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Women in the Kitchen at Home


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Our culture has just bought into the processed food industry's schtick that cooking is boring and tedious and time consuming.

I dont think its only that. It IS tedious and difficult to get a meal on the table 5 days a week, within 40 min of arriving home from work, and one that is acceptable to oneself, the spousal and the offspring units. It involves shortcuts, and simple recipes. So, cooking maybe became tedious when some of us who enjoy cooking also decided to enjoy working fulltime outside the home. Its much more fun on Saturday.

I love to cook, I love to entertain, and I love to nourish. And, I've worked hard to involve the kids in the process (I grew up thinking that everyone should know how to cook, sew on a button and type). One of the things I did when Peter and Heidi were but babes (almost twins at that) was get Diana in the kitchen with me at 8:00 at night, when the babes had gone to bed. We'd plan dinner for the next night, and get as much advance prep done as possible. Learning in many ways...math, reading, creativity, plus some great mother/daughter time that the other two prevented during the before and after-school hours. There's something that all five of us Fahning's find very comforting about sitting around the table, eating (be it a success or disaster), and going over the days events. I usually do the cooking, and even during the disasters, there's not a night that they don't get up from the table and thank me. Food, love, good conversation. It helps that I find the chopping, the searching the freezer, fondling the produce at the market very conforting.

Susan Fahning aka "snowangel"
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This is such a touching subject. I've got so many feelings tied up in what everyone else has written. I can't even begin to add my won. Let it be enough that I say thank you, Karen. For this thread with myriad feelings embedded within.

Rebecca. Remember this that you wrote, from this topic? I've never forgotten it, and don't even have to read it to see it in my mind. :smile:

The Table Of My Dreams is a massive rectangle of ancient wood, long enough for a dozen to gather comfortably, wide enough for two to sit at either end; the walnutty medieval finish darkened by centuries of use, thick, but not too thick to attach a pasta maker or grinder to, nicked and gouged in places. The grain is varied, but there is only one knot on the entire surface. And that knot is grandiose in it's efforts, and beautiful in it's ovoid perfection and mystery. The Table Of My Dreams rests on thick hand turned legs, 6 of them. The finish is waxen, but not overly so; not shiny, and yet, slightly reflective. The accompanying chairs are post modern, plastic and steel, with soft and vibrantly green blue upholstered velvet cushions. My daughter will make some beautiful, organic and yet architectural low sculptures, in a series, and I shall use them to run down the center of this table. My glass serving pieces will be a glistening counterpoint to the solidity and history of this table, and I will serve yebra and hashu, hummous, tabbouleh and immense platters of roasted and stewed vegetables and a number of entire fish, broiled on my newspaper grill and plated on large platters of steel, to my closest family and friends, to welcome The Table Of My Dreams into our midst. Small amuse of panko encrusted and deep fried chicken liver pate will be passed around, along with warm roasted and spiced mixed nuts and a salad of fresh tomatoes from the garden that peeks through the window that The Table Of My Dreams rests by. I will enlist a friend to help me to bake loaf after loaf of breads that day, and muffins as well. I will serve my family and friends a salad that will be discussed for it's complexity for months after, and the red wine will flow for the duration of our "welcome home, table" meal. We will have delicous balls of beef tartare as well. And, in the end, we will have chocolate pots de creme, ginger cookies, various chocolates that have been brought, and the most delicious port and ibrik coffees. We will talk until the morning, drink a lot more, dance, and laugh. The Table Of My Dreams will make my family and friends happy, even if they must crowd around it, as it is only intended for 12 to gather comfortably, as a rule.

edited by me:delicous! hahahaha!

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Wow, a blast from my past. I kind of wish that I was a more disciplined writer, like most of our eGullet greats are. I tend to get my heart out there in a rush, and that writing does show it. I see myself in my writing, though, with all of it's flaws, and I like that. I know that the reader knows me from my writing, and that is all I am capable of.

That is STILL a GREAT table, and I wouldn't change a thing to that setting.

Well, I might add some more food, but the table and such? Still perfect.

