Comments on: Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Food

By: Blog Segullah » Empathy Experiment

Blog Segullah » Empathy Experiment — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:08:24 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Emily M.

Emily M. — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:08:51 +0000

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.)

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:36:12 +0000

Heather H. thank you so much for reminding me of that song and linking it so beautifully to making our homes wonderful.

By: maralise

maralise — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:18:02 +0000

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?

By: Jen

Jen — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:31:33 +0000

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.

By: Heather H

Heather H — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:59:04 +0000

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.”

By: Adri

Adri — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:02:30 +0000

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!

By: pjb

pjb — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:02:23 +0000

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

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 19:06:05 +0000

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.

By: FoxyJ

FoxyJ — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 04:30:46 +0000

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.