Who is the curvaceous Rebel and why would you want to read another blog about cooking?
Yes, the curvaceous Rebel is about food, about cooking but also about life. Two things that, at least for me, are inseparably intertwined.
For me cooking is a part of life. Yes sometimes its a chore to feed two hungry boys but hey all Moms feel that way. However, cooking and baking is exciting to me. It brings me joy. It awakens my senses. Cooking also serves as therapy, anger management, to drive away sadness, to celebrate joy and happy moments and of course it is about eating. Cooking can be oddly satisfying. Imagine your hands on a dense bread dough that you squeeze, roll and form, or sometimes just slam on the countertop. Yes I sat on my kitchen floor in front of my oven (maybe with and adult beverage in my hand) and listened to that distinguished crackling sound of pork belly, puffing its majestic crust in the oven, some golden magic with the most intoxicating smell..
I cook in my head all the time. I can pick up a smell in the air that reminds me of a recipe from my childhood, or a restaurant, a meal a friend has made at their house or even something I’ve seen on TV. I envision flavor combinations and textures and can almost taste or feel them on my tongue.
As a society we have removed ourselves from food as an event, as a family thing, as a time to reflect, relax and find joy. A time to wake up our taste bud and senses. We use food often as a necessary evil, just to put something in our mouths regardless of flavor, quality, origin or nutritional value. We eat while standing over the sink, watching TV, we eat in the car, snack in bed and sometimes we can’t even remember what we ate. Family dinners might be a thing of the past, too slow, too time consuming and now during the time of Covid, too daring to attempt with friends.
For me that is scary and sad. I grew up in Germany. A twin brother and one older sister. My parents were both teachers and my Oma lived in the house with us. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was clockwork. Breakfast every morning at six thirty on school days, Saturdays were free for all and Sunday was late Sunday breakfast or brunch. Lunch was between 12:30 and 1PM, depending when we got home from school. We ate a hot lunch together every day as a family. In Germany, lunch is usually the largest meal of the day. Dinner was usually a Vesper, meaning a variety of cold cuts and cheeses, pickles, sometimes radishes or sliced tomatoes and one or two varieties of bread or rolls. Mustard, horseradish and sometimes chopped onion rings could also be found on the table. The basket with bread was passed across the table. You took a slice of bread, slathered it with unsalted butter and added sausage or cheese, or both to you liking, open faced, never as a sandwich. A few other things I remember, there was no TV, during meals, no phone calls and well, social media wasn’t a thing back then.
Modern cooking is often about trends, diets, popularity; about Instagram pictures at restaurants, FB pictures of breakfast lunch and dinners. Yes I’m guilty of all of the above, but the main reason I cook is, because I love doing it, I teach my sons to become cooks, I teach them to enjoy a home cooked meal over fast food, to enjoy the quality time shared at a meal without electronic devices and to connect as a family. Cooking is about exploring. Cooking teaches more than how to prepare food. Yes it is about flavor and texture. Cooking is also about other cultures, about history, heritage and it also gives you a crash course in math, chemistry, science and art, not to forget it teaches discipline, common sense and cleanliness. Cooking with your kids teaches them confidence and patience and the feeling that they matter.
You learn a lot about a person when you watch them eat. You can see anger, frustration or sadness in how someone picks up the utensils, picks around in their favorite dish or gobbles the food down just to be dismissed. You can see if they are happy and content. Do they savor a new recipe, take a bite in slowly, inhale the scent of the food, evaluate the texture or gleam with pride if they serve food to the family that they have made by themselves. Call me old fashioned or quirky, I think the world would be a nicer places if more meals would be shared around the table
