Magic in a Pot
Magic in a Pot
When Roger asked me what Dane and I would like for a wedding gift, I suggested a pot—a large cooking pot I could use for boiling noodles or making large batches of chili. But little did I know the pot would change my life.
Soon after moving to Vernon County, I lived in a cabin on Pa’s Road. A gas pipe that came in from under the house fueled two open burners. I’d light a match, and whoosh, there’d be a flame to cook over. I was scared to death of it at first and had to have the landlord hold my hand and guide the match to show me that I wouldn’t blow the house up!
Eventually, I moved into what I then called The White House, where I still live, only now it’s painted the color of chicory, with window trim the color of Queen Anne’s lace. Here, as a renter at first, I cooked on an electric hot plate for over seven years.
When I bought the house and later had running water installed, I finally purchased an apartment-size electric stove. But I was still using the same cooking pot I’d used back when I was raising my daughter, Jessica.
It was a basic pot, neither large nor small. And after all those years, both the bottom and the inside were heavily scratched, and one handle had broken off. The pot had also become so misshapen that the lid no longer fit tightly.
Roger’s gift pot arrived about a month after our wedding, but the magic didn’t start until a few months later. Then I began using the pot almost daily. I became more imaginative and experimented with familiar recipes. For instance, I’d add cauliflower rice to my chili, make my own bean-and-chicken soup, and even make hummus from scratch.
It wasn’t that I’d been a bad cook; it was more that I didn’t cook. I just didn’t have the confidence. The new pot inspired me. Give me one good, copper-bottom cooking pot with a lid that fits, and I start channeling Julia Child! I became unstoppable.
But a new problem arose: My now-very-tired apartment-size stove, with only one good burner and an oven that never heated to the right temperature, put a damper on my culinary endeavors.
That is, until my friend Bonnie told me she had a friend who was getting a new stove and had a perfectly good, previously used one to get rid of! It just needed a new electrical plug, which I purchased at Nelson’s for twenty dollars. Bonnie, who has the skills of an electrician, hooked it up for me, and I’ve been hooting and hollering ever since.
Every week, I experiment with a new type of bean or soup. I send containers of food home with Dane for his dinner and lunches. I even cook for friends now, something I never would have done before.
As a result of the gift of one good cooking pot, I’m eating more healthily than ever. Add in a working adult-size stove, and every day is a culinary adventure.
Sometimes all we need is a little magic. What shape or form that magic comes in isn’t important; this time, it showed up as a shiny new copper-bottom cooking pot. What matters is that it inspires us to get more creative, which builds our confidence.