. Everything is so immediate, so fast, so urgent, so needy, so pushy, loud, angry, bright, trendy, exciting, fresh, dirty, sexy, raunchy and hard. It’s hard to live here. Some people thrive in this city, and I admire them to no end. But it’s just not, ultimately, my kind of town. I’ll live here while I believe it’s best for my career, but my heart is in the country.

Oh, the country. I love the plains of South Dakota and the pines of the Black Hills. I have dreams of being a country wife to a hard-working cowboy and mother to a couple hard-working farm kids. I dream of spending all day in the kitchen making a beautiful meal with fresh vegetables from the farm. I dream of fresh flowers in every corner of the house cut from the garden my husband tends just for me. The country I dream of is slow, patient, warm, brisk, open, vast, kind, giving, loving, gentle, rough, lonely, dark, inspiring, and full of sky. When I go there I feel like a tight rope suddenly let go slack. All the tension melts away as soon as I see the prairie skyline. Ah, to be there now.

That's pretty much the life my grandparents led up until recently when my Grandma went into a home and my Grandpa stopped being able to go to the farm. I’m not sure it was anything extra special to them, it was just the way things were and they were happy. And I know they had a love that you can only find out where there’s room for that kind of huge love. Where the love can spread out and take up space and be a big, grand love.

So I bake and cook here in my windowless kitchen in Bushwick. I look at the framed picture of the Hills and imagine I’m looking out my window. I hear the yelling outside and imagine it’s the kids playing in the yard. I hear the big trucks go by and imagine it’s my husband on the big tractor harvesting the wheat. In the fall I bake pumpkin, apples, potatoes, chicken, cornbread, chili, pot roasts… all because when I’m in the kitchen, I could be anywhere, and the country is where I choose to be. Even in New York, I can travel to a cabin in Mystic, South Dakota, and cook some pumpkin bread for my husband as he settles down by the fire to read before a night of well-earned sleep. I believe in the power and possibilities of food. I believe food can take you anywhere you want to go. Even if for just a minute, it’s so worth it.