Dr. Maria DeBlassie

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On Grocery Lists

 

There it is, a little blackboard sticking to your refrigerator door, a continual work in progress. 

You use up your last sweet onion, caramelizing it for a mushroom pizza.  As the onions simmer in the pan, filling your kitchen with their savory aroma, you take a moment to write 'onions' on your grocery list in thin white chalk.  It is then you see that you also have nutritional yeast on the board and you erase it, having bought more of the cheese-like miracle on your previous grocery trip.  There is now a blank space over blue corn tortillas, those kitchen staples you have had on your list for some time, the ones you keep forgetting to pick up with each trip to the grocery store. 

It is your daily work of art, the truest expression of your life: the recipes you cook to nourish self and family, the ingredients that make up your week--here a wedge of aged cheddar, there more radishes because you can never keep enough of them in your refrigerator.  Spinach, your perennial favorite, never quite erased from your list because you always need it. 

It occurs to you as you finish caramelizing your onions that your life is made up of a series of grocery lists, each one building on the other, like layers of paint on an artist's canvas.  Your life is made up of caramelized onions and red wine, chia seeds and fresh blackberries.  Your life is made up of a deep desire to nourish and be nourished. 

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