I Don't Understand Why You Can't Cook
(Amy and Emeril.) You don't have to cook like these guys...just cook!
You
know that trope we’ve heard our entire lives about how we aren’t taught basic
life skills in high school? We’re
learning about the Teapot Dome Scandal and mitochondria, but we don’t know how
to do our taxes, etc.? I’m on board for
a lot of that. (Although the notion that we don’t know how to ‘balance a checkbook’
is antiquated and simply isn’t true.
Balancing a checkbook takes all the math skills you learned by fifth
grade. We just suck at it.)
Why do so many of us not know how
to cook? I feel like it is something we
should learn just after tying our shoes and just before geometric proofs. It’s eating!
It’s the thing we all have to do every day to stay alive. We breathe without conscious effort. Check.
The biological urge to drink water seems to take care of itself. Check.
But food preparation, the one that takes effort, escapes so many of
us. I don’t get it.
First of all, let’s get this out of
the way. Cooking isn’t hard. It isn’t.
Most of the time it doesn’t take a long time, and it can be done when
you are doing other things. Nutritionists
will tell you that the simple fact you are cooking for yourself means you will
end up eating healthier than if you ate your meals in restaurants or ate from
the microwave every day. Now, I just made up that fact about nutritionists, but
damn that seems plausible to me. It’s
minimal effort. With actual food
ingredients, fresh or not, you will eat better.
You’ll stretch your dollar further, too.
One of the reasons we don’t cook
for ourselves is that in this insane culture, cooking has a feminine
connotation. It’s something that moms do.
Some men don’t want to associate themselves with feminine things, so they don’t
cook. Some women don’t want to associate
themselves with domestic things, so they don’t cook. Both of these views are categorically stupid.
Why? Because the notion that cooking is inherently
male or female is ludicrous. We all
eat. All of us. My wife is a chef, and the restaurant business
is still predominantly run by men. How
does that fit into all this? Women should cook for free and men should get paid
for it? What the hell does that mean?
Also, what you are saying to the rest
of society when you don’t cook is this: “I have a basic need to eat every day
and I expect all of you to take care of that for me.” Fuck you, dude. If you can’t find the time
and effort to lift up a spatula now and then to flip an egg, then maybe you
shouldn’t be breathing, either. What,
are you too good for your own biological necessities? I think that somewhere in the ideological
divide we have in this country is self-reliance versus state support. The balance is always shifting, and all our
arguments seem to fall on one side or another.
I believe there is a giant pile of daily bullshit that the state can
take care of that I don’t want to deal with in my life. It creates jobs, keeps bridges from
collapsing, keeps kids in school, etc. But,
if I had to make a conceit to satisfy the bootstrap pullers on the other side, I
say that everyone learns to cook for themselves. It’s a strong lesson in self-reliance and you
understand a lot about finances, health, and how to participate in society
along the way. Yes…can you imagine…not only cooking for yourself but making
enough for others, too? Whoa…
It shouldn’t be a source of pride
to not cook. It shouldn’t be cute to
admit you can’t boil water or that you eat Twizzlers for dinner. Maybe it was at one time, but times are
changing. If you want to respect the environment,
what’s a more personal way than what’s in your kitchen or what you feed your
kids? You can show pride in your country with a dozen flags and a bunch of
stickers on your truck, or maybe you can raise kids that know how to feed themselves?
It’s food! You are going to eat
some today! Why don’t you want any part
in that?