7:45 A.M. Ready for the day, I walk into the kitchen and there where I left them drying last night, are three graduated though un-matched pans. Oh, it’s Father Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. The old faithfuls! Ready for yet more service—no rest for the weary around here, pals!

4 P.M. Time for dinner prep. Papa Bear’s working again tonight, and I am, too, about to trim green beans, onions, and peppers. I zoom about muttering and thinking how this meal’s going to put itself together. Some evenings, though, I’m anything but relaxed, desperately trying to think up dinner, but tonight, the ideas are flowing. My hands go right to work with my batterie de cuisine, a pick-up group with which I play just about every day.

I think back on my repertoire: how many meat loaves I’ve forked, stirred, seasoned, and fork-crammed into pans. The hundreds of heads of lettuce I’ve washed and torn, dressed and tossed, the containers opened, the thousands of veggies I’ve sizzled in butter or oil—and come to think of it, how about my basic frying pans? Yet another family: deep main dish Papa pan, Mama who works the hardest, and their two little kids, small batch saute pans.

Baking, I haul out measuring cups and spoons for mixing sugar and flour, eggs and cinnamon and vanilla. All this stirs hand memory of my favorite pliable red rubber spatula, spreaders, several chosen spoons, my Microplaner zester—oh, and yet another family. Meet the Strainers! Once again, Mama happens to be my favorite, both for weight and feel, and especially for the beautiful dot patterns she contributes.

I go on and on, cook and cook, noticing how my favorite paring knife nests between my thumb and forefinger; I also recall an old spatula with a time-dulled red handle that works best for lifting hot cookies off the baking sheet. And here are yet more old friends, the Corningware casserole family in its nest: Papa (who’s got quite the belly) and Momma and Junior, svelte and petite by comparison.

Then I think about that big warehouse I occasionally visit called “Chef’s Toys.” My first reaction to their trade name was Well, that’s sort of silly, the merchandise is for professionals mostly, isn’t it? Toys? Give me a break. But I get it now. There is a feeling of play about cooking with the right stuff. And when I go there to shop, my eyes play, too, just as they do at home.

Over the years, though without any design or plan, I’ve come to keep on hand the toys I like. Broken in, familiar in and to my hands, the way the flute used to be. Habit (or its synonym, long use) and years of playing that instrument trained me to prefer efficient, light weight instruments. My wrist groans at lifting cast iron frying pans, even as my husband swears by them and I know others do, too. True, I keep soldiering on with a couple of cast iron casseroles, either because they were gifts or they’re a useful size or perhaps I need them only occasionally. But in general, I want light-weight handling comfort right from the get-go. Just as I played notes with feeling and agility in my flute days, responding to the music itself, I want to concentrate on the food.

Yet there are those side effects, including sound—a whole battery of percussion! The spatula scraping the pan as I saute onions or agitate a stir-fry; the thump of a wooden spoon vs. the skimming of a metal ladle. Also sound produced by the food itself, such as quartered mushrooms squeaking as they tumble around in melted butter. Or water bubbling and boiling in the pan whose lid I lift, as though it were demanding, “Gimme that pasta! Let’s get going on the action here!”

Really, I can hardly isolate single sensations. I feel both the energy of a whisk and its springy brush-like sounds, or the simple tink-tink of a fork when I beat egg yolks and how the fork hits the Pyrex bowl as it tinks. I smell onions as they fry, one of my all-time favorite fragrances. I taste as a check on progress or to determine if I’m really cooking, so to speak, and I listen to the song of the soup as it simmers.

Taken all together, these utensils, knives and tools are my orchestra, my complex instrument. And when things are going well, I love a spell of playing what I might call, with some humility about the term, my own kitchen gamelan.

I’m “home on the range.” With all these tools, these wonderful utensils at hand, ready to serve as I work and play. And then, I serve my family and friends.