I love cooking with Rosemary. The sparse stalk with its long-fingered leaves scents a Witch’s kitchen beautifully on a bright – but cold – February afternoon. You see, today I found myself reminiscing about the Sunday afternoon dinners that my mother used to make during winter, complete with pot roast and potatoes.
I needed to feel grounded, to return to my roots. So a quick trip to the market produced potatoes, onions, and carrots (veggies that grow underground = help one stay grounded) and upon returning home, into the kitchen crock pot they went. A chuck roast followed, along with fresh Rosemary.
As the day traveled from a sunny morning, to a bright but shockingly cold afternoon before diving into a starry evening, I inhaled the warm smells of a roast cooking merrily in my kitchen. All day I clearly remembered many an afternoon spent in my mother’s kitchen, her presence and energy alive in the ritual of preparing a meal that she had served up to our family on hundreds of Sundays before.
Rosemary is for remembrance, says Hamlet’s Ophelia, and while I have no plans to meet her end, I will call upon this herb should I find myself wanting to summon fond memories from younger days. As Nicholas Culpeper notes in The English physitian, when speaking of Rosemary: “It helpeth a weak Memory, and quickneth the Senses.” Indeed it does and when I yearn for a return to my childhood, to remember the warm kitchen of my mother, Rosemary is sure to lead me there.
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