A Tale of Two Kitchens....

Recently, I was a guest in two very different kitchens.  The first was a sterile, shiny kitchen strikingly devoid of anything not attached to a wall, floor, or counter; a kitchen so obsessively clean that not even a fingerprint would dare stick around.  It sits on the twentieth-something floor of a condo in Miami and is meticulously maintained by my friend, Marilyn (previously known as "my sister's friend, Marilyn")  It looks like this.

The second kitchen had no counter space at all.  All the chopping and mixing was done in bowls on the floor; which was covered in ash from the charcoal fires burning in their metal stands.  There was no sink (water was carried in in old plastic bottles) and a refrigerator would have been a waste of space as there was no electricity to run it.  This kitchen was in the upper room of a ramshakled cement building in the remote town of Jeremie, Haiti and is used by my friend Madam Fritz.  It looks like this.

Both kitchens are amazing in their separate ways.  Marilyn is an organizational freak!  I wouldn't be surprised if some day, she comes up with a better system for organizing the names and numbers in a phone book.  She's also a neat-nick.  Everything has its place and she isn't emotionally attached to "stuff" so when she's done with it or no longer needs it, it gets pitched.  She is The Fen Shui Queen!!!  I spent several minutes looking around her kitchen for the trash can.  I looked under the sink (an obvious and common storage place) and in large pull-out drawers; I wandered around looking behind and beside the counter, the fridge, the stove....  I finally had to ask her if she even had one!  She went to the laundry room and came out with a small basket, explaining that she doesn't like it cluttering up her kitchen so she keeps it hidden in a back corner of the laundry room. 

As proof of her organizational skills, I offer these pictures of her kitchen drawers and refrigerator...

The second kitchen is amazing in its ability to even function as a kitchen at all despite the lack of running water, stove, counters, drawers and cupboards, or even a sink.  It's literally just a room with four walls and a floor.  Pots and pans, knives, a stool for sitting, a mortar and pestle all had to be brought in from their storage areas in the neighboring bedroom.  All the ingredients needed to cook lunch had to be purchased and carried in as there is no space or system for storing supplies for future use. 

In addition to her strict ideals on how to keep house, Marilyn also has some strong opinions about what should and should not be put in the body.  So, on the morning she fixed me breakfast, she opened her tidy refrigerator, withdrew several previously hard-boiled and shelled eggs, cut them in half, removed the yolks (which she tossed down the garbage disposal) and filled the cavities with prepared hummus.

Several days later, the cook(s) in the second kitchen also prepared a meal for me.  They butchered a couple of chickens, plucked the feathers, cut them up, pounded the spices, and left them to marinate in a large bowl.  There was no removal of undesirable food parts and throwing them away.  To the contrary, several things were left in the food pot that probably should have been tossed to the cat!

Marilyn artfully displayed her hummus stuffed eggs on rice crackers topped with yogurt and an olive.  She brewed a pot of coffee which she served with some sort of almond milk instead of cream.  Her breakfast was actually quite delicious and ready to consume in under thirty minutes!  (Martha Stewart could take a few pointers from Marilyn!)

Back in kitchen #2, after plucking, cutting, and marinating the chickens, they were stewed in a flavorful broth and served with boiled plantains.  If you include the time spent going to market to purchase the live chickens (and other ingredients) it took more than eight hours to prepare lunch.  But it was worth the wait!!

I'm looking forward to the day when I can visit both of these kitchens again!!!