The joy of having only one.

Something big is happening: I’m in the process of actually finishing a book.  In fact, I’m slowing down so I can savor it.  Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home is a beautifully written memoir by a woman who suffered and survived a brain aneurysm.  Very meaningfully, she weaves in recipes and stories of how food shaped her past and pulled her back to health.  Every page holds delight, but this passage about the joys of a small kitchen is my favorite.  You’ll see why:

“We kept nothing in that kitchen that we didn’t need, a pleasant side effect of which being that everything we had was both useful and used. There is a special kind of satisfaction in owning but three mixing bowls, a single favorite wooden spatula, and one each of the few pots and pans you actually like to cook in. You always get to use the spoon that feels best in your hand when that's the only one you got.” 

- Jessica Fechtor, author of Stir

Having a small kitchen, I can relate.  I’ve always been strangely ok with it and guessed it was because everything is in close proximity.  She nails it though; when you have limits on what you own, you tend to hold onto only the best.  Isn’t one perfect thing better than a dozen that are not?