Here’s some food for thought by Kevin Hackett, our JG Network representative in San Francisco:

In recent years, i have noticed that the media seems to focus on how to survive this event, rather than celebrate it. What should be an intimate affair, with a deep renewal of bonds between family members, is now seen as an emotionally charged maelstrom. In essence, Americans have misplaced the ritual of a home cooked meal.

According to leading sociologists, it is the lack of process participation that has been detriment to the downfall of Thanksgiving. And the cure for this lazy malaise? It seems that the principle of ‘action absorbing anxiety’ has demonstrated that if each member of the family has a specific task at hand, a bonding synergy will be generated that has healthy neurological implications for all. In other words, get them involved.

The role of kitchen designer is integral to the success of this objective. If we look at the typical suburban floor plan, the fragmentation of active rooms has only reaffirmed the archaic gender boundary. This aged stereotype of women preparing food in the kitchen while the men watch football in the living room has yet to evaporate in the majority of Americans homes. In this layout, the sterile dining room becomes a transient pause for food and drink, a no man’s land between kitchen and living. As designers, we must recognize the importance of breaking down these boundaries, both physically and mentally.

It is our duty to create spaces that emphasize this seamless flow between functions, visually linking us as a family unit and encouraging democratic planning on all levels. A kitchen layout must be flexible enough to support several activities at once and allow the passive observer to interact if desired. It can be said that food preparation is a stronger bonding experience than eating itself.

Think foreplay. It is this very anticipation in the fulfillment of a desire that makes the activity so powerful. Isolating individuals from this process can only lead to detachment on a larger scale. This active living space should be a welcoming environment for all. Transforming this concept of task into something much bigger than work is the challenge set forth.

Perhaps we should learn to dine in the midst of our own kitchens? Once upon a time it was the norm. There’s a thought, Thanksgiving every night.

My aunt was British cookery writer Elizabeth David, who was known to the family as ‘Liza’. Between the ages of 15 and 30, I often dined with her, perhaps every eight weeks. We met up mostly for lunch. It was a lengthy affair, lasting up to five hours – there was no rush because she began her writing at 5 am and had finished by 10 am (few writers it seems can do more than this). The time with her was pleasurable, daunting and always full of surprises.

I always looked forward to the conversation and mood of these lunchtime excursions into the world of eating. When you arrived, she had usually prepared one course, which was already in the oven. Over the next hour or so you would be invited to participate in preparing second courses, salads, hors d’oeuvres or desserts, all the while sitting at her rudimentary pine table. There was no work surface.

If you were lucky, she was in the middle of one of her research programmes, although ‘research’ might convey the wrong impression. She nurtured ‘enthusiasms’ that became scholarly and gustatory quests. I once ate lunch with her when she was writing her English Spices and Aromatic Herbs book. We ate spiced beef terrine. On another occasion, whilst she was working on English Bread and Yeast Cookery, we dined on delicious Ligurian pizzas & Selkirk Bannocks.

But it was her ice cream experiments for her Ice Book, posthumously published, that gave our long meals perfect ending.  Sweet, scented, aromatic, rich or delicate and scooped from the ice cream maker whilst still soft and non-crystalline - I can almost feel it in my mouth now.

Occasionally things went wrong - or at least not right - for her. She would always be the first to say so. She never boasted about her cooking, always analysing it thoughtfully, eating small quantities and encouraging me or other guests (I rarely remember more than one other – she liked intimate conversation) to eat as much as possible.

Generosity - making guests feel the food was there to be eaten to the point of satisfaction - was important. There was always a glass of carefully selected but not expensive wine at hand and one of my jobs was to use the corkscrew. She used to buy half bottles so that we could switch wines when appropriate. She never expected you to finish the glass once the courses had moved on.

There was one major drawback to eating with her. As she lived on her own and lived in relatively modest circumstances, she had no one to do the washing up. The guest (at least me) was expected to do the bulk of it. Fairly early on, when I was 17, what one could describe as a sink cabinet finally fell apart. When leaks began appearing in the drainers, and the cupboard doors started falling off, she suggested that I should build her a new sink cabinet, this time at the right height and properly constructed. I duly obliged, constructing it in the street to the bemusement of local Chelsea residents. I was paid in meals – mostly lunches and £300 to embark on student travel. Looking back, it was no accident that I became a kitchen designer.

See ‘You can smell the sea or touch the olive branch…’, a 2006 article by Tom Norrington-Davies , in the Telegraph.

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3