Where did you learn to cook?

I hear this question asked every so often, usually by older relatives of their 16 to 30 year old nieces, nephews and cousins whenever they supply any kind of foodstuff to a family gathering. As in, "Ah, tuna caserole! That looks great. Where did you learn to cook?" I rarely understand what is meant when this question is asked and will inevitabley loose all powers of speech whenever it is asked of me. "James, you brought the mashed potatoes - excellent! Where did you learn to cook?" I am never sure how to answer this question. Are they asking where I learned how to read, thus giving me the skills I need to follow a recipe? Are they asking where I learned how to take something that was previously solid and to mash it up, thus making it into something mushy? Are they asking me where I learned how to take something that was previously cold and raw and to put it into the oven thus initiating a chemical reaction by which that something becomes both hot and cooked? Cooking is not rocket science. It's something mankind has known how to do since before there was any language to talk about what it was they were doing. All that we have "learned" since the first caveman roasted his first wooly mammoth in a spit 10,000 years ago has just been a variation on this theme.
Our lives are complex enough as they are. Please, can we refrain from making something as basic as food complicated as well?

This entry was written by James Logan, M.D., posted on December 1, 2008 at 3:48 PM , filed under . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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