Traditions.

Somewhere around the time I went off to college, my mom and my aunts started calling themselves the Kitchen Sluts. Nothing like my friends' conservative, well behaved aunts and mothers, my mom and my aunts Suze and Pam would strap on their KSA (read: Kitchen Sluts Anonymous) aprons, and expound with a martini in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other about why cooking is sexy. (Fire, knives, texture and flavor, the age old relationship between food and sex…) They were the centerpiece of every family celebration, and you couldn’t help but want to be near them while they discussed their favorite kitchen gadgets, with the sound of onions hitting hot oil sizzling in the background. They were loud, funny, irreverent, and cooked over the top, elaborate meals…you know, for fun. They didn’t do low fat. They didn't cook with boxed wine. They were a huge force of personality. The party was in the kitchen, and the only way into the kitchen was to earn it. The summer after my sophomore year of college I decided I had to learn to cook, so while all of my friends were off at the Star Market looking for frozen pizza and mountain dew, I was at the farmers market looking for shallots and heirloom tomatoes. (Not to mention finding friends old enough to buy me cooking wine.) I had to prove myself to earn a place in the kitchen. I returned to the family Thanksgiving celebration (aka the “Turkey Orgy”) ready to show the women in my family what I could do, and when I premiered my homemade marinara the day after Turkey day, I was met with approving shrieks of, “My God! She’s one of us! She’s a KITCHEN SLUT!” I’ve since renewed my membership with new and increasingly decadent contributions to the annual family feast—my heart attack mashed potatoes (or as my aunt Pam calls then, “infarction spuds”) are now considered a family tradition, and this year I introduced sushi to the family Thanksgiving spread with my guaca-maki rolls, to roaring acclaim. Keeping up one's end of the Kitchen Sluts mantle is a constant game of self imposed one-upsmanship,but the payoff is a coveted spot at the heart of the party, in the kitchen,where the music is louder, the jokes are bawdier, and the wine is constantly flowing. Now when I’m entertaining my twenty-something crowd of friends, I bring that Kitchen Slut philosophy with me. Relax. Screw the recipe, if it doesn't work, just order a pizza and pour everybody some more wine. It’s a foreign idea for a lot of my friends, who still can’t work their way around a kitchen, but I’m teaching them, slowly but surely, and gaining a reputation for my dinner parties in the process. But one thing’s for sure. I would never have learned to cook if the outrageous women in my family hadn’t made it look like such a party, and taught me everything I know about food, wine, and entertaining.