I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, and there seem to be so many answers– for fuel, for pleasure, for survival. It is inextricably bound to the broader question: why do we eat?
Out to dinner last week with my husband and a colleague of his, our conversation kept returning to this one question, and we weighed out the different possibilities. The epicurean, in the truest sense of the word, one who cooks entirely for his own pleasure, never thinking about health, moral ramifications, or weights and balances. Or the marathon runner for instance, who sees food purely as fuel– “If I eat so many grams of carbohydrates, they will fuel my run for approximately so long.” Then there is the chef, often cooking for others, experimenting with textures, colors, flavors– the artist.
Take the organic food movement, a movement that seems bound by many of these concepts. One eats organic produce because it’s fresher, tastes better, the fruit is riper. The quality of produce is generally higher, leading to an epicurean ideology of better taste. But then there is the person who buys organic produce for health concerns. They want chemicals, insecticides out of their diet. Further still there is the person, like Alice Waters, who thinks the quality of food is important, but also believes in supporting local growers and farmers. The type of food one prepares, and in turn eats raises social consciousness. So it is possible to be a part of a movement for one/many reasons. One may subscribe to one movement that is subsisting because of another.
And then there is me. Why do I cook, why has food been such an integral part of my rearing? Why does my sister, just a few years older, raised by the same parents, not find the same joys and comforts in preparing and eating a meal? These questions prove just as difficult when answering them about myself. Yes I enjoy the cooking process, and the feeding of hungry friends and family. But it is not simply an act of altruism. Cooking gives me something to do. But still, there is many a Sunday afternoon, when I am bored yet do not bake a loaf of bread. I am a healthy eater, but I do not stress myself out unnecessarily about eating “properly” all the time. And besides if one was to concern herself entirely with what was “in-fashion” for the moment to eat– one would go insane. And although I appreciate the role of chefs , and I go out to eat often, I have never actually coveted their job, too stressful and taxing. But yet I am constantly thinking about food, what is in season, and how I should cook it.
Maybe you, my faithful readers have a more complete answer to these questions. Perhaps I am thinking too much, inflating this question to unusually large proportions, and it is all rather simple (something that is entirely possible). So, why do you cook?
