One Pan And Four Things In The Cupboard

You counted them out loud with the door open.

Rice. A can of beans. Half a bag of pasta. And the tin of tomatoes that has been there since you moved in.

Four. You said the number under your breath and shut the door and did not cook anything.

And under the counter there is one pan. Not a set. One, with a slightly loose handle, that you have had since an apartment you left about six years ago.

And here is the sentence you have been running about that kitchen, and it is worth saying out loud because you have never quite said it: I do not have what you need to cook.

Not enough pans. No proper knife. Not the things a kitchen is supposed to have. And so cooking is a thing that happens in other people's houses, where there are drawers of equipment, and in yours it is not really available.

So this article has one rule and I am going to keep it all the way through.

There is nothing in it about equipment.

Not one suggestion about what you could get. No mention of what to buy cheaply, nothing about the three things every kitchen should have, no list of essentials at any price. Not even a hint that a second pan would open things up.

Because every one of those, however kindly meant, agrees with your sentence. It says: yes, you are missing something, and here is how to close the gap. And then the cooking waits until the gap is closed, and it has been waiting six years.

One pan. Four things. That is the whole kitchen this article works with, and it is not a limited version of a kitchen.

Set on the great pot

There is a moment in Kings where a man tells his servant to cook for a crowd, in a famine, and it is worth noticing what he asks for.

And Elisha came again to Gilgal: and there was a dearth in the land; and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him: and he said unto his servant, Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage for the sons of the prophets. (2 Kings 4:38, King James Version)

Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage.

Look at the situation. There is a dearth in the land, which means a famine. There is a room full of hungry men. And there is one instruction.

Set on the great pot.

The pot. Singular, definite, the one they have. He does not send for anything, he does not describe a better arrangement, and there is no suggestion anywhere in the passage that the equipment is inadequate for what is needed.

And what gets made is pottage, which is the plainest food in the Bible. A pot of something boiled: grain, whatever herbs are around, water. It is not a dish. It is the thing you make when there is a dearth and there are people to feed.

So the whole scene is one pot, very little food, and a room that gets fed.

And notice, because it matters for a man with four things in a cupboard, that nothing in this account treats that as a hardship story about the kitchen. The pot is not pitied. The plainness of the pottage is not commented on. It is simply how food happened, for most people, for most of history.

The idea that a kitchen requires an inventory is about ninety years old. Every generation before that cooked in one pot over one fire, and fed households, and nobody described themselves as unable to cook because they lacked a second pan.

One pot in a famine feeds a room in that account, and the equipment has never once been what decided whether people ate. 2 Kings 4:38 says set on the great pot and seethe pottage, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody counting four items with a cupboard door open.

Four things is a meal

Here is the practical half, and it is arithmetic.

Those four things are not four ingredients. They are several meals and you have not looked at them that way.

Rice and the tin of tomatoes is a meal. Beans and the tomatoes is a meal. Pasta and the tomatoes is a meal. Rice and beans is a meal that most of the world has eaten for centuries and considers entirely normal food.

That is four meals out of four items, without leaving the house, and there is almost certainly salt in that kitchen and probably something else at the back.

And here is what has actually been happening, which is not laziness.

You have been comparing what you have against a picture of what a meal is supposed to be. The picture has several components on a plate, and something green, and a thing that has been done properly, and against that picture rice and tomatoes is not a meal, it is an admission.

So you do not make it, and you order, and the four things stay in the cupboard as evidence of what you do not have.

But a meal is food you cooked and ate. That is the definition. Anything past that is a preference, and preferences are lovely and they are not requirements, and nobody in history has ever been fed by a picture.

And the one pan is not a constraint you have to work around. It is the ordinary way this is done. A pan on a heat with things in it is the central technology of cooking, and everything else is convenience.

Those four items are several meals rather than four ingredients, and a picture of a proper plate has never once fed anybody. The written word sets one pot on for a whole room in a famine, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has been measuring a cupboard against a photograph.

Cook in it tonight, and wash it after

So here is the assignment, and the second half is not a throwaway.

Cook something in the one pan you have tonight and wash it afterward.

Tonight. In that pan. Out of what is in that cupboard.

Rice, and when it is nearly done, the tomatoes in with it. Or the beans warmed through with the tomatoes and eaten with whatever. Or the pasta, drained, back in the pan with the tomatoes. Anything where the pan does the work.

Do not go and get anything first. Do not look up whether you are doing it right. Put the pan on and start.

And then the second half: wash it afterward.

That sounds like housekeeping and it is not. It is the thing that makes tomorrow possible.

Because with one pan, the pan is the kitchen. If it is sitting there tomorrow evening with tonight's food dried onto it, then cooking tomorrow requires cleaning first, and that extra step at seven in the evening is exactly enough to make you reach for the phone instead. Then the pan sits for another day, and by Thursday it is a thing you are avoiding, and the kitchen closes.

Washed and back under the counter, the whole barrier to cooking tomorrow is: pick up pan.

That is the entire system in this article, and it is why I am spending a paragraph on washing up. A one pan kitchen works perfectly and it works on one condition, which is that the pan is clean when you come to it.

And when you have washed it, put it back where it goes and look at the cupboard again. There will be two or three things left in there, and now you know they are a meal.

You are keeping the one pan ready so that tomorrow costs nothing, and a dirty pan at seven has never once been a small obstacle. 2 Kings 4:38 sets the one pot on without sending for anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody washing a pan and putting it back under the counter.