ABOUT CATHLEEN

I Didn’t Set Out to Do Any of This

There was another life before this one — structured, fast-paced and mostly lived behind a desk. Then I planted a small kitchen garden.

What started there gradually changed the questions I was asking. I wanted to understand what I was growing, how I could use it, why certain ingredients had endured for generations and what they could do beyond the garden itself.

One curiosity kept leading to another.

From the Garden, Outward

The garden came first. Growing herbs and vegetables made me pay more attention to ingredients — where they came from, how they were used and why some of the simplest ones seemed to turn up everywhere.

That curiosity followed me into the kitchen. I began studying culinary

nutrition and looking more closely at the relationship between what we eat and how we feel.

But the more I learned about plants, oils, herbs and other familiar ingredients, the less interested I became in keeping them neatly confined to food.

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell me about it.”

— Mary Oliver

Many of the same ingredients had histories that reached into bathing, body care, medicine, household use and everyday ritual. Olive oil belonged in the skillet and on the skin. Herbs could become dinner, tea or something entirely different. Salt was seasoning, a mineral and a centuries-old bathing ingredient. The boundaries weren't nearly as tidy as our modern shelves made them appear.

That's the territory I find myself exploring now — the places where the garden, kitchen and the ways we care for ourselves overlap.

Sometimes that becomes an essay in the Journal. Sometimes it becomes something I'm making at the worktable.

And sometimes it's simply an idea I want to follow a little further.