Company's Coming! with Guest Nonna Andrew Reiter
My Kitschy Stew Pot
A little over three years ago I moved into my cozy 380 square-foot studio apartment. I fell in love with it immediately — lots of light, lots of character, close to some nice parks. I wasn’t thinking about the kitchen when I made my decision, but it’s quite small. Like, thirteen inches of countertop small. It didn’t matter to me though, for I was never really a person who liked to spend time in the kitchen. As such, I had almost nothing to furnish the kitchen with, except for a Keurig I’d inherited from my old roommates, two coffee cups, and four stemless wine glasses. So nothing to cook, serve, or eat food with. To rectify this I went to my local hardware store where I’d seen the most adorable (tacky) pot in the window.
I could hear it calling to me, Aaaaandrew… I’m kitschy… And indeed it was: a white enamel pot printed with red hibiscus flowers. The lid, also white, with a red plastic knob. It’s 3.8 quarts, kind of an awkward size, but perfect for a single, hilarious gay guy like me. I may not like to cook, but every time I stomp into the kitchen to make something and reach for this pot, I get a little wink of joy.
After a few weeks in the new place, my parents came by to help me move some furniture and offload some necessities. They were renovating their kitchen and had some things to pass on to me: saucepan, frying pan, butcher block, knife block. All things I recognized from home, from my childhood. These timeless and useful items were used to make oatmeal and meatloaf and tuna fish for my three siblings and myself.
It wasn’t until recently that the kitchen had ever been a place of sentimentality for me. I have long viewed it as a place of business. Growing up, the kitchen was where my parents thanklessly whipped up and doled out three meals a day to their always-hungry brood. Lots of moving parts and too many for kids to spend much time in there. The kitchen also had a lot of rules: drawers you shouldn’t open, snacks that are off limits, foods you can’t eat after a certain hour.
The dining room was like that too — lots of rules. Charmingly, we ate dinner as a family every night. Except for Friday and Saturday, we had to drop whatever we were doing and come sit at the dining room table. We would say grace, we ate what was served, and we went around in a circle and talked about our day one at a time.
If it weren’t abundantly clear by now, my parents kept things old school.1 But they did all that because that’s what they picked up from their parents. From childhood til NOW we are reminded of the time my grandfather stabbed my Uncle Ian with a fork because his elbows were on the table. Like stories, manners get passed down.
My parents have mellowed out a lot as we’ve all gotten older. When I visit home, I don’t feel anxious in the kitchen and mealtimes are very nice. It’s wonderful to share the table with my parents and siblings and all have a conversation. But some of this is hard to shake. I like to eat late (and snack even later) and sometimes still hear my grandmother’s voice at night, telling me in Baltimorese, “The kitchen is closed.”
My relationship with food has been pretty fucked up for a long time. The kitchen stuff is important, but it’s only a piece of the whole story. I have been obsessing about my weight since I was 10. Disordered eating habits as a teen, body dysmorphia, and internalized fatphobia distorted my relationship with food and my body. All of that, plus shame — around enjoying food, gaining weight, being attracted to fat men —transformed food into something I could recognize only as sustenance. I mean this literally when I say, for a very long time, almost all food tasted like nothing to me. Complete disenchantment. As if it never had flavor to begin with.
I’ve come a long way. Food doesn’t taste like nothing to me anymore. I’m working hard at learning to enjoy eating and to find pleasure in food. It’s a very active practice. I’d prefer to do all this in a restaurant of course, but my apartment didn’t come with a restaurant. It came with a tiny kitchen. And if the kitchen is the heart of the home, I’m sorta in the process of defibrillating mine. The kitchen, apparently, isn’t just a battleground or a minefield: it can be a place to have fun. And eat. And grow. There are moments of joy to be found in the kitchen, like in the subtle humor of a flowered pot.
After we’d moved all the furniture and unloaded their car, my parents drove back to Massachusetts. The spatula, mixing bowl, and butcher block, all very useful items that I use almost daily, found a new home. But it’s when I’m making one of my famous stews in my kitschy stew pot — stirring with a wooden spoon from my mother, serving into a bowl from my grandmother — that I’m really able to see the extent of what I have been given. Generations of cooks roll out before me, like Avatars stretching into the past.
As they say in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, “We shed as we pick up…and what we let fall will be picked up by those left behind.” I think about this quote when I think about the things I’ve picked up from my family. Some, like a frying pan, are useful, so I keep them. But other things I once picked up don’t serve me any longer. I can’t carry everything and I have to keep it pushing.
My kitchen is mine alone. I have been handed down a few tools and picked up a couple of my own, but the design is all mine. I’m trying things and seeing what works. What tastes good, what’s easy to make. Which recipes I should try, which I should chuck. I’m not quite Martha, but I’m getting there. With my trusty kitschy stew pot, I can make anything I want. I could make my mother’s Swedish meatballs or my grandmother’s clam chowder. But usually what I want to make is Alison Roman’s infamous chickpea stew. Or some regular-ass pasta, served with Texas toast. I’m gonna make what I want my own way and I’m gonna eat it the way I want to. Which, usually means in front of my TV and without a shirt on. But still, eaten off a forty-year-old plate and never ever with my elbows on the table.
Andrew Reiter is a writer, birder, and amateur naturalist. He lives in Manhattan with his two pet pigeons. You can read his newsletter about birds, people, and nature,One in the Hand, right here on substack.
And by the way, they’re not even old — they’re Gen X! Their favorite band is U2!!!