Cheryl Katz

Michael Ruhlman has been addressing an important question on his blog (Ruhlman.com):  Why do we cook?

I’m cooking a lot now because I’m in culinary school, but what led me to finally make a real career choice and seek training in culinary arts was that after I stopped working, and left to my own devices, I failed to make any other choice, but found myself cooking on a daily basis.

What drove me to cook then, and the basis for choosing a life that will without question revolve around food, is a question with so many answers that I can hardly decide which one to describe first.

I started cooking after I left my job because I didn’t have any reason left not to.  I didn’t cook as much while I was working because I felt always rushed for time, and to satisfy the time vs. hunger balance I wound up making a lot of quick and easy meals  – from scratch as I was able.  Being a full time stay at home mom afforded me the time to plan and explore, which resulted in more elaborate food adventures and a constant expansion of my skills and knowledge.

I was motivated to cook once the time was available because I viewed it as my new job description – feeding my family well was part of what I understood to be my contribution to family life in lieu of money.  I wanted to eat well, and I wanted a kid who doesn’t throw a fit when you feed her something other than chicken tenders and PB&J.  While these are simple goals, they require a lot of food-focused effort.

My friend Elizabeth Willse recently posted a review of Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.  This book of reflections from writers and foodies about what they eat when they’re alone is now on my plan-to-read list.  Her review got me thinking about the things I like to cook, and the completely separate category of what I like to eat when I have only myself to think of and/or don’t feel like cooking.  I eat more bread and Camembert or triple creme cheeses than any one person probably ought to, but then even the cheeses I choose often have identities defined by where they come from or what they are made of.

If it were just about the food, I wouldn’t have pursued a structured culinary education, and I wouldn’t be writing this post today.  By now my constant search for patterns and meaning is no secret to anyone who would be reading this entry.  A fellow student once asked me, “Can’t you just be cooking food?”  I can’t.  I cook and I eat not for the love of food alone, but because I became aware of the experience of food, beyond the flavor to the story that starts in the ground and ends on my plate, through eating; I’m here learning what I learn, doing what I do and planning my future moves because I want to be an active author in that story.

When is a carrot just a carrot?  It never is.  It’s always a note in a chord in a song, no matter how simple or complex a song, and it’s a note with context and history and endless lifetimes of associated meaning that is viewed from different angles when used in different ways.

I cook because when I do, I feel connected to what I eat, to the environment that produced it, to who I am and who I will be as a result of the eating and the cooking.

It bothers me that Lactaid is only available in bulk wrapped in foil-lined paper. Costco sells them in tear-off packets that come in boxes of a few hundred.

It irritates me because before they came in paper tabs, they came in big bottles, four or five hundred to a bottle, and they’d always come with a little reusable plastic Tic-Tac like box to carry them around conveniently with. I continue to buy them, because at least I still do get several hundred per cardboard box, so that goes a long way toward assuaging my ill ease.

That way the bottle was recyclable, the tablets were consumed, and the carrying case could be reused for any number of things.

I’ve made the same complaint about markets where produce and other items come wrapped in plastic where other shops might sell them loose. I avoid situations where I have to buy something on a styrofoam tray, wrapped in plastic, because of the extraneous use of plastic and non-recyclable materials.

I frequently hear from people that “the trays at [store x] are recyclable” and that simply isn’t an adequate response. Recycling is no replacement for simply not using up the resources that go into the creation of, and in fact make up, plastics and styrofoam.

It’s worthwhile to me to take on a little extra effort by bringing my own bags, shopping at eco-mindful markets (especially if they’re on my daily path!) and being aware of what packages are made of, to reduce the quantity of raw materials consumed to get a product from the earth to my plate.

Ways to do this:
-Buy products in the largest sizes available (the 6-lb mozzarella loaf uses less plastic per ounce than the same quantity in 1-lb blocks or, obviously, string cheese.)
-Buy produce and meat at markets that don’t pre-wrap and don’t use styrofoam. A good meat shop, and many supermarket meat counters, will often wrap its wares in paper, and I prefer this.
-Bring your own bags – even those ubiquitous plastic supermarket bags add up and take their toll.

I will now step off my soapbox and return to my previously scheduled relaxing after a calm day of marketing, running errands, and doing generally otherwise boring adult things BY MYSELF!