This past weekend, the mother of a friend asked me what my mother had taught me to do in the kitchen. I told her about the years spent helping to make pasta and bread and sausages. Then she admonished me, saying that I should only learn to make the things that I can't buy."All those years that my sister and I made tortellini into the middle of night, it wasn't because we wanted to, it was because we couldn't buy them anywhere. Now that you can buy pasta, why would you make it?"
I didn't reply properly at the moment because my mouth was busy deconstructing some fruit, but here is my full response now.
It's a health thing. Although there are many grocery stores, brands and eateries that I trust, there are three times more stores, brands and eateries that I don't. When you make something yourself, you can choose quality ingredients that you can feel good about. You know what's going into your food... which is not something you can say most of the time.
It's a social thing. There is great pleasure in creating food and eating it together. I don't make everything that I eat, but sometimes it's a nice excuse for bringing people together. Even if she did make tortellini all night long - she was doing it with her sister.
It's working with your hands. Understandably, this woman works with her hands every day and it must be a pleasure to just buy the stuff and give the digits a break. But for the rest of us that make our living staring at computer screens and tapping at keyboards, it's a pleasure to switch skill sets and make something with our hands instead. When my work day is drawing to an end and I'm exhausted between the ears, I long to clear my head by plunging my hands into soft dough.
And lastly, the food just tastes better.
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2 comments:
The other day I tried to explain to The Boyfriend, who does not cook, why cooking is play for me and not work. (I had just spent an entire day making brownies, cookies, ravioli, and bread, and he just couldn't understand why I was having a good time.)
I finally said, "Cooking time is the only time in my life where I feel like I can just do what I'm doing, and don't feel like I should be doing something else."
I'm not sure this makes sense to anyone who doesn't suffer from chronic guilt over all the things they should be doing, or someone who has a job where someone else is telling you what to do and so you don't have to be constantly self-disciplining. But when I'm writing I feel like I should be preparing my courses or marking papers; when I'm preparing my courses or marking papers I feel like I should be writing; when I'm reading I feel like I should be going for a run ... and so on ... but when I'm cooking, I'm just cooking. It's like meditation, except that, at the end, I have made a thing. A thing that we can eat.
siobahn: very well put
Strangely enough, those are the very same words that I use to describe yoga. Both of them require you to focus on the task at hand - measuring, mixing, downward-dogging - so there is no room for chronic guilt.
Knead on, lady.
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