Calming Cooking
On my recent visit to the UK, I stayed with very dear friends for a few days and we spent one evening watching a show on TV called “Murder in Provence”. It was new for all of us, but we soon found ourselves sucked into the question of “whodunnit”. Part of the male lead’s character was a love of food, and in particular there were several occasions where he would be mulling over the case as he cooked. Because I’m now hyper aware of these triggers, I found myself watching his hands rolling pastry with as much engagement as I listened to his words. To me, this was a classic example of busy hands allowing him to think more freely about the possible meaning of the accumulating clues. Contrived I know, but true to life for some nonetheless. Then right at the end of the show, after the case is resolved, we find him in the kitchen again and he utters these simple words - “I always feel calm when I’m chopping vegetables”.
Food preparation is one of the simplest and yet most purposeful things we can do with our hands. It’s crucial to our survival and thus permeates every culture around the world, bringing families and communities together in the making, the sharing and the eating. I grew up in a household where preparing food was an integral part of daily life. My Granny lived through World War II in England, so rationing had taught her to be creative with limited ingredients. In my eyes she could make just about anything and there always seemed to be something happening in the kitchen. It wasn’t fancy food, but it was wholesome and delicious.
This ethos flowed through to my Mum, so my childhood was filled with the comfort of delicious home-cooked food. We rarely had takeaways and most meals were prepared from scratch. When my Dad retired, he also discovered a love of cooking and it’s now a task that my parents share. My children have grown up knowing that part of the fun of visiting their grandparents is eating Grandpa’s home baked bread smothered with Granny’s lemon curd for breakfast (the combination is utterly delicious!). And for my parents, preparing healthy and delicious food is an absolutely fundamental part of the daily rhythms that keep them well both physically and mentally.
As you might expect, my sister and I have in turn inherited the family love of cooking good food. There is something so satisfying about gathering fresh ingredients and then running through the almost automatic actions of chopping, mixing, stirring, kneading, cooking, etc. For me, a favourite way to spend a weekend is to invite friends or family over for dinner and then prepare a delicious meal. I have a slightly worrying habit of using my guests as guinea pigs for a new recipe, but a little like my stitching, I get bored serving the same food all the time. It’s fun to keep trying new things, and I haven’t poisoned anyone yet (to my knowledge at least!).
As luck (or unavoidable conditioning!) would have it, the cooking habit has now landed on both my children. My son recently moved interstate and decided to follow in his Grandpa’s footsteps and start making bread. We had a video call recently where I couldn’t really see his face but I watched with delighted fascination as his hands worked a mess of flour and water into a smooth, elastic ball of dough. I loved watching his graceful, strong, repetitive movements as we shared the news of our respective weeks.
My son’s bread rolls - yummm!
My eighteen year old daughter is still living at home, which has proven to be an absolute joy for us as she prepares at least half the meals in our house now. But it’s actually really important for her too. As a busy university student with a little too much on her job list, cooking is a favourite way for her to reduce her stress levels. I will sometimes offer to cook the evening meal but she will reply that she actually needs this time. Like the judge in “Murder in Provence”, chopping veggies is calming, rolling homemade gnocchi is soothing, and she loves experimenting with new ingredients and flavours.
My daughter made this cake for her Grandpa’s birthday several years ago.
During the early stages of the COVID pandemic, I was fascinated to see the proliferation of posts about home cooking, especially baking bread. Given time and space (even if it was enforced), large numbers of people quickly started engaging with some really fundamental handmade food processes. This article from Berkeley tells the story of two chemistry students who became obsessed with perfecting their sourdough bread. They were soon making way too many loaves for the group in their COVID bubble, so they started selling it and donating the profits to a local food charity. It has all the hallmarks of cooking that is good for the soul - shared working with your hands to make something delicious that not only feeds your friends but also gives back to the community.
Another article written during the pandemic takes a philosophical look at bread and the role it holds in our society. The author, Emily St James, makes some really interesting observations about the ways we romanticise these activities, and in particular notes that there can be a strong element of drudgery in cooking too, especially when the burden falls on just one person in the household, more normally women in our society. If we were forced to bake bread every single day because that was the only way to feed our families, it might not have quite the appeal that it does as a shared activity that kept us busy when confined to our homes during lockdown. But she still concludes at the end of the article, “For me, as corny as this sounds, baking bread offers a kind of optimism. Flour, yeast, water, and salt can become something else, meant to be shared.”
There is something so satisfying about making homemade bread - and it smells fantastic!
Another writer, Tim Adams in The Guardian also found himself doing a lot more day-to-day cooking during and after the pandemic lockdowns. He wrote the following:
“I’ve found that the new habit of starting the day discussing what’s for lunch or what’s for supper and then later doing those things, together or alone, the best you possibly can, alters the balance of how you think about any of the day’s challenges. We are forever fed the lie that our psychological ease lies in greater convenience, speed, the avoidance of complication and difficulty; that life is a battle for me-time; that work is the enemy and leisure the goal. It almost goes without saying that those ideas empty out life rather than fill it, and miss the texture of what makes most days worth living: doing things as slowly and well as they demand (even if it’s only making a great omelette), mastering skills for their own sake, searching for tomatoes that taste like tomatoes.”
I love this. Life loses it’s complexity and richness if you pare everything down to the fastest, most convenient route. It’s one of the reasons I am so passionate about The Hands Manifesto. Taking the slower route, making something with your hands, discovering the simple magic that comes from combining ingredients or materials into something that is more than a sum of the parts. For me, this is what life is all about - the joy in the details and the experience.
Cooking is an easy way for anyone to connect with this idea. We all need to eat after all. Even if you only have time to make one home-cooked meal a week, using your hands to transform ingredients into tasty dishes, not only nourishes body and brain, it takes care of your soul too.
How to comment
I love receiving your comments and hearing your ideas! Making a comment is easy. Just type it into the box below. If you test it with “Preview” first, the name field will show “Not Logged In” (which is a system thing I can’t change). Never fear though! When you click on “Post Comment”, a dialogue box will come up asking for your Name, Email, and Website URL. The only field that must be completed is “Name”. It can be anything you choose - full name, first name, initials, nickname. So go ahead. Let me know what you think :)
