Getting Back In the Kitchen
“Food is medicine” - Hippocrates 400BC
As an educated, single, female, bit of a “wild child”, twenty something, I latched on to the quote - “domesticity is death.” I don’t know who said it but it became my mantra. I had just finished graduate school and did not want to be relegated to the kitchen, ever. Nor household chores. No thanks. I wanted to explore the world, stay out late, hike, bike, run - nothing that involved cooking or cleaning. I wanted to be free to do what I wanted, when I wanted - outside of work, of course. But then again, I have never wanted a 9 to 5 job. It never resonated with me. My girlfriends at the time were all in the same camp. We were not our mothers.
Maybe sowing my wild oats was exactly what I was supposed to be doing in my 20’s, but as my 30’s neared I knew something was missing. I had never really learned to cook - except for a chili my dad made up and shared with me that just involved dumping a bunch of canned stuff into a cast iron skillet. It actually became a source of embarrassment, as really all I could do was boil water for spaghetti and bake cookies. The irony was I was living in Berkeley, mecca for all things super foodie and organic - think Michael Pollan and Alice Waters - the farm to table movement- school farms and co-ops. Here I was professing to be so healthy when all I really knew was exercise. I started to think that I should really learn how to cook.
I continued to flail about in the kitchen for the next two decades starting with giving three dinner guests food poisoning after serving them undercooked chicken. True story. It also happened to be my very first dinner party (they still talk about it to this day). I ended up microwaving a turkey one Thanksgiving (think chewy rubber) because I didn’t time all of the dishes right. I have had countless things “die” in my fridge from poor meal planning, and I’ve fallen victim to fruit fly infestations and other pesky vermin due to my ignorance around food storage. The amount of stories I could tell about botched dinners and undercooked food is endless. Folks, I needed a mentor.
I did not learn to cook from my mother (who’s a pretty darn good cook today, btw). This is partly due to the fact that she, too, in her 20’s had stuff to do that did not involve spending all day in the kitchen. She was working, and going to school, and raising three girls and moving every 1-2 years as a military wife. She had spent her teens cooking for farm hands, but now it was all about what she could cook in a hurry. She had no time-- and thus frozen dinners, sandwiches and cereal became the norm. Again, in her defense (btw, she reads my Mantras :) she ALWAYS made Sunday dinner. It was a sit down affair involving a big hunk of meat - usually a pot roast.
It wasn’t until we moved back to California in 2017 that I really got serious about learning to cook. It went from fairly far down on my priority list, to number 1. My gut issues I had suffered from in my late 30’s were not resolving themselves and now I was pushing 50. I kept putting off actually learning to cook, thinking I could heal my gut with ready made protein bars, nuts, and salads. I begrudgingly fed my family pre-cooked meals from Trader Joe’s with not much success. They, too, began to eat sandwiches, cereal and frozen dinners.
And then, I started reading books on our food supply and how the American diet got to where it is today. I went to see Michael Pollan speak, one of the foremost journalists and experts on the food industry, and was mesmerized by his every word. He has since gone on to have his own cooking show. He explains why we are not cooking as much anymore…
“...women [were] leaving the kitchen to join the workforce in the mid 1900s. Food companies that had been profitable during WWII saw how profitable instant, convenient, and processed food could be. The companies put ad dollars behind it. Pollan singles out a vintage KFC ad with the tagline "Make Tonight Mother's Day," and copy that reads "Do it for Mother's sake, We fix Sunday dinner 7 days a week," as amplifying any feelings of drudgery and panic many homemakers (namely, women) associated with being marooned in the kitchen.
Read the second half of this article down below...
Michael Pollan inspired me to learn more about nutrition and cooking and whole foods and organic farming. I decided to become a health coach.
It was here, in my health coaching certification program, I learned that healing, especially for the gut, starts in the kitchen with home cooked, wholesome foods. I was so excited to finally learn to cook! I learned cooking basics, meal planning, healthy food shopping, what to buy and what not to buy. I learned that there is no one diet that works for all.
Over the past five years I have made a concerted effort to learn all I can about home cooking, healthy eating, composting, growing vegetables and fruits. This is a HUGE learning curve, and like my yoga practice, this learning will continue a lifetime. I am by no means a chef, but I am a cook. I can call myself that now, as I do cook almost daily. (I said “almost”). I would love to share with you what I’ve learned on this journey to better health.
My six-week Cooking & Nutrition Series starts tonight at 5 pm, and I would love to see you there. We have a wonderful group of women already committed to this new energy in the kitchen, and I hope you’ll join us for one class, or all six!
Let your mantra this week be “get back in the kitchen
Continued From Bon Appetit 2021
According to Pollan, the big food companies basically stepped in and said, "We've got you covered. We'll do the cooking," boosting processed food as modern and cool. A half century later, "We let restaurants cook for us, or buy home meal replacements, prepared foods from supermarkets, and we watch the process on television. Cooking has become highly mediated and removed from daily life for many of us," Pollan said in an interview with producers from the series. It's, ironically, why many of us spend more time watching cooking shows like Pollan's than actually turning on a stove or building a soup layer by layer.” Bon Appetit 2021