I’ve always enjoyed cooking. But it seems to me that cooking as an enjoyable pastime is practiced less and less these days. Sure, there are “elitists” like me, who enjoy the Zen of slicing onions with a knife I’ve honed to a decent edge, but for each of us there are ten folks who have been convinced that fixing food to eat is the devil’s work. Television networks sponsored by huge food conglomerates are glad to keep this trend alive, offering up shows on how to fix meals in the least amount of time, as if cooking were a blood sport; the best cook finishes first.
That’s a pity because I’ve recently been pondering the social significance of moving away from home prepared food.
You see, yesterday Martha came home from a meeting with some of her former students at her continuation high school class in culinary arts. She reported that an amazing number of students in the class keep in touch, many of them have taken culinary jobs of one sort or another, and some of them are attending the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. It was an amazing success.
Let’s take into account that these were students who didn’t do so well in regular high schools; it was cooking that bonded them together and gave them a course in life to pursue.
After all, cooking is both artistic and disciplined. Followers will find detailed recipes; creative types will find plenty of molecules to rearrange and traditional dishes to deconstruct.
But the important thing is the result, and the result of a well prepared dish is an increase in the pleasure felt by those lucky enough to consume it. Where else would you find a more noble enterprise?
We forget, in this new puritan age, that pleasure is important to the well being of all of us. The pursuit of it is even protected by the US constitution, believe it or not.
Still, I feel an odd urge to apologize to the oddly motivated “pleasure is poison” people in advance. Or maybe not. It’s Valentine’s day. You gotta gimme a break.