One of my favorite things is a linen dishtowel from Studio Patro, in San Francisco. I don’t know if they still make it, but if not you should email them and ask that it be revived. Because the message is both important and universal: Cook Every Day.

A linen dishtowel from Studio Patro, in San Francisco contains words to live by.

 I want to make a garden sign/ornament that uses old wooden spoons and that slogan. I haven’t decided exactly what it will look like or where it should go, but in many ways, these are words to live by.

To cook means to combine ingredients for a meal. But it can also mean perform or proceed vigorously or well. As in “the band was really cooking.”

In and out of the garden, both definitions are worth striving for. When we are combining ingredients for a meal we’re usually using fresh components, be they vegetables, fruits, grains or protein. In other words, we’re preparing real food. And real foods, unlike prepared foods or worse, “food products”, are better for us.

Cooking meals from fresh ingredients is also a creative act. Like most undertakings of creativity, it feeds future connections and achievements. When we are focused on combining ingredients for an enjoyable outcome, we’re training our brains to think creatively toward other pleasurable experiences.

And performing vigorously and well? Why would we not want this in all aspects of our lives?

Raising our own food inspires us to cook every day. When our fruits and vegetables are fresh from the garden they are the tastiest food on earth. Being the result of our own labors, we also value the produce even more. We’ve performed vigorously and well.

In all parts of our lives, we should strive for the same results. We aim for all cultivation efforts to be creative, satisfying and nourishing to body and soul.

Cook Every Day.

Gardening is so much like cooking. We have something in mind that we want to create, we assemble ingredients, taste and adapt as we go, and then wait for a bit to see how things turn out. We season as we go, and we enjoy sharing what we’ve “cooked” with others.

Hey, Studio Patro, listen up: This is the most important message you could put on any of your products. OK…maybe “Plant Every Day” would be as good, but we would have to work a bit to get people to realize that planting and cooking are both important dishtowel messages.

There is nothing as life affirming as being able to go out to the garden and ask, “What’s for dinner?” If you haven’t had the pleasure of planting a vegetable garden or cooking your own home-grown produce, you’ve got something huge to look forward to.