So, um, yeah, you know what I'm saying. What I'm getting at. The emotional component of it all. And, can I say, is it possible to discern, if these feelings are from being a woman or from being a nurturer, and THAT is because I'm a woman, or what? I don't know, it's beyond my ken, and I'm still ruminating on this . I'm rolling this subject around in my mind, and just having enormous difficulty deciding on an opinion. But, I've got the feelings down, certainly, I do. And I've still got the James Joyce Award for run on sentences, too. :biggrin:

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thank you, carrot top for this thread... and to all the posters who have had much to say and said it with passion and open hearts.

i love to cook, started quite early as a child. i was fortunate to have a mother who did well with the basics [including lots of veggies and salads, no fried food], a stepfather who was a gourmet cook who wanted to teach/cook with me and a mom [stepmother] who cooked with love. [thanks, mom. :wub: ] so i didn't grow up thinking ''cooking was a lesser job to be done by anyone who didn't have better things to do.''

while married i ''trained'' my husbands [and son] to eat what i cooked and spoiled them to homemade breads. they all learned to love different cuisines, lots of veggies and realized you didn't have to fry it to make it good. not that i never cooked things they were craving, of course i did, but mostly it was my lead. neither hubby had mothers or former wives that actually cooked much you'd want to eat if given the choice between theirs and almost anything else. :blink: they didn't grow up knowing how glorious a vegetable can be. hubby 2 did, in fact, most of the cooking for his ex and daughters while married out of what he referred to as ''sheer fright and self-defense''. :laugh: he can whip up a fine meal when inspired and did so while we were married. he was especially good on the grill and most of the time when he was being grill master i cooked the ''inside stuff''... veggies or salads, etc. hubby 1 learned some basics from me and came already well-experienced in pizza making. i mean really great pizza. not a skill i'd ever discount and i learned a lot from him about pizza. i did contribute a better sauce, but that's another story. :raz:

my point here is that as a cook i had an appreciative audience.

my son spent days and evenings in the kitchen with me from birth. by the time he was only a toddler he was ''helping'' me in ways a toddler can. he grew up enjoying learning how to cook. he enjoys it still, cooking for his own family [and occasionally for me now that i live in the same town :biggrin: ]. he cooks on an irregular basis, but he does the clean up when his wife cooks.

now i'm on my own again and still cooking. it gives me pleasure and fills my body and spirit. like snowangel i enjoy the rummaging for what inspires me, going to market and thinking up good things to do with the treasures i find.

i don't try to cook for one unless it's something individual such as eggs or fresh greens salad. i like ''makeovers''... usually eating the excess once and freezing the rest to enjoy again or most often to makeover into something else.

i bake all my own bread, often supplying son and family also, make my own stocks and try to treat myself as good as i would a guest. i deserve it, i'm good company at dinner. :biggrin:

Judith Love

North of the 30th parallel

One woman very courteously approached me in a grocery store, saying, "Excuse me, but I must ask why you've brought your dog into the store." I told her that Grace is a service dog.... "Excuse me, but you told me that your dog is allowed in the store because she's a service dog. Is she Army or Navy?" Terry Thistlewaite

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This thread has been so interesting to read, so many emotions exposed, and lives looked into. In my limited experience, I have found cooking to be a way of, firstly, asserting my independance when I was a rebellious vegetarian teenager, cooking what I wanted for myself when I wanted. It was a way of distancing myself from my parents and my brother, of delimiting myself as myself. That was my selfish phase of cooking, but it came interspersed with dinner parties I would hold for my teenage friends (in my parents house, they would graciously vacate), and then I learnt the pleasure of cooking for others. To echo what others have said, I cooked not what I liked, but what I knew would be appreciated, like the beef lasagne I couldnt taste (meat), but all my friends devoured. I loved the recognition and the looks of satisfaction on peoples faces as they tucked in to what I had made.

I cooked for my parents when they were busy at work, and felt their gratitude and pride in a daughter who was able to not only fend for herself at a young age, but wanted to show them some gratitude in turn for all the meals they had cooked for me.

Now I cook for my boyfriend, trying to make him meals that are nutritious but meals that he will enjoy. I limit the foods that I would like to eat to make sure that he eats well.If I make something that isn't nice, I feel bad, but only if I have made it for the two of us- I wouldn't care if it was just me.

I think that the reason every woman (and man) who has posted on this thread feels so bound up emotionally with cooking, and the relationships that it forges, and strengthens, is because, in some way, the food you cook and serve is an extension of yourself. It is you, served up on a plate, in your glories or your failures, on your busy days, or on your slow, luxurious days, when you have time to plan and surprise, delight and impress, or when you don't and throw something together.

