Why I Cook

Cooking in Italy

Michael Ruhlman, a fantastic writer and collaborator on the best cookbook we received this Christmas, posted a challenge to bloggers to write about why we cook.  You can read it here.  Never one to back away from a challenge, at least where food is concerned, here I go.  Though the more I think about it, the more I see there are two subjects here – why I started cooking and why I cook now.

I blame it all on Susan Wittenberg.  Susan was a childhood friend and neighbor at the Tara Apartments in Athens.  That’s Athens, Georgia, not Greece.  Until that point, food was food.  It was what your parents fed you.  As far as I knew, everybody ate the same things.  Don’t get me wrong, the food at our house was good.  I come from a long line of fantastic home cooks.  But I never knew food could be different.

And then one day I was over at Susan’s apartment (probably trying on those red corduroy jeans she used to let me borrow, so cool) and she made us toast.  Toast is not usually a life-changer but it was for me.  This toast was made from rye bread and spread with the softened butter her mom always kept on the counter.  I’d had rye bread before, but never toasted.  And the butter, real butter…I must have eaten half a loaf’s worth of toast.  From that point on, life was different.

Susan also had something to do with my almost unreasonably intense love for fresh tomatoes.  Her dad grew cherry tomatoes and we used to sneak out back and pick them.  We’d run away into the woods with our stolen fruit and sit by the creek, popping them into our mouths like candy.  Chocolate is nice but I’d rather have a just-picked tomato, still warm from the sun, any day.  I haven’t seen my partner in crime in about 35 years but, wherever she is, thank you Susan.

Anyway, after the toast incident, I started learning to cook.  My mother is a very competent cook, unlike another mother with whom I’m acquainted and whose most infamous culinary creation was the meat wad.  But I never got the idea Mama really enjoys cooking much.  So I think she was happy to encourage my interest in the kitchen (and, in turn, that of my younger sister and brothers; the Davis kids are all good cooks now).  Long story short – after years in the kitchen with Mama, Diddy (yes, my dad is the original Diddy), Memama Suddath, Grandmother Davis, a few hundred cookbooks, and a food-loving husband – I learned to cook.

Bones - the food-loving husband

And now I’m back to the question of why I cook, or perhaps more precisely I suppose, why I love to cook.  I cook because it give me pleasure.  It makes me truly happy to feed my family and friends.  I can feed, nourish, strengthen, share and love, all through the simple act of cooking a meal.  I find the chopping and stirring and kneading to be relaxing, most of the time.  As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than with a big pot of sauce bubbling on the stove or a roast in the oven, with opera blasting from the iPod and the knowledge that friends and family are coming for lunch.  I don’t cook to impress, my food’s not fancy enough for that, but I do hope my Sunday lunches make people happy.  Because they sure do make me happy. 

I also cook to learn – new cultures, new cuisines, new techniques, new recipes.  I even plan my vacations around my stomach.  I don’t care how pretty the views are, the first thing I want to know is what the food’s like.  What do the locals eat?  Where do they eat it?  Can I have the recipe?  My love of food has taken me to France, Italy, Mexico, England and all over the Caribbean.  It’s why we don’t often stay in hotels.  Rental villas have kitchens and I can go to the market, buy food and cook it.  I want to cook, even on holiday.  I shall probably never go to Antarctica.  Ice is nice, and I know it’s one of our last unspoiled frontiers, but I don’t think they grow many good things to eat in Antarctica.   Cooking, for me, is a journey.  Hopefully it will never end.

Cooking also connects me to my past.  A stray flavor or aroma can instantly transport me back to another place and time faster than stepping through Alice’s looking glass.  The smell of fresh mint takes me straight over the Atlantic to England.  I’m reminded of fresh peas, new potatoes so tasty they didn’t need butter or salt, and my dear sweet father-in-law.  We would sit in his cottage at the dinner table that now resides in my house, drink port and smoke cigarettes.  He was a navigator on fighter planes during World War II and I loved to listen to his war stories.  He’s gone now and I don’t think I ever told him how much he meant to me.  But the smell of fresh mint brings him back.

When I make Grandmother’s dinner rolls or Memama’s spaghetti sauce, something of those two amazing, strong ladies remains.  A simple dinner roll is a tangible, edible reminder of an adored grandmother.  It makes me think of pennies on the railroad track and a still beautiful white-haired woman lounging gracefully at my wedding with a bourbon in her hand and love in her eyes.

I hope that Audrey, when she’s mastered dinner rolls, will have an appropriate, though perhaps less graceful, memory to accompany the aroma of rising yeast and fresh baked bread.  I hope the smell of jerk on the barbecue will send her sense memory careening back to her Caribbean childhood.  I hope the sear of a scotch bonnet at the back of her throat will make her think of Devica, who loves her so much.  I even hope she’ll remember my attempt at making Aunt Sarah’s peanut butter fudge, which Audrey hated and still brings up as the worst thing she ever ate.  I hope it will make her laugh.

 So, I guess I you could say I cook to preserve the past, flavor the present, and nourish the future.  I cook because I want to, like to and have to.  Why do you cook?  Ruhlman wants to know.  Me too.

This is why I cook

Tagged as: cooking essays, why I cook