An Inspired Kitchen: the Simple Pleasures that Keep Me Going

We returned home from our dreamy week of hosting our first Italian getaway just last week. During our stay with our 10 guests, we ate and explored and tasted and rested far away from the daily demands of home. It was a moment of excess. Extra truffles on the pasta, extra prosciutto on the plate. For our group, it was a time of beautiful simplicity, and in some moments, beautiful songs. But time marches on and it was time to come home. Far away from the land of olive oil and one euro cappuccinos was home. Now home is an impossibly wonderful place that I am so grateful to call mine even with all of its daily demands and messes. So just like I want to focus on simplifying ingredients in the kitchen, I want to do the same for our animals and Maeve is exactly what I look for in a dog food. Birdie and Rex are both much more vibrant when they're fed a raw food diet. Maeve is a human grade protein with organ meats, produce and supplements that is flash frozen. It's made with super high quality ingredients. You can read them right on the bag. You'll know exactly what they are. Dogs are meant to have a raw food diet, one that is natural, simple and reflective of what the dogs would actually eat without fillers and processing, just like us. Though we've made our own natural dog foods in the past, that was long ago when the schedule allowed for such fun things and long before company like Maeve existed. And I'm so glad that they're here now so that we don't have to compromise on principles when it comes to our animals food and it's convenient for us. Right now you can save 30% off your first order with Maeve by using the code Elliot and clicking the link right below the video. Stuart and I worked incredibly hard during our KV to get away to give our guests the luxury experience that they expected. The kitchen was cleaned while they slept, supper was prepared for them by private chefs in the villa and around the village, and I made sure we were plentifully stocked with wine. In short, their cares were taken care of. For them the trip was quite simple. Show up and indulge in all of the wonder that a small village in rural Italy has to offer. Even though the week wasn't the same for me as the coordinator and host, I had the added privilege of seeing behind the scenes. Working alongside the restauranteurs and chefs and chauffeurs, I got to see a slightly different piece of Italy and this is why I love to travel. I never ever ever return the same person and believe it or not even though we worked tremendously hard to coordinate and host this wonderful getaway, I came back inspired to get into my own kitchen and to make it sing with all of that homemade charm that makes it uniquely mine. Though the kitchen is far from perfect, this sweet space has been built by our own hands. Each piece has been selected and invited in by us. This is where we get to gather and tend to daily. Way back when I first started tending a home, each piece was so impossibly new to me. I'd never made my own bread or soaked my beans from scratch or simmered my own broth. Each working piece of the kitchen is a piece that I had to learn. In fact, I remember buying my first mocha pot after a trip to Italy almost 10 years ago. Now it's just a part of normal life and routine, just like baking bread or homemade stock has become. For me, it's these daily rituals that become the breath of the kitchen, the air that we breathe every day. Each time that I return home from my adopted second home in Italy, I find that I crave my own kitchen and I crave deep simplicity in it. I come back with a desire to source beautiful ingredients and allow them to be what they are without too much fuss, without asking too much of them. Almost like taking dishes back further and further into their purest form. Oftentimes, basic tasks like tending to a sourdough starter, they can take up a little bit too much time and space in our heads, like a never-ending to-do list that's forever changing. But the kitchen is far more forgiving than that. And since returning home from Italy, I keep reminding myself to take it one task, one meal at a time. In this way, I'm only thinking one step ahead of myself. So on any given day, that could mean pulling meat from the freezer, soaking some beans, or just mixing up a pastry crust. Just one step ahead, keeping it simple in ingredients as well as planning. Because then the kitchen stays delightful and stays a blessing, not a burden. While in Italy, we had the privilege of being cooked for by a private chef in the villa. She explained to me that she works very hard to use no more than five ingredients per dish. This allows each ingredient to have a say, showcasing what it's capable of when seasoned and cooked and prepared well. While there's an extraordinarily large world for the home cook to explore, I wonder, what if we dialed it back and took cooking back to its basics? One of the very best things that I ate the entire time we were in Italy was just a perfectly made ciabatta with tomato and burrata cheese. It was so impossibly simple and wonderful. These are foods that are simple, that please us when we make them without too much pomp and circumstance. In my kitchen today, that looks like some slowly simmered meat and broth that I can turn into a quick soup for supper. I love that on the Italian table, you'll often find something like this, a pot of something delicious alongside perfectly cooked beans, a bowl of some ripe fruit, some nice sliced cheese, none of which took too much time to prepare, but was still thoughtfully curated. And home cooks, this is great news for us, because the simpler it is, the easier it is to make it a part of our life and routine. One of the dishes that I think showcases this so well are my favorite beans. I enjoyed these at a restaurant a few trips back. They're just high quality beans, soaked and cooked until they're tender, then completely drenched with olive oil, rosemary, lemons, salt and pepper. They're impossibly delicious and unpretentious, just beautiful ingredients simply prepared in a way that highlights what they do best. I'm coming back from our trip so hungry to take our next group in April, and if you'd like to experience our getaway, I'll put a link right below the video where we can connect and learn more. In the meanwhile, I'm looking into autumn and winter and the cooking that's ahead with excitement for keeping it simple. I want lots of dishes on the I want each dish to reflect itself, showcasing what can be done by just appreciating what's clearing away the excess allows more time and money to be devoted to good ingredients, or even time spent enjoying those good ingredients with others. Keeping it simple may mean being able to invite others more easily to our table, or feeling less burdened by the tasks at hand. To me, it feels like a bold and wonderful statement to proclaim that simple foods like beans and bread and cheese and meats and broth and vegetables and good salt and oil are sufficient. Yes, I can make them sing, and if I can't, I can easily learn how, because when we pair it back, it is after all quite simple. Simple and delicious, and I'm already hungry again for more.