A Cookie in Every Pot

Cookie continues her series of poses as Domestic Goddess (in addition to being “The Goddess”) by curling up in one of my enamel cooking pots. This time I had no garnish for her; though I would have been glad for a few carrots and stalks of celery, they’d already gone into another pot of soup. I may get some and leave the pot where it is in the hope that she’ll do it again.

This pot being a one-gallon pot, I now know that Cookie’s total volume is just about one gallon of tortoiseshell ingenuity.

She is intelligent and self-aware, curious and inventive yet feigns humility, and this habit of crawling into kitchen items has always seemed to be a thinly veiled bid for a photo op. Until recently, she hated having her photo taken, and to my dismay would look away from me at the last minute as I tried to capture her many expressions. Her objection may have only been that she wanted to choose her venue and pose. She’s been very ostentatious about these kitchen poses, pausing to look directly at me, then arranging herself just so.

This is the second in a series, the first being “Cookie in the Pasta Bowl”. My kitchen has no lack of things to get into—safely, of course—the room being very small, and at this time of the year I’m cooking a lot because vegetables are ripe and ready for soups and such. I’ve brought all my extra pots and baskets and mixing bowls out from storage and they are everywhere. But even without all these extra props I’ve found Cookie curled up in the basket with the tomatoes, curled up on my dinner plate while I’m cooking dinner, and curled up next to a rustic loaf of bread on the bread board in imitation of its shape and color.