A Reporter's Kitchen: Review

Whether it's picnics in the gardens of Paris, or cooking for tribes in Morocco, there is very little reporter Jane Kramer hasn't seen or tasted. She is the kind of person who truly embodies what it means to live a life dedicated to food and travel. These two subjects are the driving forces of her writing, and serve as the fuel for her inspiration.

Cooking was not always such a prevalent part of Jane's life however. In her work, “The Reporter's Kitchen” she remembers back to her childhood, and how scarce the culinary knowledge of her household was. Her parents couldn't cook anything worth mentioning, and her brother had only mastered a single simple desert, made only for the sake of impressing a girl. It wasn't until Jane began writing that she also began cooking. She reminisces back to her time at Columbia University, when her free time was mostly centered around good books, good sex, and most importantly, good food. It was then that she began toying with her passions for writing and cooking, finding a way for one to complement the other. Shortly after she began experimenting with this relationship, her work was recognized and she was offered a job, catapulting her into the world of professional writing.

Through the many years in Jane's writing career, she has found time and time again that food and writing are not mutually exclusive experiences, but are instead interdependent of one another. The art form that is cooking, is an emotional and intellectual exercise for her. She has found that something as simple as an aroma or taste can take her back to the place the dish was first had. All at once, she begins to think and feel the way she did at the moment the food first entered her mouth, which in turn brings new perspective and motivation, which then contributes greatly to her writing.

Not all experiences with food are good ones however. Perhaps the most interesting of Jane's many stories concerning food, travel, and writing, is her story in Belfast, Northern Ireland. While in a hotel cooking a pot of cauliflower soup in search of inspiration, a terrorist's bomb exploded, and complete chaos broke out all around her. She and her colleagues now look back on the incident with horror, and she has since refrained from cooking cauliflower soup altogether.

Kramer argues that it is “sensible” to keep one's memories in the kitchen, because “that way they don't crash with the computer.” More than anything, Kramer seems to believe in cooking as a kind of “transcendental” or higher experience, that serves as a medium through which foreign cultures can be understood and unique perspectives gained. This conception of food, travel, and writing has been paramount in her writing process, and has served her well throughout her career.