Get Cooking!

Beth's post below about growing your own vegetables from scraps got me thinking about food. Specifically, I recently listened to a very interesting interview with Michael Pollan who is promoting his new book Cooked.

Rather than being a traditional "cookbook" his book is more about trying to change people's ideas about cooking. For most of us he argues (I think rightly) cooking is always thought of as a chore. What's more, many of us don't have the basic skills that are needed to cook healthy meals.

I was thinking about these two points and what makes them true. I don't know about you, but everyone at my middle school had Home Ec one semester where we "learned to cook." I put this in quotes because the big culmination of the class was having to cook a meal for your family. Now, my mom upon hearing this was very excited and made me create chili mostly from scratch. When I asked my friends what they made for their families the answers were hot dogs and mac and cheese. It's no wonder now that they're adults these same people can't create any meals that don't involve processed food. Sure, partly their parents are to blame too. But whatever the reasons, the fact remains these people never got the skills needed to make basic meals.

 I think another big part of why people don't cook as much is because their food often "doesn't taste as good" as premade food they buy. Sadly this is largely due to the fact that it is healthy, and therefore not saturated with sodium, sugar and fat, which humans are biologically conditioned to enjoy, like fast food, most restaurant food, and all processed food.

As for the other point, that cooking has become a chore. I think this speaks to how fundamentally messed up our culture is. A highly visible example is the Dollar Menu. We have become a culture that values food so little that we are constantly looking for ways to get it as cheap as possible and consume it as quickly as possible so we can get on to other more important things. The search for, cultivation, and consumption of food was the driving force for life for millennia. The fact that we as a culture see food as an inconvenience rather than a sacred timeless tradition is frightening.

Now not to sound too self-righteous. I'm guilty of eating out more than I should and I sometimes buy frozen items to include in my meals for times I'm feeling lazy. But I'm really inspired to be more active in my food and savor the process of creating it. Food shouldn't be a necessary inconvenience.