Civilization is mostly the story of how seeds, meats, and ways to cook them travel from place to place.
The Table Comes First, Adam Gopnik
I grew up surrounded by delicious food and people with a flair for cooking. Yet, I never learnt cooking at my mother’s knee as they say. I loved reading and all my spare time outside of school was spent with books. I just didn’t see the point of learning to cook!
Fast forward a lot of years and suddenly I was in a space and a time in my life when I HAD to cook. Thankfully, I WANTED to cook too.
I’ve been cooking pretty much every weekday for the last 9 years. Cooking has taught me a whole lot of things and I don’t just mean about ingredients, and techniques and everything that is the process of cooking.
There’s a sense of anticipation that I associate with cooking. Deciding to use new-to-me vegetables creates a little tension at first but it is soon overpowered by a buzzing sense of excitement. I enjoy the process of looking up ways to incorporate the new-to-me-ingredient in our meals (looking at you stinging nettles and fiddlehead ferns!). I enjoy being in that space which transitions from uncertainty to satisfaction as things start falling into place and a clear picture of a full meal with the novel element at its center emerges. That sense of anticipation and looking forward to something is one of my chief delights in life. I sincerely hope that as long as I live, I will keep having things to look forward to. . . it is what keeps drawing the life force in us, and through us, in my opinion.
Till a short while ago, frying had been something I was wildly uncomfortable with. Nopes, not for me, is what my mind would say, as I thought longingly of poori and bhatura (former is a fried flat whole wheat bread, latter is a fermented flat bread that is fried). Stumbling upon information on good fats, how they’re actually essential for our body, and how frying done right can be good for us, were all pieces of the mosaic. What completed the picture was practise.
Don’t worry, we didn’t start eating fried food every week. Just that the arc of practise over a period of time drove home the point that there really is no shortcut around getting your hands in the clay, and just doing it. Turns out, be it meditation or frying, the more you do it, the steadier you are!
I find the parallel between meditation and cooking extends to having the right tools as well. I like thinking I have a tool-kit for my meditation. Sometimes I need to use a guided meditation. Other times, just a soft and unfocused sort of listening does the trick. Still other moments require a focusing on my breath and the soft rise and fall of my own body, or perhaps focusing on white noise. The key is building a tool-kit with practice and time and knowing which tool to wield in the moment.
Having the right tool when cooking is equally important. The tools don’t have to be fancy but having the right tool for the job does help without a question. I find (in cooking and in life) the right tool enables me, stops me from faltering and wobbling unnecessarily.
For a while now, I’ve become mindful about including more varied grains in our diet. Buckwheat groats (also known as kasha) have been a winner for us (my son loves a buckwheat groat khichdi I make for him for his school lunch. The groats are cooked with some whole spices and then mixed with a stir-fry of cabbage, beets, and carrots). As has been my discovery of red and brown rice. We’re finding a mix of white, red, and brown rice works for us as a side-dish for many of the stew like concoctions I make.
Going outside my food zone, err, I mean my comfort zone food-wise has been such an interesting experience. It is always a bit daunting and doesn’t come with a success rate of 100% but does lead to some extremely rewarding experiences. I guess it appeals to the adventurous in me?
As I think over the last 9 years, I see how the knowledge and practise of cooking has helped me build my own intuition about this process, my own inner compass that whispers about the right ingredient-pairing, and which technique to use, and that I should trust my instincts about the done-ness of any thing!
I love enjoying food. And I love the thought that perhaps I am in some way helping my family develop a healthy relationship with food.
“We shouldn’t intellectualize food, because that makes it too remote from our sensory pleasures; but we ought to talk as intelligently as we can about it, because otherwise it makes our sensory pleasures too remote from our minds. The knowledge that our senses are part of our intelligence is what makes us human. We alone know our fun. The sweetness in our morning coffee is at once a feeling, an idea, and a memory. Eating is an intelligent act, or it’s merely an animal one. And what makes it intelligent is the company of other mouths and minds. All animals eat. An animal that eats and thinks must think big about what it is eating not to be taken for an animal.”
The Table Comes First, Adam Gopnik
Practising Appreciation 