Food defines us as people, it certainly defines me as a person, in that it it what I do, and what I love, and I think all the people who post on this thread realise that food and cooking is more than just nutrition, it is self-expression, and in expressing oneself, we try and express the feelings we have for the people that surround us.

Edited by minichef (log)
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I just don't know if I can agree that food defines us so intensely, although it does, to an extent, at eGullet. I don't think that this is a simple a subject as that. It's more, this question is is as to WHO WE ARE.

Although food, and feeding people, is a part of who I am, I am also involved in many other activities, just as passionately. And, there is one thread running through it all, including food. The pleasure I get in pleasing those around me, and in smoothing things over for others who have interpersonal problems. Basically, I want everyone to live in the moment, to feel safe and loved and free, to have pleasure, joy and happiness in this life, be it while they are helping customers, manufacturing jewelry, collecting books, making music, art, food, whatever. Or while I am dating, too. I know that my charms are not just in my looks and membership in Mensa, after all. Especially now that I'm befuddled and bald! :laugh:

Also, I adore words, because language can connect us, please us, and free us.

So, that desire to make and share and GIVE happiness, it colors my entire world, no matter what milieu you put me into. Food or otherwise. THAT is my defining trait, and the care and feeding of others is just a manifestation of that.

Is that because I am female? Is it because of my childhood, my religion, the ideas I was exposed to as a child? THAT is the question that is filling me right now, from this thread. And, from this thread, I will find a rope... to paraphrase the film we just watched.

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I just don't know if I can agree that food defines us so intensely, although it does, to an extent, at eGullet.  I don't think that this is a simple a subject as that. It's more, this question is is as to WHO WE ARE.

Although food, and feeding people, is a part of who I am, I am also involved in many other activities, just as passionately. And, there is one thread running through it all, including food. The pleasure I get in pleasing those around me, and in smoothing things over for others who have interpersonal problems. Basically, I want everyone to live in the moment, to feel safe and loved and free, to have pleasure, joy and happiness in this life, be it while they are helping customers, manufacturing jewelry, collecting books, making music, art, food, whatever. Or while I am dating, too. I know that my charms are not just in my looks and membership in Mensa, after all. Especially now that I'm befuddled and bald! :laugh:

Also, I adore words, because language can connect us, please us, and free us.

So, that desire to make and share and GIVE happiness, it colors my entire world, no matter what milieu you put me into. Food or otherwise. THAT is my defining trait, and the care and feeding of others is just a manifestation of that.

Is that because I am female? Is it because of my childhood, my religion, the ideas I was exposed to as a child? THAT is the question that is filling me right now, from this thread. And, from this thread, I will find a rope... to paraphrase the film we just watched.

I agree with you, rebecca, it is NOT that simple, but I think that your point about language helps me clarify my point a little, food is like words, like language. And although we are not defined by the language that we speak, we can and do use food as a (muted?) form of language- which connects us and pleases us and frees us.

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So, that desire to make and share and GIVE happiness, it colors my entire world, no matter what milieu you put me into. Food or otherwise. THAT is my defining trait, and the care and feeding of others is just a manifestation of that.

Is that because I am female? Is it because of my childhood, my religion, the ideas I was exposed to as a child? THAT is the question that is filling me right now, from this thread. And, from this thread, I will find a rope... to paraphrase the film we just watched.

Interesting questions, Rebecca. To me, the rope you speak of *is* a bundle of threads. To try to see each thread for itself, separate, in its different colors and textures, in a true sense, to use for oneself as a sort of compass or footing, is a fascinating task to undertake. Probably an endless task, but fascinating. :biggrin:

I would add to your list of questions or defining points that I put in bold above, also life experiences. Luck has a lot to do with this, doesn't it? Sheer luck? And time and place. And how one reacts to what experiences one has.

I know for a fact that I'm the same little red-headed girl I was at four years old. I can feel my personality and see it used in the outside world in the same way. And yet in other ways very much I am not, but the urge is still there to recapture the purity of self that existed in the four-year old Karen.

Yet it also happens that the way I live my life is *not* the way the "original" ( :biggrin: ) four-year old Karen would have, for some things have been faced in the course of life that makes certain paths seem surer or safer ones to follow than others.

And although we are not defined by the language that we speak, we can and do use food as a (muted?) form of language- which connects us and pleases us and frees us.

