Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Food

Posted by Maralise | October 26, 2007 | 15 Comments

My husband visited his grandmother this week at her home in the Alzheimer’s unit of the local long-term nursing facility. It was lunchtime so he brought a sandwich, sat down beside her and began eating. And instead of dismissing him with the claim that she’ll call him later (which happened during his last visit) or treating him like a stranger, instead she said, “Ohhhhh, you got yourself something to eat. Good.” The act of him eating triggered something in her brain that made her realize that this man (her first grandson) was her own. It seemed to comfort her more than when we bring the children to see her, more than when we try to hug or talk with her.

Feeding her children and grandchildren (and the missionaries despite the fact that she was not a member for most of her life) was an integral part of her identity during her healthier years and even in decline, its importance hasn’t faded. After she quit cooking, she would shove money in our pockets and send us out the door to get something to eat. Three times a day. Every day of our visit to their home. And my husband’s family still talks about her cooking, telling stories of her spaghetti, her cookies, her ham biscuits and lemonade.

In Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, John Ames, an aging clergyman in a small Iowa town, says, “Since supper was three kinds of casserole with two kinds of fruit salad, with cake and pie for dessert, I gathered that my flock, who lambaste life’s problems with food items of just this kind, had heard an alarm. There was even a bean salad, which to me looked distinctly Presbyterian, so anxiety had overspilled its denominational vessel.”

I’ve often wondered why it is most often the woman in relationships who carries “the weight,” in more than one sense. I’ve wondered why mothers “feed” problems with casseroles and jellos and why feeding people is such an integral part of the job of the women. And yet, even as I ask those questions, I realize that they’re pointless. People need to eat, babies need to be nursed, our elders need nourishment. In our culture (and many others) women are the primary vehicles from which that nourishment comes.

My mom taught me how to make homemade pies of all different varieties. Her mother taught her to make bread and jam, how to cream asparagus and can everything from tomatoes to pickled beats to pears. It’s an honor for me to cook something that the women in my family have been making for generations. And yet, I have to admit that I hate to cook. I dread all three meals during the day, the responsibility of buying the food, preparing it, cleaning up after the meal and then doing it all over again in three to four hours. I would so much prefer that my husband be in charge of feeding us.

In Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, the blind “prophet,” Hazel Motes, gets asked a question by his landlady:

“Do you think, Mr. Motes…that when you’re dead, you’re blind?” “I hope so,” he said after a minute. “Why?” she asked, staring at him. After a while he said, “If there’s no bottom in your eyes, they hold more.”

I admit that I’m blind in so many ways. I don’t really want to feed people, but I want to understand why this is my role (for now). I don’t really want to be known only for my cooking, and yet I’d like my family to know me for constantly nourishing them, helping them grow and become the men that they will soon be. And I hope that if I feed their bellies, they’ll in turn feed my soul.

Books Read This Week: “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson, “Wise Blood” by Flannery O’Connor, and selected short stories from “The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty.”

Category: Book Challenge

Comments

15 Responses to “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Food”

Wendy
October 26th, 2007 @ 8:42 am

Maralise, this was beautiful and such a nice essay to wake up to. It stirred memories of my own grandmothers: one was the June Cleaver variety, mixes and cans and packaged food, the other was the farm-raised variety, homemade ev-er-y-thing. Food, and feeding us, was just as important to them as you describe so beautifully.

I like the connection you made with feeding souls. This is all going to be on my mind today.
Suzy
October 26th, 2007 @ 9:46 am

I got food coming from both sides of my blood lines!! Seriously, it is so much a part of the dynamics of both my families that I wonder how to spend the time together that doesn’t involve thinking, planning, or cooking the next meal!! (It is after all only a few precious unplanned moments…) I loved this article! It reminded me of the lessons I learned in not only planning and preparing the food, but in sitting in the kitchen talking, asking questions, and having the kind of candid conversations with my Mom, sisters, Aunt, and Grandmothers that I would probably never have outside of that warm center of our home. Indeed “everthing I need to know I learned from food” as well!!
Kristen
October 26th, 2007 @ 11:43 am

I think Gilead is one of the best, most beautiful books ever written.

But about foodâ€”I also wonder about why it’s the woman’s job to cook, to feed. I don’t mind cooking so much, in fact, I should probably say that I like it much more than I dislike it. But it is definitely a mystery to me.

