Girl meets Hot Plate

My passion for good food is life long. Some of my earliest photos are in the kitchen with my mother. She has always been an excellent cook, and still dreams of giving up law to run her own bakery or catering business. I learned most of what I know of cooking from watching her bring Seville and Tuscany to our table. Even if we had no money I could always count on something delicious to eat. Frugality, she said, was no excuse to abandon good taste.

The rest I learned from my father, who owned a small organic farm north of Napa Valley’s gourmet splendor. He taught me large and involved recipes from scratch, always eager to instruct. Because of them I developed a love of cooking for others, and extravagantly so. A door was always open and a plate was always set for anyone hungry or lonely. Love in my family is expressed in the kitchen.

I fell in love seven years ago in the usual way: in a grocery store. I was eighteen, new to Oregon. Ben was a lifelong Oregonian on the way to a geek party. I introduced myself and he all but hid under the grocery cart. We became friends anyway, and tried a relationship only after I had moved back to California. Like the car accident that forced my return, our long distance relationship crashed and burned.

We reconnected in late 2008, and by June of 2009 I was preparing to move to Oregon. Both Ben and I had unrealistic expectations about the move: I would find a job in days, we would move out of Ben’s studio apartment after my first paycheck, and I would recreate Napa in my gourmet kitchen night after night.

Life, however, is rough around the edges. I was laid off from a job after a month, and I had a harder time making friends than I ever had before. We had no chance of moving this summer, even if I found a new job immediately. We were stuck for an indefinite time in a studio apartment with one window and no air conditioning. Ben’s bachelor “kitchen “was equipped with just a hot plate and a toaster oven. California, despite all of its economic problems, seemed like paradise lost.

With no job, no friends, and no creative outlet, I began to lose hope. My mother could hear my voice grow bleaker and bleaker with every phone call. One day I told her about how much I hated the kitchen, and how no good food could ever come of it. Suddenly, the tone of her voice changed. “I think it can,” she said. “I think if anyone can figure out how to make gourmet meals with a hot plate, you can. I heard that Ina Garten (the host of Barefoot Contessa on Food Network) had only a hot plate on her honeymoon in Europe, and it made her into the cook she is today. This is an opportunity to be resourceful. Make this a fun challenge, not a destructive one.”

So I did. I took stock of my “kitchen”, said a quick prayer, and The Hot Plate Gourmet was born.

Thanks, Mom.