The Everyday Made Sacred by Intent
A while back, Stephen Grasso commented to me that he appreciated reading the entries on my blog about cooking, how the tales of finding ingredients and preparing them were actually small love stories. Perceptive. Whether baking bread or pulling everything together for a risotto, my cooking is often one of those commonplace expressions of love that can easily be overlooked. A bit of the everyday made sacred by intent. Sometimes you want to tell those who command space in your heart and mind your love them with words, other times by plucking basil leaves from the pot in the kitchen and adding them to the tomato sauce you have been reducing down for the last hour.
Another higher function cooking serves for me is as creating a meditative space within my life. When I am being slammed hard by a storm of deadlines and worrying about trying to fit in making a speech at a literary convention, a child’s birthday party and a visit to Nanna all on the safe day, cooking grounds and centres me. The urgent tang that comes from sweating onions and garlic cuts through the roaring static of my stress. Building the flavours of a sauce becomes alchemy. Combining ingredients I transform base elements into a temporary panacea for my ills.
The moment in the day when I take down the wooden board, pour olive oil into the pan and begin chopping while Radio 4 throws out voices is always special. Cooking is not just a chore, not just a pleasure. For me it can be as essential as sleep for gathering up the cares of the day and making a feast out of life.
Another higher function cooking serves for me is as creating a meditative space within my life. When I am being slammed hard by a storm of deadlines and worrying about trying to fit in making a speech at a literary convention, a child’s birthday party and a visit to Nanna all on the safe day, cooking grounds and centres me. The urgent tang that comes from sweating onions and garlic cuts through the roaring static of my stress. Building the flavours of a sauce becomes alchemy. Combining ingredients I transform base elements into a temporary panacea for my ills.
The moment in the day when I take down the wooden board, pour olive oil into the pan and begin chopping while Radio 4 throws out voices is always special. Cooking is not just a chore, not just a pleasure. For me it can be as essential as sleep for gathering up the cares of the day and making a feast out of life.
Labels: Cooking, Domesticity, Love, Stephen Grasso
posted by David at
6:24 PM
13 Comments:
What a wonderful post David, really.
For me, that I can hardly cook despite the fact that I am Italian and come from a family in which both sets of grandparents were pasticcieri, the words you use to describe the way you 'live' the cooking are so, so vivid! I can really smell the tomato sauce, and that specifc flavour which basil has, a little bitter sweet.
Ohhhhh thank you!
How did you ever cope with that Anne-Marie Forker woman who wouldn't eat butter and was doing that bulimia stuff with chocolate?
Milla – Thank you. Coming from someone with such a passion for food, your words are high praise.
Kid Atari – Given that the 'Anne-Marie Forker woman' has read this blog eight times in the last month and seems to spend a lot of Net time typing her own name into Google, I am not inclined to even begin to answer that question. When I feel like exorcising ghosts I will write entries on dead kittens, Trimble and nights spent on the kitchen floor, but until then, this blog is officially a Forker free zone.
I'm glad to see you posting! How do you feel? How are you healing?
I enjoy your thoughts about cooking. It is indeed a meditative time for me also, from the moment that I pour the water into the plastic macaroni bowl and push Start on the microwave, to the jarring BEEP of the cooking cycle's end... those three minutes are magical to me. ;-)
Goodness...a revalation. Thats how people feel who really love cooking. Its wonderful. The state you talk about is how I feel when I pull out my watercolour pencils... or start drawing the first eye. There is a stillness and quietness and time does not matter. Some of my sisters are like this re coking but I was the outdoors one who did the wood and things after dad died and never really developed a love of cooking...now I understand at 54!!! that its the same feeling I get with my pens and pencils... thanks for that 5am revalation.
When I read this post, I thought of you cooking for or with Surreal Girl.
So many people equate food with love.
For me, it is not so much what I am cooking, but the effort, time and thought. The care in preparation, the time it takes to make it the best you can and all the thoughts for whom you are making the dish is what is love.
Without someone you love to prepare a meal, it is just food on a plate.
I can really relate to this post David. I have found a love for cooking in the past few years. Of course having people who love to eat kitchen creations helps too.
Great post.
I feel the same way about cooking. Nothing more soothing than chopping and preparing and stirring to a background of radio 4. In may my aga will be fitted,a long held ambition, at huge expense.
I miss that whole symphony of cooking, when you are surrounded with people with picky and conservative tastes it becomes as dull as dishwater, its only when cooking for myself that I muster creativity, sadly those are few and far between days with maternal demands and what not :(
Mmmm.... I never learned to cook, so it always takes me by surprise when I enjoy it! I see it as a chore, but don't always feel it as that.
I made some baked portabellos with butter, pepper and bay leaves, fried up some eggplants with chipotle, and made fried rice and veggies. Sounds like a weird combo, but I think the enjoyment made it all hang together ok. ;-)
The mushrooms and bay leaves were magical! Fresh from the tree by my back door.
I love reading your cooking posts! They're extraordinary, and make me wish you didn't live so far away!! ;-)
Cooking is the best escape from depression for me. When I cook, I forget about thinking how miserable I am but just focus on my nose' feeling.
Cooking is the best escape from depression for me. When I cook, I forget about thinking how miserable I am but just focus on my nose' feeling.
Amen Brother...
The smell of good cooking destroys all the ill will of the world.
To taste those alchemical blends in person is the stuff of epics my friend!
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