I feel like I lost a good friend this week. My vegetable peeler broke. To the untrained eye, this kitchen tool looks like any other, but I know there was more to it behind its commonplace, functional façade.
I wish I could remember who gave us our kitchen peeler, but I am pretty certain it was a wedding present. I can recall adding it to our registry as we scanned with abandon various items in the “Home” section of Target.
For just shy of 20 years, I have used that vegetable peeler to prepare food for my family. I peeled potatoes to make mashed potatoes, quartering the naked spuds and boiling them until fork tender. Then mashing and buttering and creaming and salting until they tasted just right.
I peeled apples for many apple pies, attempting to keep the spiraled apple peel intact before slicing them, adding heaps of brown sugar and cinnamon and dumping all of that sticky apple goodness in a pie shell not quite as good as my mom’s. Is there any smell in this world as gratifying as the smell of an apple pie baking?
My dearly departed vegetable peeler wasn’t flashy but it was dependable. It helped me make comfort food that filled the souls of my people. It symbolized a labor of love for those I cherish and serve most every day. It also was my companion through my early cooking trials, the pies and side dishes that didn’t turn out so great and the occasional, accidental whittling of some knuckle skin while trying to peel a fruit or vegetable.
As we approach Thanksgiving and all the preparations for the big meal, I think about what it means to feed my family, particularly a special dinner with all the trimmings. I’m much more chill when it comes to timing the dishes and the turkey and the desserts and doing as much ahead of time as possible, but those first years I hosted Thanksgiving I was a wreck. It’s hard to live up to the hype.
But as long as I can be the human equivalent of that trusty little vegetable peeler, I can get it done: One swift movement at a time, pay attention to what you’re doing, make it special because you take the time, relax and breathe.
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