![](https://i0.wp.com/media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/09/14/080123_ymk_michelenorris_portrait_0032_v2_wide-1cb407a3892f3e4737723319c28b476bc6d2c81d-s1400-c100.jpg?ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/09/14/080123_ymk_michelenorris_portrait_0032_v2_custom-3153c7735282c94c0991303131f6a29773ec4cc9-s1100-c50.jpg?ssl=1)
Michele Norris explores the household kitchen in her new podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen.
Audible
conceal caption
toggle caption
Audible
![](https://i0.wp.com/media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/09/14/080123_ymk_michelenorris_portrait_0032_v2_custom-3153c7735282c94c0991303131f6a29773ec4cc9-s1200.jpg?ssl=1)
Michele Norris explores the household kitchen in her new podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen.
Audible
Why does everybody find yourself within the kitchen at gatherings? Is it the smells? The heat? The bottle of champagne chilling within the fridge, simply begging to be popped?
No matter it’s (most likely the champagne), the kitchen is the guts of the house for households of all types.
Journalist, author and former host of All Issues Thought-about, Michele Norris, is exploring the importance of the household kitchen in her new podcast, Your Mama’s Kitchen.
Norris asks her visitors like former first girl Michelle Obama, CBS Mornings host Gayle King and actor Matthew Broderick about their mom’s kitchens — what they keep in mind, what they discovered there and what it means to them.
What’s it? The household kitchen.
First, let’s hear in regards to the kitchen Norris grew up in:
- “Our kitchen was additionally the hub of life. It had a TV, had a bit radio in there. She was at all times listening,” Norris advised All Issues Thought-about. “She was one of many early adopters for public radio up there in Minnesota Public Radio. But in addition, my sisters would take management after which go to the tip of the dial, and dance music would come on and we might dance within the kitchen.”
- “My mama’s kitchen was organized as a result of Betty Norris is organized,” Norris says. “It was scrumptious as a result of Betty Norris is a good prepare dinner. And it was adventurous. My mother used cookbooks to discover worlds that in any other case weren’t obtainable to her.”
Need extra on meals? Take heed to the Think about This episode on how the recent canine consuming contest turned an American custom.
![](https://i0.wp.com/media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/09/14/gettyimages-1011589324-edit_custom-ebeedb381fb8535c525e776d7b08e540847716cf-s1100-c50.jpg?ssl=1)
The sounds, smells and rituals of the kitchen all inform a narrative.
Caia Picture through Getty
conceal caption
toggle caption
Caia Picture through Getty
![](https://i0.wp.com/media.npr.org/assets/img/2023/09/14/gettyimages-1011589324-edit_custom-ebeedb381fb8535c525e776d7b08e540847716cf-s1200.jpg?ssl=1)
The sounds, smells and rituals of the kitchen all inform a narrative.
Caia Picture through Getty
What’s cookin’?
Within the podcast, former first girl Michelle Obama talks about how her household did not have some huge cash and had been cautious about how a lot meals they purchased, however regardless of that the kitchen was a heat and safe place.
- “They did not think about themselves poor,” Norris says of the previous first girl’s household. “That may not be a phrase that they utilized to themselves. However her mom stayed at house, and her father labored in Chicago — a municipal worker. And so they raised two children in a bit condominium above their kinfolk. And so their kitchen was mainly a transformed bed room. However what was fascinating in listening to her discuss that [was] significantly on the finish of the podcast the place you’ll be able to hear her getting a bit emotional.”
- This is how Obama described it on Norris’ podcast: “That was the facility of my mother and father’ love — that consistency, the standard of the interactions. That is what it means to be a mum or dad. That is the way you instill one thing worthwhile in your children.”
- Author Glennon Doyle and her spouse, soccer star Abby Wambach, describe within the podcast the difficult meshing they’ve needed to do in their very own kitchen based mostly on their childhoods. Wambach got here from an enormous household the place meals was plentiful; whereas Doyle’s mother and father instilled a way of shortage and monitoring what everybody ate as a result of they had been involved with physique.
- “Then [Doyle and Wambach] discover ways to come collectively and construct this stunning life collectively,” Norris says. “And that represents numerous different points of their life. That abundance and shortage usually offers with finance. It offers with how they cope with their time. So it is all this difficult stuff, however so many issues in life come proper again to the kitchen.”
What do the children must say?
- Norris requested her personal children what they might say about their household kitchen. Norris says she was a bit frightened about it at first: “As a result of the kitchens are additionally the place we pay payments, the place now we have arguments, the place we fuss at our children to do their homework, the place we do loopy volcano tasks on the kitchen desk.”
- “However I requested the children, and dancing got here up ‘trigger we do dance loads in our kitchen,” Norris says. “They talked about holidays. They talked about gumbo. And that is the factor that made me — my husband, Broderick, and I — smile a bit bit: they talked about consistency. That they knew that the kitchen was constantly a heat area the place we ate frequently even whereas internet hosting this loopy present, you recognize? I would careen house and have a fast meal with the children after which a second meal with my husband afterward the place we actually had time to eat. However I simply needed to take a seat on the desk with them earlier than they went to mattress.”
- And Norris’ kitchen is funky. Not the meals — the sounds: Stevie Marvel, Prince. So here is a pattern if you would like to think about you are sitting on the desk of a radio legend:
Prince — “Kiss”
YouTube