In the documentary series, “Cooked,” author Michael Pollan talked about how cooking shows have become a hugely popular form of entertainment even though fewer people are spending time in the kitchen making food for themselves. He attributed the interest in watching people cook to family recollections implanted in childhood, an experience that created a sense of tradition and nostalgia.
“You know there are lots of things in modern life we no longer do for ourselves, that we’ve outsourced to corporations, and we don’t watch TV about it,” Pollan said. “Cooking is different. There’s something that draws us to that hearth. And I think some of it has to do with the fact that we all have powerful memories of being cooked for by our moms, by our dads, by our grandparents.”
I seem to be an outlier of his theory. I love to cook. I cook for my husband every day. But I certainly didn’t learn to love cooking — or food — in my childhood home.
I come from a Midwestern working-class family, one that pretty much survived on convenience foods. Typical dinners were hot dogs and Kraft dinner, fish sticks and canned veg or Hamburger Helper. Once in a while, there would be a pot roast or a meal cooked on the grill in the back yard. We couldn’t afford to eat out much so we never got hooked on fast food; going to McDonalds for a birthday party was a rare treat.
Every lunch box was filled with a sandwich (usually made with cheap white bread), a piece of fruit and some sort of salty or sweet snack. Every dinner was quickly assembled from a box or a can, and made on the stove top. My brother and I drank gallons of Kool-Aid and sweet iced tea and milk, but pop was a luxury that only Grandma provided on weekends.
Needless to say, in my family, there were few “traditional” recipes handed down from generation to generation, and certainly none that harkened back to any particular culture. Our meals rarely featured any ethnic cuisines or influences; hell, I didn’t even try Chinese food until I went away to college.
And so, I cook for other reasons:
Health: Cooking is healthier than eating out because I know exactly what’s going into the food I make. For example, my favorite recipe for sandwich bread contains flour, salt, milk, unsalted butter, honey and yeast. The most popular brand of sandwich bread sold in grocery stores contains: flour, sugar, wheat gluten, yeast, fiber, calcium sulfate, salt, calcium carbonate, soybean oil, cultured wheat flour, vinegar, dough conditioners (including one or more of the following: sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium stearoyl lactylate, monoglycerides and/or diglycerides, calcium peroxide, calcium iodate, datem, ethoxylated mono and diglycerides, azodicarbonamide, enzymes), guar gum, soy flour, ammonium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate, soy lecithin, niacin, iron (ferrous sulfate), thiamine hydrochloride, riboflavin and folic acid. Americans also consume a great deal of excess salt and sugar from eating processed food products; when you cook at home, you decide how much of each ingredient to use.
Experimentation: Think back to those rainy afternoons at home with a stack of blank pages and a box of crayons. Or perhaps you were given a block of molding clay in art class and told to go wild. As children, we’re given the opportunity to play, to create, to mess up and start over again. Cooking is the same for me. Each new recipe is a chance to make a masterpiece — or to learn from a dish that didn’t turn out quite right. The more I cook, the more I understand and over time, I’ve gained the skills needed to elevate some of those “not so great” recipes into food that’s more than just edible.
Kitchen witchery: There’s something magical about cooking and baking. You take quality ingredients from all parts of the planet, combine them skillfully, add heat or cold or motion — and ta da! A dish appears. Watching this transformation occur is such fun. Plus, the “trick” tastes divine and it disappears!
Love: I’ve never worked in the food industry nor am I a trained chef. For me, cooking is an act of love. When I create meals, I’m showing people how much I care. I fill the house with warm, delectable scents and fill the body with food that both nourishes and satisfies. When circumstance allows, cooking at home leads to good conversations and great meals.
Hmm… Perhaps Pollan was right about that memory thing after all.
1. SIMPLICITY: In its purest form, popcorn contains only four ingredients: oil, corn, butter and salt. It cooks fast — under 10 minutes on the stove, under 2 in the microwave — and requires few tools. Plus, it’s served in a bowl or bag so you don’t even need to use silverware.
2: VISUALLY STUNNING: Exploding kernels are a wondrous sight.
3. POP! PING PING! POP: Popping corn is edible music.
4. YUM: The smell, my goodness, is divine. And the taste has an addictive quality. You simply can’t eat just one.
5: PORTABILITY: Eat it at home, in a hotel, in the car, at your desk or just out in the world.
6. CUSTOMIZABLE: You can dress it up with everything from bacon to spices to cheese to chocolate, but honestly, homemade popcorn is fine on its own.
7. FESTIVE: You can string it on thread and use it as a Christmas decoration. Alternative, you can pour some popcorn into a tin and give it as a present.
8. NUTRITIOUS: Popcorn is healthy! It has one of the highest levels of polyphenols of any plant food, contains quite a bit of fiber and antioxidants, and according to Joe Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, “It’s the only snack that is 100 percent whole grain.”
9: UNIFIER: Anyone who smells popcorn will want to be your friend.
10. MEMORIES: Popcorn is one of those foods that instantly transports you to a different place: a movie theater, a circus, a carnival, a street fair.
To be fair, popcorn does have two notable — and lamentable — down sides. One, it gets stuck in your teeth, no matter how how you try to avoid it. And two, once it’s removed from the pot, the remaining shells look like burned ladybug corpses. But other than that… popcorn is the best.
Here it is, my friends: a new day, a new month and a new year. I know some people complain about how we, as a collective, simply accept when a year debuts, but I’ve always appreciated having a clearly defined moment to make a fresh start with calendars and resolutions.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I intend to spend more time this year working on my fiction. Making stuff up is so much harder than reporting what’s actually happened, and it’ll be an uphill climb to get my imagination in shape. However, I’m determined to give it the old Girl Scout try.
Another one of my goals is to engage in a series of 30-day experiments. The purpose of this activity is twofold — to build up my discipline levels and to explore new interests. Here’s the current game plan (subject to change, of course):
January – Listen to a new song every day February – Walk for at least 20 mins a day March – Meditate for 15 mins a day April – Read a new poem every day May – Write a blog post every day June – Go vegetarian at least one meal a day July – Take a photo every day August – Record all of my dreams September – Write a postcard or letter every day October – Try a new recipe every day November – Write a new poem every day December – Perform an act of kindness every day
Whenever I chop peppers for a meal, particularly spicy peppers, I make an effort to avoid touching my eyes. This avoidance stems from two occasions when I wasn’t as careful — and you can imagine the end result.
For a while I wore food-safe gloves, but then I ran out, and well, I haven’t gotten around to picking up another box. I’ve also utilized the plastic bag method, which effectively keeps the capsaicin off my skin but makes the food prep a bit more difficult.
So I’m back to bare-handing it, only now I’m much more cautious about what I touch afterwards, at least until I’ve had the opportunity to properly wash my hands. And yet, whenever the chopping is underway, my left eye starts to behave irrationally. It is always in that moment, during the dismemberment of the jalapeño for a chili or soup that my eye starts to itch, as if begging to be rubbed.
The reason for this itch eludes me, but I’m beginning to think my left eye is masochistic.
