Dishing the Dirt

Like a groggy bear (such as this one or this one or this one or this one) emerging from hibernation, I'm squinting at the light and sniffing around for real food after spending the never-ending winter sniffing around for mentions of it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I hope the search for sunlight won't prove as fruitless (or as veggieless).

As winter turns to something vaguely spring-ish (it's 55 and raining as I write...), I notice that my dirty pot and pan quota increases in the spring. Taking a stand against the chill and damp and impatient for Summer Mind, I scrubbed and serviced the grill about a month ago. Well, here's to outdoor cooking in polar fleece and raincoats. Grill baskets, cages, huge mixing bowls and half sheet pans now hit the suds along with the cutting boards, colanders and roasting pans of winter. 

Not that I'm complaining. Into every busy kitchen some dirty dishes must fall. So why do so many people hate washing them? Google lists 396,000 results to the query, "hate to wash dishes". Yeesh. The biggest reason given? Because the cycle repeats itself relentlessly. But so do the cycles of sleep and eating and watching bad TV. Is it because we're standing up during dishwashing? Is it because many people lack a window over the sink? Is it because gunky pots require elbow grease? Dunno, because while I'm doing dishes I'm contentedly daydreaming my way to Sparkle City. I admit it - I like washing dishes. 

From a simply practical standpoint, knowing they'll soon be done, tidy and back in service is immensely satisfying. What cook doesn't appreciate a certain degree of order? My sadly departed mother-in-law, a huge fan of order, made two lasting pronouncements on the matter of all things dishy. First, there is One Right Way to Load a Dishwasher. Second, Use the Right Tools. I respectfully disagree with the first rule, since each load of dirty dishes is a unique jigsaw puzzle all its own, but I get the spirit of it. I'm a huge proponent of the second rule, though - why have so many kitchen tools if we don't use them? Washing them afterwards is worth the aid they give us.

But being a philosopher's daughter, I can't just leave it there. There has to be a way to overthink dishes. Ah, got it. Like the much-quoted American Beat poet and self-effacing dharma teacher Gary Snyder said, this task is not a distraction from the path. In and of itself, it is the path. Whoa. If so much of life is full of mundane things, doesn't it make sense to celebrate them or at least recognize their place in the order of our lives? And isn't a stack of dirty pots evidence of abundance both of kitchen tools and the foods that soiled them? Sounds pretty good to me.

I've said it here before, but my goodness, aren't we fortunate? Edward Gibbon mentioned the value of emperors' kitchenware before the Roman Empire became the place where Euros went to die. How many more luxuries do we have than emperors did back then? Hot and cold running water, bad TV, the Internet, polar fleece (thank God!), and tidy little W.C.s, the likes of which would dazzle an emperor. Now if only they came with a self-cleaning option....