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August 14, 2005
Magic Chef
That's what the lettering on the microwave that came with the house that MR and I are renting says. I think the microwave is about as old as I am, but it works, though slowly.
Sunday afternoon is a good time to reflect on everyday miracles, and so this hot sunny afternoon finds me reflecting on the daily miracle that is cooking. As someone I rather wish I had known once said, "Forasumch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance..."
In this day of fast food and body angst, I think it is too easy to forget the miracle by which the sunshine joins with the water and the earth to form the tiny parcels of lifeforce that we sometimes so unconsciously scarf down. People who cook or farm or garden are more conscious of this process, I think, than those who for whatever reason are deprived of these great pleasure. Living with MR makes me constantly more reverent in the presence of the great mystery... how on earth do we get our food to taste so good? Eggwhites meet vegetables, pour in garlic and pinot noir and a heaping spoonful of love and as though by magic, you have a delicious meal. What's the secret ingredient? Is it really the love? If it is, then can you not truly have good food without love? Or is it the tomatoes?
Even in my short lifetime, attitudes towards cooking have gone through many transformations. In the middle seventies when I was born, women weren't having as many babies... it made it hard for my mom to be the only one of her feminist crowd who was pregnant, but it caused a great dip in the population, making it easier for me to get into Yale. Many of the women of her generation and younger rejected cooking as another form of slavery, and I can see why: if I were chained to the stove day after day cooking for an ungrateful husband and children, with no say in the matter myself, I'd be ready to give it all up and send the husband and kids out to the nearest drive-thru too!
I know lots of women who have had partners who made them feel that their cooking was inferior. Just another way in which people can use the symbols of femininity to hurt or to harm. A man says you're gorgeous and adores you're cooking, and I swear, you feel like the latest manifestation of the Goddess. A man says your stomach is too big and turns his nose up at your cooking, and it's basically like being told that you're not a real woman. No wonder food, in which we confront both cooking and the effects on our bodies, is such an emotional issue for most of us female humans!
My cat sees it differently. MR says, "Feeding Kieffer is futile. It distracts him for a moment, then he's back to howling." It's true: we wake up in the morning, and MR gets his supplements and feeds Kieffer before bringing me my supplements in bed. Kieffer, as soon as he has consumed a can of Fancy Feast, returns to the top of the stairs to howl until his Mommy comes downstairs. MR says that Kieffer is thinking, "Now my belly is full and I want my mommy!" Who can blame him, really? We have basic needs: food, water and companionship. Some of us seek these out through elaborate networks of family, friends and colleagues and fancy DWIDP'd recipes. Others of us eat a can of Fancy Feast and return to howling for our mommies. Who am I to judge?
I've blogged before about how in the past, I've experienced a disconnect between the love I felt for a person and the food I was creating for or sharing with him or her. Making "treats" that really weren't healthy, or sharing special meals out that did more harm to our bodies than good always made me slightly uncomfortable. Like somehow my actions were speeding both me and my friends towards an early death. As it turns out, I was more right than I knew. Nowadays, when I cook, it does nothing but fortify the body and mind.
I understand that there are those who don't like to cook. MR is actually one of them, believe it or not, and it works out beautifully because that means he lets me practice my favorite hobby on him! I can accept that for some people, cooking is just not part of the accomplishment of their true will, in much the same way that backpacking simply will not make me happy, not now, not ever. But for those of us who do, I think that we get a special little window onto one of life's greatest every day miracles. We have the privilidge of actively giving life to ourselves and to others, without the pain and hassle of childbirth. We have the power, through our choices about what delicious treats we create for others, to powerfully influence their health and lifespan.
Makes you wonder... who died and made us gods?
Posted by april at August 14, 2005 2:53 PM