Cold wet clothing from a day of foraging wood fuel out of the forest during a cold winter' day. The fire's warmth and smells of the meal to come ease tensions and relax conversations in a time-honoured tradition that began long, long ago in a time and place long forgotten by our industrious society of today.
The act of cooking is not only a necessity, but it is a means to show one's love and appreciation for the consumer of the dish with all the preparation required from sowing seeds, harvesting and processing to standing on a wet shore line awaiting whistling wings of fowl in the early autumnal mornings.
The dinner table with its beautifully crafted dishes steeped in the seasonality of the region's food crops and foraged goodies, change just as seasons throughout the year.
In the spring, the handpicked wild greens and false solomon's seal is just as anticipated as the melting of the last bits of snow from the shady spots around the farm. In contrast, by the time fall arrives we are back to craving the dense greens of cabbage and fermented kraut coupled with some birch-smoked wild duck and geese taken from the shores of Eaglet Lake covered in sauted wild chanterelle mushrooms. Thoughts of these meals makes me truly understand the "Italian Chef Kiss" gesture.
Today's average household however, puts as much attention to meal time as it does the price of rice in China.
With the daily lives of Canadians being consumed from lengthening work days and the social media sphere, less time is put into the creation of time-honoured traditional meals. With the cuisine being the pivotal focal point of all societies (without food, we all kinda perish you know?) are we losing our identity to the fancy marketing ploys of fast convenient, pop in the microwave meals?
This article is spurred on by my appreciation of my wife's cooking, that of which like all meals in our house is virtually done from scratch. I do the cooking during the week and she takes the helm on the weekends to which I am very grateful.
It is always too easy to just slap a starch and protein together and call it a meal to fill the void, but when you truly take time to craft a meal, the results can be euphoric.
We often like to make some meals weeks in advance for what we call "hard days" in which we don't want to spend much time cooking but still want to enjoy the deliciousness that is a meal sans-preservatives, xanthum gum, maltodextrin, dextrose, food coloring 7, "spices," corn syrup, Acetylated Tartaric and Acid Esters of Mono- and Di-glycerides.
Cooking, like growing food, should be just as nourishing as the consumption of the meal, not an inconvenience. Eating is the single most important act a human can do. When you eat a product, you are essentially saying this product/meal is good enough to create my body, for that is what it will do once entering your maw.
My question is, do you want Acetylated Tartaric Acid Esters to create the very cells that make up you, or would you rather create your cells with something that doesn't require Google to understand its affect on the body?
To all the eaters out there, and I know there are many, I say to you, are you going to let marketing decide what makes up the blood in your veins and the cells in your body and your children's because cooking looks complicated or time-consuming?
Because most of our decisions are made based on pricing, maybe I should let you in on a secret. It is really inexpensive to make everything from scratch and it is enjoyable.
So when the spouse or kids ask "what's for dinner" next time, reply with a dish that will make their eyes bulge with delight like that of an ol' bull frog.