The opposite too, though, minichef. :smile: If food is succor given or received, it can be the opposite - a lack of love or pleasure shown in what we give or receive. :wink:

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Here's what I mean about threads. Both in a global sense of self (in the forms of being female and in the connections of feminism and all) and in the personal sense of self - all as connected to food.

Why try to sort the threads? Sometimes, to find a good and accurate path to follow for oneself. Other times, because the stories we live and tell are the ones our children hear and follow, believe or not, take in to their hearts as part of who they are and how they will live.

My mother was a single mother, ardent feminist, angry woman, and very proud of her Ph.D. She did not particularly like food - it was fodder. So when I grew up to learn about food and how it could show love and succor, it totally blew me away. If I had followed my mother's lead, I would not care too much about food and would avoid many other things that offer love.

But then I learned to be a chef. When I was a chef, I followed my mother's feminist teachings, and also by the way profited greatly by the very fact of "feminism" having changed the world. I never would have been able to make a six figure salary as a woman as an Executive Chef in this venue in previous times. Hosannas, indeed, to notions and realities of feminism.

As an executive chef, I was paid very well. Got lots of compliments on the things I cooked or the the kitchen under my direction cooked. Excellent feeling.

So later on, in another life. I am married, with children. "I am married with children. I cook, at home," I would say. And the comments were blah in return from those who were around to meet. "I used to be a chef," I would say and the bright smiles lit up faces. Where? What did you cook? So much interest shown. In the profession. Of cooking. But *not* in the act of cooking, as mothers, wives, and now more, husbands and fathers are doing at home.

The act somehow becomes a different thing at home. If it is done with love, it can give more than one can ever imagine. Yet those that do it are met with such a different attitude than those who do it to make money.

My children know how to cook, they have from a young age. But still, there is no sort of religious fervor about dinnertime, and still, they are children and will eat from their mother, will want to be fed by their mother, which is a different thing for a mother to do than it is for a woman to feed a man. A different relationship. And children do make one humble. They do say 'yuck'. They do not want this that or the other thing, whether the President of the United States thought it was the best thing he ever ate or not. If they feel 'yuck' they say yuck. And so it goes. Not a high level of appreciation sometimes. :biggrin:

How to fine tune all this for myself, is my internal question.

And how on earth to answer this thing I see where professionalism in cooking is rewarded in the world though it really is a job with a salary attached, where cooking at home is thought of so very very differently by the world. Really it is. And with no salary attached, it is a jump of faith to throw oneself into it as sole occupation, as homemaker. Faith indeed, and prayerfully to all that undertake it in this way, it will be a faith rewarded in close-known quiet ways. Would that it could be made safer for those that choose to undertake it, in a world that sorely needs comfort, comfort of the home and hearth.

Where have the better rewards been in cooking, for me? As a chef, whose food was well appreciated, where words of thanks were given each day along with the mantle of "chef" that people seem to like? Sometimes I laugh, thinking of how I would be approached here and there if I used the moniker "Chef Karen" (which of course I was). I look at that sort of personal experience and compare it to having been a home cook for a family where somehow my spouse turned out to be a turncoat, where the foods fed him were not somehow appreciated. This can happen. I don't know the "why's". But I do know that they need to be asked, if never, finally completely understood. It is good for each person to see the place they are standing on to see what it is that makes it, so they can love it or, maybe, say "uh-oh".

:wink:

I like the line Henry James wrote, about "the time-honored breadsauce of the happy ending".

Food, delicious food, loving food, can sometimes take on that mythical soft and fuzzy sort of power. But is that power real? Or is it all in the narrative, which can not always be written as one might wish it to be.

Edited by Carrot Top (log)
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  • 7 months later...

Since I like to eat, I cook.

I have a hate/love relationship with cooking though. I don't like the nightly drudgery of cooking after a full day at work. That's so draining. Because of this, I don't cook every day. I'll cook a meal where we can eat leftovers for a few nights. By the time the middle of the week arrives, I'll do a quickie meal like pasta, meatloaf, a saute - something easy that I can get on the table fast.

However when it comes to holidays, weekends and entertaining - that's when I come to life. On weekends, I'll make "Sunday dinner" type meals, experiment with new ingredients and recipes and make the "from scratch" type of things like stocks, soups & sauces that I can freeze for future meals.

