Last week, I got to cook with my sister. She's a musician who lives in Austin, TX when she's not on the road, so while we check in with each other often, we don't manage to work it out so that we're in the same city frequently.

We didn't grow up cooking together, our parents (mostly our mother, to be honest) did the bulk of the food prep for the years we lived in the same house. I left for college in 1997 and when I moved back for six months after graduation in 2001, she was long since gone. However, having learned to cook from the same people, I've found that we have an innate compatibility in the kitchen that makes cooking together a joy.

Last Monday night, we didn't make anything particularly fancy, just some onion-spiked turkey burgers and a vast pan of sauteed veggies. I mixed the ground turkey and formed it into patties, as she washed and chopped the broccoli and cauliflower. She opened the fridge as if she were in her own home and rooted around for toasted sesame oil, Braggs and little sweet red chili sauce. It delighted me that she was so comfortable and that we could move around my two-person, galley kitchen with such ease.

After dinner was over, we headed back into the kitchen to clean up and I found myself wishing that these moments of cooking, eating and cleaning together came more frequently than two or three times a year. Sadly, during this phase of our lives, it is just not to be.

Do you have a person in your live with whom cooking is a joy? Do you cook with them regularly, or is it a rare occasion that you find yourselves in the kitchen together?