On cleaning refrigerators and hand washing dishes

 

My mom is on my mind today. I am becoming her all over again. In many ways, that would be a good thing. I’d like to have her graciousness in almost all situations, her light laughter, her intellectual curiosity, her devotion to what she thought was right. And, yes, I’d like to cook like she did. But those are not the traits I’ve apparently inherited. I got her frugality.

Mom lived through the Depression as a young wife, then a too-young war widow, and again a bride. She carried the lessons of those years with her throughout the rest of her long life. Of course we saved aluminum foil for the war effort; she used paper towels twice—once on counter or stove-top and then it went in a special cubbyhole to be re-used for a spill on the floor. We never threw anything out, and boy did I know about the clean-plate club. Mom canned her own vegetables, from the struggling produce Dad coaxed to life in a tiny Chicago back yard, and she hung her laundry on the line to dry, which meant she had really muscular shoulders and arms. When we cleaned out her refrigerator for the last time, my brother said, “She has all these petri dishes in the back.” There were jars of who-knows-what—leftovers, jam, and so on.

Mom never thought I learned those lessons of frugality quite well enough. When I was married and running a household of six, she lived down the street and dined with us most nights. She’d ask what to do with leftovers and then, before I could answer, she’d say, “I know! Just pitch it!” (I do the same to Jordan today because I think she’s too quick to throw things away.)

Today I cleaned out my refrigerator—eliminated thirteen jars of various sizes that held a dab of this and a bit of that—jam, sauerkraut with mold, chutney, things I couldn’t identify. And I don’t have a dishwasher, so I hand-washed most of those jars. I declared three beyond recovery. Still I was at the sink for a long time, and I thought of Mom again.

For much of my childhood she cooked—and let me experiment—in a kitchen probably almost as old as our 1893 house. I can still see that old Roper gas stove and the scarred porcelain sink that stood in one corner. There wasn’t much money. Dad was a doctor, but was mostly in administration, not practice, and he supported his mother and sister in Canada as well as our family. But in the Fifties, money came from somewhere and Mom got her dream kitchen—the whitewashed knotty pine she loved, turquoise Formica counters, and a round picnic table with benches that curved around it. And a dishwasher! We thought that was the ultimate luxury.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Buddhist monk who just died, preached that staying in the moment should be a goal. He apparently once said, “When washing dishes, wash dishes.” It made me think of Mom and how many dishes she must have washed in that old kitchen. I thought of it again today as I was washing those jars. My writing sisters in an online group heartily embraced that philosophy this morning in our daily discussion, but I rebel. Washing dishes is one of those things you can do with your mind turned off the process. So I often plot and plan while my hands are in soapy water.

I admit I was a bit proud of myself this morning. Those jars had been staring balefully at me for a long time. Tomorrow, I’m tackling my pajama drawer because the other day, when sub-freezing temperatures were about to hit, I looked for a special pair of flannel pajamas and could only find the bottoms. I bet there are a lot of things in that deep drawer that I never wear. When you’re mostly quarantining, it’s a good time to clean out. Oops, do I sound smug?

The things we can live without …or do you wash dishes by hand?

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.