More men cooking

Good morning!

There have always been men cooking in American homes. Take a look at the comic strips and the movies of my childhood where there was  often  a big handsome-type fellow or sometimes a Dagwood, apron tied clumsily around his man-waist, cooking up some food.  Dennis the Menace's father barbecued, didn't he? 

Yet, in many American homes, Dad never went anywhere near the stove.  He sat down, and was served a plate of food by someone who cared enough about him to perform that holy service.  John Steinbeck wrote a beautiful piece about a young woman, baby on her hip, skilfully making a breakfast.  And someone else has written a beautiful piece about someone making him a sandwich. Holy service!!

Right now, the men in the younger generation in my family of sisters, all of them, perform the major cooking duties in their families.  In the course of watching their mothers, and repudiating a role as her helper, often, they learned something --cooking is its own reward.  We cook because it's necessary, and we cook because it's rewarding to make something good.

Something happened to the girls along the way.  They looked at that kitchen slave mother and said: Not me!  I'm not doing that!   And along with their growing  up came the maturation of the American prepared food-fast food-ready to eat food industry, and the girls never had to learn how.  And they lost a lot, I think, but they gained a lot too. I am not going to argue that at all.

Benjamin is like his mother and has become a master of baking, first, and now a master of soups.  He loved baking, and like me made everything. His own fig newtons...his own curry refrigerator cookies (Fannie Farmer)... My only criticism of his cookery is that he like many of his generation LOVES hot stuff, and sometimes puts in a little too many chiles even for his mom.  It has always been fun to talk cookery to him, and it gives us a common bond for shopping and browsing.

Alexander is a master of the pizza.  He has spent years mastering a perfect pizza dough for the home oven.  Supper time at his house is sheer pleasure with one little hand shaped oval or roundish pizza after another appearing out of his oven.  His daughters have taken over the cakes, cupcakes, and muffins from their mother. I hope my grandson is learning about pizza dough.  If he doesn't, I am sure there will be another phase of cookery that he'll find for himself and reward himself and others with!!

My husband Theodore is an okay cook too. He has turned out many a family meal but never when he had me to do it. His meals were the meat, boiled red potato type. Not to be knocked when you are really hungry.  For a while he went on the oat bran muffin kick and turned out many a nice muffin...Then he stopped. 

My family, in short, is obsessed with food.  Some slender young women have been known to think that it is a bad obsession...At some point they had a baby and realized that that baby is obsessed with food, too. 

Little kids welcome a set meal at a set time, very much.  I feel sorry for the many many children in this country who never have one, at home.  I had whole classes, when I was teaching school here in San Diego City Schools, whose entire nutrition came from the school program.  They ate the school breakfast, and they ate the school lunch.  "What do you eat when you get home at night?" I would sometimes ask.  Oh--not much, they'd answer.  Sometimes their mother tossed them a bag of chips, they'd say. 

A teacher in the East County here noticed that many of her children had had their last meal for 72 hours or more, when they went out the schoolroom door on Friday afternoon.  She began rounding up foods and putting them in bags, which these select children would be given after school on Friday.  Things like apples, crackers and cheese, cans with easy pop tops that could be eaten directly out of the can like stew or beans...children would tell her that they fed toddlers at home too out of these cans.  The teacher's retired father got into the act and they  made it a bigger project.  The truth here is that there lots of hungry kids in our United States, and they will never get the wonderful prepared meals at a home table that I got as a youngster, and, grown up, cooked for my kids.

I seem to have gotten away from men cooking, but I haven't really.  Men, wives, cooks, kids, all are part of the picture.  I still think the family meal (if only once a day now) is a very important part of our lives....YAZZYBEL