I think with the Mormon culture, food has really become a huge part of our identity. Food is given at celebrations, mourning, pretty much anytime and anywhere. Not that other groups don’t do that…but Mormons definitely have a place for food in their life. I think it might have something to do with nurturing. Women are supposed to be the nurturers, and food is a comfort thing, so we do it.
plutarch
October 26th, 2007 @ 12:54 pm

As a male edging reluctantly into late middle age, I’d have to say that preparing food seems like a very nurturing thing to do. When my wife (a superb cook) had major surgery last year, I ended up learning to cook a few things. Now that she’s much more functional, I still do about 60% of the cooking. Part of that is that she has some favorites among the thinks I make; part of it is that when I cook I get to make what I like. Different kinds of food have different feelings (and, ultimately, memories) associated, too. People don’t usually develop warm fuzzy feelings for whoever vacuums or cleans toilets, but they often do for the person who provides food and a central activity for gathering together. (See the movie “Like Water for Chocolate” for a cinematic expression of this idea.) Since my sons are all grown, with their memories of home long since formed, they will only associate the warm gatherings and meals of their childhoods with their mother. I’ve missed out, although their mother now associates me with food and nurturing.

There are lots of ways of relating to other family members, though. One traditional way in our family was books and movies–certainly not camping, which seems to be the only way the church can imagine fathers relating to sons. So you find your own ways and enjoy those with the family. That mostly doesn’t come through pre-conceived roles or church programs. It comes from what people really enjoy doing together.
Sharlee
October 26th, 2007 @ 10:20 pm

Mara, I’m not a natural-born feeder either. In fact, sometimes food really bugs me. Well, not food, maybe, but our constant need to eat. In my world, people will eat once a month. One grand lavish and luscious feast a month. Followed by everyone helping with the dishes.

I loved nursing my babies though. And, I must admit, there are times I get great satisfaction from feeding my family something warm and nourishing, especially in October. (Doesn’t everyone love to cook in October?) It’s just the *relentlessness* of the need to feed that gets to me sometimes.

My attitude toward this is changing though. Iâ€™ve been reading Anne Lamottâ€™s, Plan B: Further thoughts on Faith, and one of the things sheâ€™s helped me understand is the absolute preeminence of the need to care for one another–to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, minister to the sick and downtrodden. Thatâ€™s what Christ was all about. We can do everything else weâ€™re supposed to here on this ole earth, but if we donâ€™t take care of each other, weâ€™ve missed the point.

So, I was feeling guilty because I havenâ€™t spent more time feeding the hungry. Then it hit me that thatâ€™s exactly what Iâ€™ve been doing (poorly, at times; often begrudgingly) for the past 22 years of my life! I know that thought seems clichÃ©â€™, but it was a powerful epiphany for me. Day after day, meal after meal, purchasing, preparing, serving food for my family. Feeding the hungry. Viewed from this perspective, all those endless hours spent in the kitchen take on new significance. It is holy work I am engaged in when I feed my family.

Of course, none of this means that we shouldnâ€™t still seek out every other possible opportunity to feed and care for the poor and the downtrodden, but it might mean that Iâ€™ve been a better disciple all these years than Iâ€™ve given myself credit for.
FoxyJ
October 26th, 2007 @ 11:30 pm

Last night at dinner my two little kids scarfed down the food I’d prepared (curried garbanzos, interestingly enough). My four-year-old exclaimed “This is so yummy!” and my 1 year old kept signing “more”. I felt so good–validated almost, and I was thinking about why that is. I’ve always loved to cook for other people and I’ve always loved to eat. I come from a family that really focuses on food, so I think it’s partly that. I think it’s also that there aren’t very many other creative things I do well, so the act of preparing food and giving it to others is an act of love for me. When my husband and I were dating we were very poor students (well, we’re still poor students) and we’d get together and cook for each other. He proposed to me during a homemade picnic at the park. Feeding someone is meeting a very basic need and showing that you care about them.
Tiffany
October 27th, 2007 @ 2:06 pm

I confess that cooking is something I have always enjoyed. My biggest complaint about my current schedule is that I’m not spending enough time in the kitchen creatively cooking for my family. But I haven’t thought of my cooking in bigger terms–in more meaningful terms. I can definitely go for that! Thank you for such a thought-provoking meaningful essay.
pjb
October 27th, 2007 @ 8:02 pm

Maralise,
I was raised also with great meals that were home cooked. I didn’t learn to cook until I got married.
My younger brother was the one that learned and loved to cook from my mother!

