Rediscovering the Joy in Cooking
Last Updated March 28, 2015 · First Published September 23, 2013
This post originally appeared as a guest post on the Attune Foods blog.
When I was a kid, my mom had a huge cookbook on a shelf in the kitchen calledย The Joy of Cooking.
Iโm sure youโve heard of it; itโs been around since 1931, and is in its 11th edition. I think my mom had the 1975 edition. I always loved the name of the book itself, and it was my go-to book whenever I wanted to try anything new in the kitchen โ even something as simple as making hard-boiled eggs.
Although it was originally published during the Great Depression โ at a time when seemingly not much joy was to be had, whether in the kitchen or elsewhere โ I think the title is just as compelling today, 80 years later.
Last year, Tim Kreider published an excellent opinion piece in the New York Times called โThe โBusyโ Trap.โย Heโs referring to the increasingly common response of โBusy!โ when you ask someone how theyโre doing. ย It seems weโre all busy, busy, busy with projects, emails, activities, deadlines, and the resulting inability to simply sit still. (Iโm surely guilty of all of this.)
Today, in our world of โbusyness,โ too many of us think of cooking as a chore. Itโs perceived to be as unpleasant as taking out the trash, brushing your teeth, or doing your homework. After all, weโre so busy, we barely have time to eat, let alone time to prepare a nice, wholesome meal from scratch! And letโs not forget all that time for the sheer drudgery of grocery shopping.
Well, I refuse to accept that.ย The very act of cooking itself can โ and should โ be joyful! Cooking is transforming raw materials into something new, something enjoyable, something fundamentally satisfying and (ful)filling.ย Youโre creating. Youโre making something. Itโs as fundamental to human nature as our opposable thumbs. You get to sit back and say, โI did this,โ which can bring a deep satisfaction into your life.ย (There can be tremendous joy in picking out fresh fruits and vegetables at the market, too.)
We all have the same number of hours in the day; itโs what we choose to do with those hours that matter.ย Somehow, we have plenty of time to spend on Facebook, Instagram, and the like โ all those โtime sucksโ that didnโt even existjust a few years ago. Americans now spend 34 hours a week watching TV. (Ironically, a lot of that time is spent watching other people cook!)
I know that if I choose to do so, I can find a lot more joy in cooking than I can by watching another episode of TV or by chasing the โinfinite scrollโ of my Facebook news feed.