everyday commonplace
WELCOME TO
EVERYDAY COMMONPLACE
“Household economy makes family and land an independent state. never buy at a store what you can grow or find at home— this is the rule of liberty, also of neighborhood. (and be faithful to local merchants too. never
buy far off what you can buy near home.)”
— Wendell Berry, The Farm
Home is where we begin and where we return to.
Here you will find an ever-growing classroom rooted in the extraordinary pleasures of seasonal living from a domestic point of view.
Everyday Commonplace offers you decades of lived experience in all things related to homemaking/keeping, growing, preparing and preserving food, family herbalism, and cultivating a homesteading mindset. (You don't need a large piece of land or a cow to harness the homesteaders mindset.)
The noun homestead by definition according to Merriam-Webster is “the home and adjoining land occupied by a family.”
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The verb homesteading by definition according to Wikipedia is “a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. It is characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of food, and may also involve the small scale production of textiles, clothing, and craftwork for household use or sale…
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Homesteading is not defined by where someone lives, such as the city or the country, but by the lifestyle choices they make.”
why cooking?
Someone asked me recently what was one thing I remember about my childhood.
I told her it was food.
Not just the food I ate but the way in which food was used to communicate, to serve the community, to show hospitality; in the way visitors were greeted as honoured guests; no one was ever turned away and no one was ever too busy to talk because they were having their meal.
Everyone was welcome and in fact, you had to be careful not to arrive near mealtimes as you would then find yourself sitting down with the family to eat weather you liked it or not.
Even going into a shop or visiting someone at their place of employment was an opportunity to stop for coffee and to chat for a while.
Food helps us to find a common language. Food is one of the ways we acknowledge our humanity, our appetites, our need for nourishment.
It may seem trivial to some people, but when I am telling a story, the part about what we ate really does matter.
God created this physical world, and He designed the ways we experience it with our bodies. These are gifts, not to be dismissed.
God saw all that he had made, and it was good. – Geneisis 1:31
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Cooking is commonplace
Besides entertainment shows and high-class restaurants, it often gets little credit as a creative form. But cooking artfully is not reserved purely for professional chefs or bakers. Fine china, plastic plates, old newspapers, and banana leaves are all canvases for the commoner’s food.
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In his book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, Michael Pollan asks, “For is there any practice less selfish, any labor less alienated, any time less wasted, than preparing something delicious and nourishing for people you love?”
Strangled by the speed of industry and culture, cooking has lost much of its role in the world. But no matter their background, every person can point to the kitchen as a place where they received deep love.
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I grew up watching my great grand mother, grandmother , mother and aunts cooking. Cooking was an event - an offering.
Much of what I have learnt about cooking is from watching these woman. I watched how they used their hands to chop, cut, mix. To kneed, to roll. I watched them lay their hands over the pan to check the temperture and their senses to perfect each dish.
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I have started Everyday Commonplace in hopes of making everyday, accessible recipes that inspire more people to gather in the home’s common place: the kitchen. Food provides us with a medium for creativity, relationship building, and cultural exploration. I hope to impart that relationship with food to others via recipes, menu ideas, guides to eating sustainably, and hopefully much more!
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I am a firm believer that cooking should be loose, fun, and experimental. I have no formal professional chef training, but a deep love for food and a continuous desire to hone my skills and knowledge—knowledge of techniques, dishes, history, nutrition, herbalism and the list goes on. I hope I can empower home cooks to take joy in the creative side of cooking, as nothing I make is intended to be a rigid recipe, but rather a blueprint to be built upon.
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xx - Jassie
some things i believe... SO WE ARE ON THE SAME PAGE...
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I believe that human beings are complex - and because of this our needs and relationships around cooking eating and food is also complex.
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I believe that home cooking does not have to be complicated to be good, nor does it have to take a lot of time or money to be satisfying.
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I do not believe that the word “healthy” means the same thing as the word “skinny.” or the same to everyone - This is a judgment free space.
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I believe that diet culture has robbed many of the joy of cooking and exploration - and I hope to help you discover peace around this -as I too have adventured through this struggle.
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I believe in God - and like to talk about my faith.
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I believe that our kitchens are the best places to connect with ourselves, God and each other, a place where we can find common ground in an everyday commonplace. - I worry that many people feel so disconnected and lost in their kitchens. I hope to be a help in this area.