When I did learn to cook it was not from recipes but from my own creativity. I would serve up my husband a plate of food toppled very high with my creations!

First I would ask him approx. 20x’s if it tasted good. He never said it with the conviction I expected.

Then I would watch to see if he would clean his plate. However, he could not possibly consume the amounts I expected of him.

To me, the bigger the portions I served him,
the more love it showed.
To me, the he more he ate,
the more it showed he loved me.

Of course this ritual went on with my 5 kids.

Now I watch my daughters being consumed with feeding their families. It exhausts them, it takes up the better part of each and every day. When the kids eat the moms are happy, when the kids don’t eat the moms are miserable!
It’s a double edge sword.
pjb
Adri
October 28th, 2007 @ 2:02 pm

I was visiting with my cousin this other day and she was saying she wished she had a full time cook so she could spend her time playing with her kids and not worry about the cooking. I thought about her comment a lot, trying to agree with her (it seemed to me, on first hearing it, that I should want that, too). But, I couldn’t come to that conclusion. I love making dinner. It is probably selfish: making dinner is my daily escape (I turn on NPR in my kitchen radio and let my kids play a computer game until dinner is done). But, your essay made me hope that maybe it is more. Maybe taking great care to get something nutritious and filling and gathering my little family together at the end of the day is my way of nourishing souls. I’m going to think that, okay? It makes me feel better about skipping out on another round of UNO so I can have adult thoughts in my “All Things Considered”-filled kitchen!
Heather H
October 28th, 2007 @ 8:59 pm

These lines have been going through my mind all day,
“The sure provisions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be my abode,
And all my work be praise,” from a song we’re singing in ward choir, “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need”. I hope that the work I do to feed my family, and myself and can be seen this way. As we sang it today the menial tasks the fill up so many days as a mother went through my mind and I thought, “I want that to be praise.”
Jen
October 28th, 2007 @ 10:31 pm

i admit it, i love with food. and i can’t help it. there is nothing more satisfying to me than seeing my family eat a dinner i have cooked and then ask for seconds…it just makes me feel whole. i can’t explain it. i will be like your husbands grandmother someday…i guarantee it.
maralise
October 29th, 2007 @ 3:18 am

Ladies–it’s so nice to hear your different perspectives about nurturing with food. I wonder–those of you that “love with food” (and I would count myself as one of those…until recently when the *Sharlee–great word* “relentlessness” of it began to consume me): do you find that you love yourself with food as well?

Here’s my point: is it possible to love our young-ins with food and escape loving ourselves with food until we’re overweight? My weight is always a yo-yo and part of my problem is my dependence on the comfort (love) that food brings. Where’s the line? Because to me, it seems almost impossible to be thinking about food for most of the day (because I am primarily responsible for feeding all of us for EVERY meal, not just dinner) and not eat a good (meaning bad) proportion of the food that fills my thoughts.

I’m not trying to contradict my own post, I still think it’s necessary that we “feed” our loved ones in so many ways, but I wonder, when it comes to food…how do we do it in moderation?
Tiffany
October 29th, 2007 @ 5:36 am

Heather H. thank you so much for reminding me of that song and linking it so beautifully to making our homes wonderful.
Emily M.
October 31st, 2007 @ 8:08 pm

Maralise, I’ve thought a lot about this topic… written about it some, too. You’ve made me want to read Gilead.

I like to eat. And I like to cook. In college I would cook one big meal a week and eat leftovers the rest of the week.

What I don’t enjoy, as Sharlee said, is the relentlessness of cooking. No matter how much I put into today’s meal, there’s always hungry kids tomorrow. There is no getting around it; the best way for me to deal with it is to plan ahead enough that I’m not bitter and scrambling around dinner time. If I plan enough in advance, even if it’s only by an hour, then I’m happy to serve what I made instead of defensive that it’s late and not very good.

(Ask me how my dinner planning is going now that school and lessons have started… the answer is, not too well.)
Blog Segullah » Empathy Experiment
November 9th, 2007 @ 9:08 am

[...] rice, or corn-based products for the starch. Now, I don’t need to tell you that my supposed Mormon-born cooking ability has lagged in the past few years. And so this venture into empathetic eating was a welcome change [...]