How to Wash the Dishes

Washing the dishes is an ordinary, everyday task--but with examination and care, it can become can be much more. In this reverent guide to the household chore, Peter Miller shows us how washing dishes can become a joy, a delight, a meditative exercise, and an act of grace and rhythm. We pay so much attention to recipes but little attention to maintenance and clean up. Washing the dishes is as much a part of making a meal as prepping the vegetables, making the sauces, or seasoning the meats. At times it is quite routine, at times raucous, at times complex. It is never convenient. Despite its din and clatter, and despite its reputation, washing the dishes is the coda to the meal. It is a bustling musical of water and soap, of flow and surface, and done well, the fragile shall sit as proudly as the cast iron. There are some who do the dishes for the clarity and privacy of it, and there are some who relish the quiet isolation putting things in order where they belong. There are some who feel the time and movement is a kind of digestive. In the evening, in particular, there is a silence, when it is all done. How to Wash the Dishes brings elegance, art, and a bit of mindfulness to the sink. It is the perfect gift for those who love to clean and equally as aptfor those we wish would clean a bit more--