Louisville Process Theology Network

Cooking as a Religious Devotion

Mar 01, 2010

Is cooking a religious devotion in our fast-paced lives today? Consider Page 129 of "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver.

?“Cooking is the great divide between good eating and bad. The gains are quantifiable: cooking and eating at home, even with quality ingredients, cost pennies on the dollar compared with meals prepared by a restaurant or a factory. Shoppers who are most daunted by the high price of organics may be looking at bar codes on boutique-organic foods, not actual vegetables.

A quality diet is not an elitist option for the do-it-yourselfer. Globally speaking, people consume more soft drinks and packaged foods as they grow more affluent; home-cooked meals of fresh ingredients are the mainstay of rural, less affluent people. This link between economic success and nutritional failure has become so widespread, it has a name: nutritional transition.

In this country, some of our tired and poorest live in neighborhoods where groceries are sold only in gas station mini-marts. Food stamp allowances are in some cases as low as one dollar a person per meal, which will buy beans and rice with nothing thrown in. But many more us of have substantially broader food options than we?’re currently using to best advantage.

Home-cooked, whole-ingredient cuisine will save money. It will also trim off and keep off extra pounds, when that?’s an issue. Obesity is our most serious health problem, and our sneakiest, because so many calories slip in uncounted. Corn syrup and added fats have been outed as major ingredients in fast food, but they hide out in packaged foods too, even presumably innocent ones like crackers.

Cooking lets you guard the door, controlling not only what goes into your food, but what stays in.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It?’s the only way you can get serious about putting locally raised food into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

Cooking and eating with children teaches them civility and practical skills they can use later on to save money and stay healthy, whatever may happen in their lifetimes to the gas-fueled food industry. Family time is at a premium for most of us, and legitimate competing interests can easily crowd out cooking. But if grabbing fast food is the only way to get the kids to their healthy fresh-air soccer practice on time, that?’s an interesting call. Arterial-plaque specials that save minutes now can cost years, later on.

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they?’re missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising-dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

The choreography of many people working in one kitchen is, by itself, a certain definition of family, after people have made their separate ways home to be together.?”