A recent essay in The
New York Times Magazine praised the virtues of washing dishes by hand. The
writer had worked in a small restaurant while in college, and his duties included dishwashing and,
late at night, blowing into the breathalyzer on the boss’ car so the boss could
drive home drunk. I have no comment on the breathalyzer, but the dishwashing
interested me. The restaurant had a commercial machine, but he ended up doing
dishes by hand and apparently has still been doing that until he and his wife
made a recent decision to purchase a dishwasher. He wrote, “Washing dishes, I give myself the chance
to remember that ordinary isn’t the enemy but the bedrock upon which the rest
of experience ebbs and flows.”
A dishwasher is one of the appliances I do not have. Like a
stove, it’s part of that built-in kitchen that zoning laws forbid. (For those who
are puzzled, zoning does not permit two kitchens on one property—an effort to
keep nearby university students out of garage apartments and the like). I
suppose if I wanted, I could have a portable dishwasher that I had to plug in
and hook to the faucet, but there’s not room in my kitchen. I had one once in
my salad days and remember that it was more trouble than it was worth.
Besides, like the essayist, I don’t really mind dishes. How
many pots and pans can one person dirty? When I get down to it, washing dishes
for most meals is quick and easy. Maybe one pot or skillet, one plate, a bowl,
a bit of flatware. It’s done and draining before I know it. It would probably
take me as long to rinse and load a dishwasher, and then the task of emptying
it would loom large. And I too find it a reflective time, a time when I can put
my mind on hold and go with the flow. That’s something I’m not usually good at
doing.
Dirty dishes weigh on my conscience, a product I guess of a certain
degree of OCD on my part. Sometimes I’ll sit with an empty plate on my desk,
working away, for an hour or more. And I’ll put off thinking about the dishes
at the sink. But guilt will get me. I almost never let dishes accumulate from
one meal to the next, and ever since I’ve been keeping house, it’s been a firm
practice never to go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. Yep, OCD.
Probably one advantage of the dishwasher, even for a single person—you can put
the dishes out of sight, so your conscience is clear.
The essay also got me to thinking about other things I do
without. The New York Times Cooking Community Facebook page has had an
interesting thread on InstaPots that has brought a lot of people out of the
woodwork who don’t use this latest magic appliance for cooks. One woman said
she didn’t like the final taste, and most, like me, balk at the steep learning
curve. I suppose the same is true of air fryers, though I note that Emeril has
come out with an air fryer that will supposedly replace almost all your small
kitchen appliances.
I also live without a microwave, though occasionally I wish
for one. I simply don’t have the counter space. When I first moved into the
cottage, my older daughter visited and convinced me I didn’t need the
microwave. But then she spent the rest of her visit saying, “I’ll just run into
the house and heat this in the microwave.” I use small ovenproof casseroles to
reheat food in the toaster oven—not quite as speedy but good enough for someone
like me who had given up hurrying.
I’ve become an advocate for the simple life, at least in the
kitchen—fewer appliances, more things done the “old-fashioned” way, though I am
not, like Thoreau, claiming any special virtue to the simple life lived
deliberately. It just works for me.
Excuse me…the lunch dishes are in the sink, and I must go.
No comments:
Post a Comment