Has cooking just become a chore? Craig St. John reflects on the spirituality of finding and preparing food.
I love meals. Everything about them. I love cooking them, I love eating them; I love drinking while I’m eating them; I don’t even mind cleaning up after them. Greater poets than I have waxed on about the joys of sharing a meal and how it brings up together with those with whom we share it. But there’s a greater community even than the folks at the table. Food is universal, and though we all may have different tastes, it is something everyone in the world has in common.
With shelter and sleep, feeding ourselves and our loved ones is one of our essential needs. We eat every day—our very survival depends on it—yet in contemporary society, the act of feeding ourselves and our families often becomes an afterthought. We can pick up food on the way home from work. If the food is prepared at home, its often from a box in the freezer or a can in the cabinet. Cooking is sometimes derided as “women’s work” and those tasked with our nutritional care are not given due respect for that work. But by embracing the oven, pots, and pans, washing vegetables and chopping meats, stirring (but not over stirring) the sauces, we begin to both understand and communicate the value of this work and may actually elevate mealtime from an essential need to a spiritual one.
Cooking connects us to a greater community the moment we begin to think about our meal. The process connects us to the grocer, farmers market purveyors, wine shop merchants, and everyone we consult for advice on what to cook and where to pick up the ingredients. Sometimes that may be dozens of people, sometimes, its just us and the corner shopkeeper, but we are always connected. Connected to the community, our heritage and traditions, and to a greater culture.
I’ll start at my beginning. I, like so many other children, learned to cook beside my mother. It was just the two of us in those days and she worked two jobs in order to take care of me. Mealtime was sacred in our household, and as we made simple, healthy meals with whatever fresh ingredients she could afford, we shared our days. For me that time was precious. As my mother guided my hand and the large knife I clutched, I learned more than just how to chop an onion. I learned about the silent communication of love, concern, compassion, and attention. Those lessons have, I hope, traveled with me outside the kitchen so that I approach my work and relationships with the same attention.
I learned to love certain flavors cooking with my mother, as she had from her parents before her. My palate has expanded since then, but there are certain meals that will send me back to that countertop in our small apartment in an instant. When my mother re-married, my step-father took on the role of household chef. He opted for more processed and pre-made food than had my mother, but it was prepared lovingly and helped bring our merging families together.
I never lost my love of fresh ingredients and have spent many happy hours at the farmers markets and specialty stores in the various cities around the country where I’ve lived. There is a thrill of finding a new fruit or vegetable or cheese I’ve never used before that I suspect is akin to climbing a new mountain or diving in new waters. My happiest memories of my early years after college were of dinner parties thrown on meager budgets, but with great joie de vive. After a painful divorce and a career stall, I wasn’t sure how to move forward. I found myself again in the kitchen and during meditative hours shopping and cooking, I began to rediscover and redefine my purpose.
So, cooking is indeed important to me personally. But I think there’s magic that happens for everyone in my favorite room in the house.
Not everyone has the time or resources to spend hours shopping for or preparing a meal. But when we take the time to, whether its daily, monthly, or only on holidays, we find ourselves in a dialogue with our environment.
Even before we begin to plan a meal, we talk to those with whom we’ll be eating, and sometimes reach out to others for suggestions. Often the best advice comes from people we don’t know well—the man in the next cubicle who has a fool-proof pie recipe, the woman on the train who knows the best butcher downtown. We want to share this knowledge with each other, finding common ground and conversation from rhubarb to ribs.
With an idea in mind, we head out to collect our ingredients.
For those cynics among us, I know the supermarket is not the same as the corner grocer or farmers market, but even there, we are among others looking at the food, making choices for themselves and their families, just as we are. We don’t make the same choices of course. Each of our choices are informed by our family backgrounds, our individual tastes, and sometimes, a sense of adventure.
At the farmers market or specialty shop, we may engage in conversation with the men and women who have grown or prepared our food for us. We might find out it was a good season for tomatoes, but not asparagus, or that this particular cheese is best served room temperature. Or we may just find out their son was accepted to college that week and not talk about the food at all. Sometimes the exchange is limited to the cost of the food as they drop it in paper bags or our market basket, but there is always an exchange.
Ingredients in hand, we begin the process of cooking. It might involve a casual approach, based on memories of what has tasted good in our pasts, connecting us to those memories and times. Or we may rely on someone who is likely a stranger, but has written a book or hosts a TV or web show with recipes that speak to us. We feel like we know that person and share sensibilities, even if they are limited to pea soup. Should we be feeling experimental, we may plan a meal of an ethnicity other than our own, which requires at least a little research and understanding of that culture.
As we prepare for our meal, we set a table for our companions, chose music or not, wine or not, candles or not. Whether its our young children or a collection of friends, we set the scene in a way to make the experience pleasurable for them and us.
And then there’s the eating, my personal favorite part. Its impossible to eat with others and not talk. its nearly impossible to not laugh and share and deepen ties. And while that happens in restaurants every night all over the world, nothing compares to sharing a meal at home with the history of decisions, conscious and unconscious that went into creating it.
Cooking will always connect us. To each other, to our pasts, and to our future. I won’t tell you how often to cook or where to shop or what and how to prepare for your meals. But I will tell you to do it. The impact is immeasurable and invaluable. And its delicious.
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Image Credit: Zanthia/Flickr
You know, I love cooking. I cook for my family most every day. I’ve cooked daily meals from quality ingredients for 30+ years, using inspiration and ideas from all over the place, all over the world. It’s important to me that we have good, tasty meals. I like to pass to my children the appreciation of decent food, and the ability to tell the difference. And yet, I don’t get all this “connected to world” business. I’ve never understood why some people talk about cooking like it’s a metaphysical or even spiritual experience. I’m sure it’s how it is for… Read more »
This is beautiful, Craig. I especially love the part where you talk about how each part of the finding and preparing food stretches out into the rest of our lives and brings us together.