Last week, just in time for International Women’s Day, I got back in the kitchen.
Let’s rewind up a bit. Growing up, my mother was a homemaker, a great cook, and an even better baker. She knew how to set a beautiful table and host a party with every single thoughtful detail in place. Her mother was the same way. It was a very rare occasion that dinner was not a home cooked meal. She still, to this day, has this red Betty Crocker binder with recipes handwritten in her perfect tiny cursive for from-scratch pie crusts, waffles, cookies, and casseroles. Looking toward my father’s upbringing, food was also a centerpiece in my grandmother’s role and identity. She didn’t speak much English but the first question she would always ask her grandchildren when they arrived at her home was, “You hungry, babi? Come, eat.” She was often in the kitchen, manning several pots on the stove, rotating cooking sheets in the oven, with drying herbs on the table from her own garden, and preparing food with memorized, unmeasured recipes that can only come from passing them down for generations.
Naturally as a child I gravitated towards being in the kitchen with my mom and grandmothers, especially interested in baking. As I got older, my first jobs were in restaurants as a server. As I moved into nicer dining establishments, my exposure to different types of food and cooking really burgeoned. I remember the first time trying steak cooked medium rare instead of well done. I remember the first time having homemade macaroni and cheese instead of Kraft from a box. I remember a cook teaching me how to make homemade alfredo sauce with sauteed garlic, heavy whipping cream, and a lottttt of cheese.
My passion for food has never wavered, but I did stop being in the kitchen, preparing food, for a lot of years. It was due to a combination of a lot of factors but the primary one, in early adulthood, was trying to buck the gender stereotypes. I could cook, but I choose not to. Every time I moved to a new apartment or house, I would get interested in cooking again, only for it to eventually fade. For one, my career was absolutely exhausting and I had little to no energy during the week to do anything. But in the back of my very stubborn mind, I thought I had only two lanes to define myself: either as a “career” woman, or as a “homemaker”.
One of the many reasons I was drawn to Women in Title (WIT) was the charitable initiatives element. I’ve done a lot of volunteering work and there isn’t one single time where I’ve come home after and thought, “Wow, that was a waste of time.” In preparing for International Women’s Day, the Detroit WIT chapter decided to do our first volunteer effort for a local women’s shelter in Pontiac, Haven. I’ve volunteered at Haven before during the Christmas season when the focus is on gifts for the women and children in the shelter, and I was unfamiliar with their volunteer opportunities during other times in the year. They have three offerings for groups who want to volunteer: cooking a meal at the shelter, hosting a game night with youth, and deep cleaning the shelter. The Detroit WIT chapter chose to cook a meal.
After putting together the menu last week, I decided (for logistics purposes) to cook the same meal at home. It was chicken parmesan, my husband’s favorite. He’s used to coming home from work to find me binge-watching a show on the couch, possibly crocheting, and instead he walked in to me spooning cookie dough on to a baking sheet, flipping sauteed chicken, stirring noodles, and pulling brownies out of the oven. What?
I actually had fun cooking and baking that evening, even after a long day at work. I did NOT enjoy all the dishes that got dirty, that much never changes. So a few days later when Detroit WIT showed up at Haven, we were ready to prepare this meal.
It’s important to keep in mind that while I have a lot of love and respect for these women, it is a totally other experience cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen with seven women who I’m sure run their own formidable kitchens at home.
I am used to, and very comfortable with, environments in which it is beneficial and sometimes necessary for one person to be in charge. Literally describing the adage, “too many cooks in the kitchen”, I was prepared to have to step into a director role for this endeavor. But to my surprise, that didn’t happen. After laying out all our ingredients and perusing the cupboards to find what we needed, a natural order fell into place.
As I manned the stove of five various frying pans with breaded chicken that were taking far too long to brown, one of the woman came over and told me, matter-of-fact, “You need butter.” She instructed another woman to cut up butter pats for us and she started just drenching the chicken in butter and like magic, the chicken started browning. With dwindling confidence that the oven was working properly, we had to brainstorm solutions to getting the food thoroughly cooked. Cheers went up when the green beans and carrots became fork-tender. We held our breaths as we cut into a piece of chicken to ensure it was cooked. We had to try and actively avoid lifting the lid on the massive stock pot because “a watched pot never boils” and boy was that accurate. The minute the noodles were finished, like a well-rehearsed routine, we put the food out, washed the dishes, cleaned the countertop, and put away unused supplies.
As I looked at these seven women whom I admire, it became very obvious that the “two lane” theory I had been harboring was wrong, much like most of my rebellious tendencies started in my early 20s. These women can command a closing room, negotiate a contract, manage multiple companies, and navigate tense situations without a thought or hesitation. And, unsurprisingly, they can cook. It was so much more than just putting ingredients together. It was an unfamiliar environment, unfamiliar supplies, unknown members of your team – the only thing we did know was the desired outcome. There were unexpected challenges that we had to work together to solve. No one person in the kitchen could just “do it all” because honestly there wasn’t the time or the space, so we all had to ask each other for help at different times. We came in there with our own ideas of how a meal gets prepared and alternate solutions and options were continually presented. I’ve never once tossed noodles with cheese in my life and I will never again make noodles without cheese now that I know better.
Here’s the quiet part I’m going to say out loud: women are different than men. I grew up in the “anything you can do, I can do better” era and I’ve spent half my career trying to prove I belonged in the same room as the men because I can do exactly what they can do. It took me getting back into the kitchen to realize that I’m not interested in doing exactly what men can do. Because what those seven women did in that Haven kitchen is what I’m interested in cultivating in a workplace culture. The empowerment of observing someone struggling and telling them with authority, “you need butter.” The ego-less ability to offer an alternative way and allow the person doing the work to decide to accept your advice or continue down their own path. The value of keeping the lid on the pot because your desired outcome will not magically appear if you check on it 40 times or 4 times – some things just take time. The autonomy to know what needs to get done and to assign yourself to the necessary role, without having to be directed towards it.
One last observation – it was a wholesome, comforting experience being in a kitchen full of women, because it connects to a deep part of all of us, the experiences we’ve all had in a kitchen, with other women, like the matriarchs of our families, for generations. Our conference rooms and closings rooms don’t feel like a coming-home experience for women, at least not yet. Because we are the first and second generations of women in these spaces. And it is our job, our journey, our obligation to cultivate this coming-home experience for the generations coming up after us, so that they feel just as comfortable in the boardroom as they do in their family kitchens.