I do like feeding people and am happy when my husband enjoys the meals I prepare for us. When I cook a meal, I admittedly tailor it to items that I want to eat. This is because I'm a "mood" eater, whereas my husband pretty much eats whatever I cook. That's one of the reasons why it wouldn't even pay for my husband to do most of the cooking in our household. If I don't have a taste for something, I just won't eat it. My husband is a lot more flexible in that regard.

In a sense, I do equate food with love. When I go away for a weekend to visit my parents (who live in a nearby state), I make sure hubby has a cooked meal. He feels happy when I do this and it shows him that I care about him in my absence. At one point, I'd slackened up on doing this and he made mention of it. Not that he demanded or expected it, but he missed it (and maybe in a way, he was feeling that I didn't care about him as much?). So now I make sure to have a prepared meal for him before I go away.

My husband is not much of a cook at all, but every once in a while, he will do his best to prepare a meal for me. It may not be something I have a "taste" for at that moment, but I will eat it because I appreciate the time and effort he took to make it just for me.

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I just heard a whisper from the past. My Great Aunt Lorayne (born Willa Lorene with the twentieth century, but changed to Lorayne-with-a-Y at sometime in her madcap youth) married and buried three husbands, and after the last, was alone in her little house except for family and guests in and out. She may have BEEN a feminist of the first order---she certainly had a reputation in early days for being outside the box in lots of areas.

She said to me during her final widowhood: "I still cook for occasions." This just after a holiday, can't remember which. She had got out the good china and cooked the traditional recipes, perhaps enjoying them alone with a copy of Whitman or Proust or Susann---big fan of them all--- or perhaps sharing with any number of nieces, nephews, friends or all our families.

She also dressed for every day as if she were going to a party or to church, nice dress and jewelry, stockings rolled just below the knee, pretty little shoes that seemed much too nice to cook in. I hoped to sorta BE her when I grew up, with all the spirit and enthusiasm for occasions, and for making daily life an occasion, as well.

And I think I have. We cook and laugh and sit down to tables laden for a crowd, or set the same dishes before just the two or three of us, with just the same ingredients and care-taking in the making. I haven't cooked in several months like I used to, and wondered for a while if I had reached my own slowdown-leading-to-a-shutdown, and even with a three-week houseguest, I haven't been in the kitchen as much as accustomed. But I still set out pretty dishes, move the cameras and papers and other accumulation completely off the table to accommodate the flowers, the salt-dips, the goblets. It BRIGHTS me to set down something in a pretty way, as well as to make it delicious and nourishing.

With the holidays, I feel the fire of anticipation, the cool, crisp air kindling the braise-something or simmer-soup-all-day feelings, with the closing-in and the laying-by a primal need to share warmth and food. I think that's a feeling as old as the first fire-and-a-stick kitchen, and as common as breath.

I think I do it for ME, mostly, for how I feel about the process and the nurturing and just the fact of chopping and sauteing and lifting a lid on a wonderful dish. To set it before someone I love---that's frosting on the cake. (Preferably chocolate).

PS---dividend---who washed the dishes?

Edited by racheld (log)
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I cook to please anyone of any gender, particularly me.  Because my husband and many of my dearest male friends cook as well or better than I do, I'm often on the receiving end of their skills and largesse. (eGullet men seriously rock: I've been the lucky recipient of nightscotsman's cakes, Varmint's pig, ronnie's charcuterie, Dave's Hollandaise, guajolote's turkey mole, ivan's skill at the grill, Alex's breakfasts ...) I'm sure they cook for the ladies in their lives, but, like me they I think they mostly do it because they love it.

I've also had the pleasure of cooking in Maggie's kitchen, and I beamed at the sight of the Traveling Riot enjoying my Pepper Chicken.

I can think of no more affectionate act than preparing a meal for someone. Once when I was cooking spaghetti and meat sauce for a girlfriend named Diana, the thought popped into my mind to ask Diana to invite her sister and nieces over to join us. "The more, the merrier," I said. Diana's sister lived upstairs and had spent the better part of the day rehabbing an apartment next door, so she was too exhausted to cook.

So Diana's sister and nieces bellied up to the stove as a quiet dinner for two evolved into a genial dinner for five. Diana was thrilled that I invited the whole family to the table, and frankly, I enjoyed everyone's company. If I can prepare a meal for someone, I feel pretty lucky.

There are two sides to every story and one side to a Möbius band.

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