Kitchen Interior, Joachim Bueckelaer; 1566

“JUST as it is good to get one’s fingers into the soil and plant seeds, so it is good to get one’s fingers and fists into bread dough to knead and punch it. There is something very positive in being involved in the creativity which is so basic to life itself. Home-made bread, home-made cakes and pies, home-made vegetable soup from home-grown vegetables or from vegetable market purchases, home-made jams and jellies, home-made relishes and pickles — these are almost lost arts in many homes. For growing children at play, there is nothing so interesting as really ‘doing things.’ To ‘help cook’ is one of the most enjoyable things of childhood — to say nothing of being a sure way of producing good cooks. A child can cut up carrots at a very early age, with no more risk of injury than from falling down outside at play! A child can mix and stir, knead the dough and be given a piece to make a roll man, cat or rabbit with raisin eyes. A child can fry eggs or make scrambled eggs — one of mine did every morning from the age of three! The kitchen should be an interesting room in which communication takes place between child and mother and also among adults. It should be interesting in the same way as is an artist’s studio, as well as being a cosy spot in which to have a cup of tea while something is being watched or stirred, or while waiting to something out of the oven.

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“It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in color and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in.”

— Edith Schaeffer, The Hidden Art of Homemaking (Tyndale House Publishers, 1971), pp 119-120.

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