The Kitchen Nazis

My friend Lourdes gave me this oddly flattering moniker; the kitchen nazi. When she first used it I found myself appalled. The word kitchen conveys warm images of whislting tea kettles, heat emanating from oven & stove and best of all, companions, be they wee little doggies or wine-sipping friends who cluster about the coziness in the most important room of the house. Contrasted with the gut-searing connotations of the word nazi, there doesn't appear to be any connection. Regardless, I came to understand what she meant.

She means the kitchen is such an important location to me, I tend to exert my considerable power to maintain and sustain it. Take for example my recent kitchen renovation. I could have opted for a simple, inexpensive overhaul of the cabinets, new counters appliances and left it at that. But no. I needed, nay, demanded the demolition of a few non load-bearing walls. I demanded the removal of perfectly decent, albeit ugly, green subway tile popular to say, the late 1950s. And I had to have the walls painted the perfect warm yellow that I painted them not once, but twice.

Still I thought kitchen nazi was a bit of an overkill. Until my parents came to visit. I might be known to my friends as a woman who loves to cook. But I happen to know for a fact that my mother spends 95% of her time in the freaking kitchen. Not sipping wine or chatting on the phone while relaxing on a plush chair. She spends every moment of her kitchen time COOKING. So when she and Dad arrived for a visit her first activity was to unload their Cambry of the 3, count em, 3 coolers of food she made for her visit.

Now I'm not only NOT a bad cook, Dad actually prefers some of my cooking to Mom's. So they both know I'm perfectly capable of their care and feeding. However, Mom felt compelled to cook 2 weeks' worth of food in preparation for their visit to me. While she unloaded her basket of goodies she managed to shattered a personal record of hers. She broke a major kitchen component within 30 minutes of arriving to my brand new renovated kitchen. 30 minutes is all it took to dismember my fat, adorable soap dispenser. Did I mention it was part of an expensive faucet set that can't be replaced without uprooting the entire undermounted faucet set?

But that was just the beginning. My Le Creuset pot in a fabulous sunset orange has been used only 3 times since I bought it last year. Mostly because it weighs a freaking ton and can not be easily lifted or cleaned without the use of a backhoe. But Mom found a way to lug the darn thing and cook all sorts of goodies in the stew pot. Instead of appreciating her appreciation of my cookware I grew sullen and jealous. This is MY cookware and I should be enjoying it.

That's when I began to understand the notion of kitchen nazi at a deeper level. I want to control all aspects of my kitchen. Some might say, even of my home. I recall the incident in which I was given the nickname Kitchen Nazi. My friends were sharing a brunch and everyone brought some item. I brought vegetable lasagne in a bechamel source and happily it popped it in the oven to heat. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a vase filled with flowers. They were lovely but had been taken directly out of the plastic sheeting and into the vase. The stems needed shearing, stray fronds needed to be clipped, and the flowers needed to be arranged in a complementary color scheme. Do I did this. To the laughter of the entire group. They didn't even attempt to arrange the flowers they informed me since they knew I would do so anyway.

Hence the emergence of the Kitchen Nazi. But control is one of the characteristics that is not tolerated well by the universe. So I found out during my parents' latest visit. My kitchen soon began to smell like my Mom's; which means the scent of curry permeated every nook of the kitchen. My spa bathroom, chic and comfortable smelled like combination of sandalwood & Avon Skin So Soft bathoil. Finally, my bedroom, fitted with sexy bedding & lush pillows began to reek of Ben Gay.

Good thing I'm not a bedroom Nazi.