In The Kitchen

Home cooking is a dying art. For all of our cookbooks and celebrity chefs and dream kitchen makeovers Americans cook less than ever. Averaging only 8.2 meals per week at home. European households are not much better. Meals eaten at home and time spent cooking has declined since the mid-1960's, when as much as 95% of food was prepared at home. Spending on meals away from home has gone up across all age groups in recent years. I wrote an entire thread on another site about how moving to the country changed my life. But enough of the replies were asking me how far I have to drive for a pizza or Chinese takeout to make it off putting. Even when people do eat at home convenience items are so much of our diet that calling it cooking is a stretch. Farmer and writer Wendell Berry once said that eating is an agricultural act. But you need to learn to cook. It is through the selection of ingredients, and application of technique, that you connect with your food. Stepping over the line between consumer and producer.

Takeout options are a dumb reason to live in the city if you ask me. Not that I am against eating out. My son is a professional chef. I can see the value in a quality dining experience. But most takeout and delivery options are mediocre food consumed out of laziness. A simple roast chicken with potatoes is better than any of it. Learning rustic home cooking with simple ingredients and unrefined techniques does not take that long. I would start with learning the peasant dishes of your culture. They use cheap cuts of meat and cook low and slow, so they are hard to outright mess up. They may sound time consuming, but they usually do not need much active cooking time. It is interesting to me how struggle meals of the past become comfort foods. We eat them so many times that we begin to associate them with a feeling of security. The taste of survival transforms into a taste of home and reminder of our resilience.

A kitchen should look like a workshop. It should be a place of production, not just consumption. The hardest working room in your house. Kitchen appliances are basically power tools for food. While they can speed things up there is little they can do that you cannot also do by hand. The kitchen need not be fancy either. I like the plain functionality of a Georgian or Victorian style kitchen oriented around a large central worktable or island. A deep sink for prep and washing up. Quality knives and a way to keep them sharp and more cutting boards than you think you need. Cast iron or stainless pans. I have both. Country kitchens see a lot of action with breaking down and cooking or preserving the things they raise. There is no such thing as a kitchen which is too big or a pantry that is too deep.

I miss the Sunday dinners at my parent's house that would stretch the whole afternoon. There was a time when I felt like they took up too much of my weekend, already crowded with my son's sporting events and Monday bearing down on me. But there was a peaceful rhythm to them that made it feel like a day of rest. We often had four generations at the table, until my grandfather died, which was not until my son was sixteen. At our own house we ate dinner as a family most of the nights of his childhood. That has become a rare thing. It is bad enough that we are atomized in our communities, but many of us have become atomized in our households. Separated by schedules and our respective tasks. The loss is tangible.

Home cooking is not only meal preparation. It is a way to make families stronger. Shared meals are a chance for conversation and to pass along important traditions. Cooking as a family teaches children important life skills and deepens the diner’s appreciation for what goes into a meal. For what goes into making a life. Cultural reclamation begins at home. In the kitchen.