Kitchen Diary: Knead for Peace

The act of making bread makes me sad. The sweet scent of fermented yeast drifts to my nose, once a smell that brought joy and comfort, but helplessly watching events unfold for Palestinians who will not have comfort or bread brings only despair. The act of making bread or a cake, something usually jovial, feels outright sinister. Why do I have the privilege to stand in a kitchen with ingredients in my cupboard and bake? 

I dip my crust of bread into olive oil, and I envision thousands of beautiful gnarled olive trees hundreds of years old, destroyed by this war. As if the carnage of human life isn’t enough, we destroy trees too. In someone else’s lifetime, the trees will grow back, the people will not. 

It’s hard to swallow what the world is allowing, what I’m allowing. The only thing worth dying for is someone else’s right to live, so they can stand in their kitchen and taste olive oil and bread.  My kitchen feels entitled, ugly and quite frankly – it’s lonely. How does my body get to Gaza, because my heart is already there.

We have well developed recipes for war, but not peace. It’s time for “recipe developers” to get to work. That’s where I am, which brings me back to Gaza…