Small Gods of the Kitchen

Every kitchen has its household gods, and they are all very small. The jar that never quite closes. The one good knife. The mug that is not the nicest mug but is the one your hand goes to, so it has become, by sheer repetition, holy. We do not choose these objects so much as wear grooves into them until they choose us back.

I think we underestimate how much of a life is organized around such things. Not the heirlooms — the heirlooms are for other people to admire. I mean the chipped, the favorite, the load-bearing ordinary. The wooden spoon worn pale on one side. The pan you would actually run back into a burning building for, embarrassing as that is to admit.

To pay attention to them is a small religion with no doctrine and only one practice: notice what you would miss. Then you will know what you actually live among.