I built the innards of a kitchen haphazardly in 2014. 

I was newly married, relying on guest gifts and general ideas. The first time I’d ever shopped in a grocery store alone was in 2005, age 18, freshly on my own. I had no idea how to create a grocery list around recipes or prepare the recipes or anything of the sort. I got by on snacks, soups, and rice and beans.

When I got married, I didn’t even stop to think that maybe building a kitchen could be a thoughtful experience, or something I could do with my husband. This was just what women were responsible for, what they should innately know how to do, apparently, and I gave it my best shot.

I would research recipes based on a craving or an idea, and then find myself spending way more than I’d expected. Once I had a butcher carve out an inch of meat for a recipe, misunderstanding the ingredient list and not realizing how little it was. Without question, he handed me the tiniest, carefully wrapped package.

A year and a half later, unsafe, I left my husband, and I took most of the kitchen stuff – the brightly colored knife block, the cast iron skillet, the coveted rice cooker. I had learned some recipes, had done my best, but still didn’t really know what I was doing.

With my life in shambles, I headed first to California for a couple of months, and then to New Jersey, and now Arkansas, where in all three locations I lived with other people who already had (mostly) fully formed kitchens. It wouldn’t be until this year, 2021, that I’m looking at a fresh kitchen, having lost a lot of my things along the way. I still have the knife block, missing three steak knives. The iron skillet needs to be reseasoned and scrubbed. And the rice cooker is still chugging along, its happy little self.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin, I realized, and I decided to get some help this time.

I first met Susanna in 2018. She was starting to explore her ideas for a food instagram then, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch her figure out her voice along the way. Everything she posts seems accessible.

When I moved into my new place, I reached out for some tips. Could I pay her to provide some guidance?

Susanna’s Instagram
Susanna’s Website

She reminded that most people aren’t comfortable in the kitchen, that everyone has different needs, and that it takes time to not only build the parts, but learn the techniques and skills to make the recipes. That making Kraft mac and cheese out of a box was okay, that deciding how much I wanted to cook every week was okay.

I was determined to make the switch to fresh parmesan, and I’d already purchased a cute grater from Bed, Bath, & Beyond, based on her content.

We talked about working on some projects together, but first, I needed to figure out my goals in my kitchen.

The experience, being on the other side, getting some help and some coaching, reminded me of coaching my own clients through dog training. “Babies don’t learn to walk overnight,” I’d remind them when they’d get frustrated. “Look at where you are, and where you started. See how far you’ve come.”

When clients ask me when I knew I was good with dogs, I shrug. “I didn’t and I wasn’t,” I tell them. “I had to practice really hard.”

Some of them don’t know what to do with that information, some want to roll their eyes at me, and some actually do.

But it’s the truth. I’d always been interested in dogs. I loved being around animals, but the reason I pursued my other passion, writing, was because I had some natural ability (from lots of reading and writing from a young age) but I didn’t have any natural ability with animals, and besides a week-long horse camp when I was 11, I had no way to truly learn. When I entered my internship in 2017, I had a heightened sense of my own knowledge, from owning one dog for the past five years and having taken classes with him, read a few books, researched a lot. I had absolutely no idea about the extent of what I didn’t know, and I was humbled quickly. I knew nothing, and it was time to put my head down and truly start learning. And for the first six months, that’s all I did. I worked almost every single day on the farm, training dogs, cleaning things, learning. I assisted with six plus classes a week as well, taking everything they would give me. At month six, everything started to click. I was a long way away from knowing EVERYTHING, and there are people in the industry 20+ years who don’t know everything, but I had built a good foundation, and everything was a lot easier.

It was something I wanted, and I was willing to work hard, and literally put in the blood, sweat, and tears to make it happen.

But what people see now is the end result, the compilation of all of those dogs, all of those days, plus the experiences I had here working for a dog bar and a doggy day care. And believe or not, although my time at Philly Unleashed were my most informative months, I’ve grown more as a dog trainer in the past year.

Nobody sees the mistakes, the fears, the trying and trying again. Just the parts now that look so easy because I’ve practiced them so much.

There’s very little in life that’s actually innate. 

I don’t think I would be as skilled in writing if my mother hadn’t been able to focus so much on it with us. We learned to read early, and we got weekly library trips. Reading and writing saved my life in a lot of ways, with those early access points, that intention begun by my mother. I was able to be a writer because I read so much first, and I’ve continued to practice so much. There’s things I’ve written that no one will ever see, but others seeing them isn’t the point. The practice is. 

The deleted words, the discarded pages, the unfinished ideas. 

They’re all a part of the learning process.

And then one day we look up, and things finally feel easy, and others notice the skill, but nobody talks about how hard it was to get there, because that’s not being positive, and nobody wants to think about how far there is to go, because there’s too much else we have to think about and work on and it’s disheartening to give voice to.

But anyway, what’s that cliche? 

It’s the journey, not the destination.

Not everyone’s journey is around a career, either.

Some of us just do things because we like to and want to.

That’s how I’m looking at this kitchen adventure. I’m looking forward to learning more, figuring out how to nourish and take care of myself on a budget.

And next, I have a guitar I need to restring.