A friend invited me to join a social media group he's set up that focuses on food. His friends -- and he's got many -- have been posting the most amazing pictures of the most incredible things they've been cooking. It got me thinking today about what and how we eat.
I had a colleague who admitted to me that she and her husband almost never eat at home. "We go out every night because no one feels like cooking," she laughed. And I recall reading an article somewhere some ten or so years ago about apartments built without a kitchen with the assumption that the owner/renter would eat out every day. Such eating misses out on what's truly amazing about food, the creation process behind it. Often, for me, the preparation is just as enjoyable as the meal itself: having taken over Thanksgiving dinner for our family, I'm already beginning to think about what to cook. At the same time, though, I understand that that's probably the case only because I cook so infrequently.
For K, who does most of the cooking, I think it's not always quite as enjoyable, all the chopping and cutting and slicing and stirring. She often begins the cooking at night, after the kids have gone to bed, getting as much of it done before going to bed. Soups, for instance, are almost always completely done before she goes to bed. And while she does truly enjoy cooking (though perhaps baking a little more, I suspect), sometimes it can be just a drudgery for her.
That leads to the second half of my thoughts: the what. We rarely eat anything that could be called "processed." Sure, we use canned beans in chili most of the time, and we sometimes cheat with this or that, but it's usually what folks here in the south would call scratch cooking. K's soups always begin with a pot full of vegetables and a couple of pieces of meat. And in recent years, we haven't even bought sandwich meats all that much, preferring our own smoked meats to anything you can get in the store.
There's a joy in that as well -- the cutting of the wood, the preparation of the brine solution for marinating, the tending of the fire. It's another case of the process being as enjoyable as the product. It all takes time, a finite resource that's even scarcer when one figures the children into the equation. Yet what else is one going to spend the time doing? And besides, few things bring together a family as effectively as a good meal.
Perhaps a bonfire, with s'mores.
And at that moment, young man, you sealed your fate. Previously, you’d simply been disrespecting me and my authority. But mocking the school-wide discipline program, you disrespected the entire school, the entire administration, and the entire teaching staff that came up with a school-wide plan to help you and students like you change some of the damaging behaviors you and students like you so clearly and brazenly exhibit. These are behaviors that will destroy your future if you do not make a serious attempt to change them, and our school discipline plan is intended to help prevent that, to help you see in an on-going basis the negative (and positive) behaviors you’re showing. And so it is not intended to scare or frighten or even punish: it’s intended to help. But you showed that you don’t want help, that you’re set the way you are, that you see a bright future with your behaviors. Ironically, it was that very short-sightedness that we’re trying to help you correct.
