Rebecca’s Cooking Journal

I’ve been reading A Homemade Life, a memoir/cookbook by Molly of Orangette. It’s quite delightful reading, simply because it shows how good food has always has been an integral part of her life. Her life is and always has been one of food, cooking, and eating.

I feel jealous.

My life hasn’t revolved around food memories. In fact, I didn’t know until I was 25, for example, that cooked pork chops are not supposed to light gray and tough (apparently, pork chop are not usually steamed). My favorite childhood foods were cinnamon toast and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and I got through four years of college by eating sugar cookies and cold cereal. Dinner had always just been a necessary thing every night (that is, a way to fill my belly), but food itself had never been a central part of my life and memories.

For many years, rather than begin a fruitless search for something appetizing, I decided I’d rather not eat. Eating was a bother. I skipped dinner most of the time when I was in college.

Reading Molly’s memoir helps me to realize that I want my son’s life to be different than mine. I want him to experience food as a pleasure, not just a necessity. I want him to recall seasons of his life through the foods we eat. I want him to recall dinner with fondness, and not just dessert.

Food, especially dinner, is communal. I want the dinners we enjoy together as a family to be a means to forming life memories and lasting relationships.  Food really can tell the stories of our lives, as Molly’s memoir attests.

And that is why I strive to learn to cook better.

Why do you learn to cook?

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Tags: Molly Wizenberg, Molly Wizenberg: A Homemade Life

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under where I'm going, where I've been. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Print This Post