Food for Thought

This week has been a bad one in terms of the amount of cooking I've done.  Cooking is usually something I am passionate about. It relaxes me, it calms me and it challenges me. I pour energy and love into the food that I make and the act of creating appeals to both my creative and my scientific sides. Cooking is something that engages me intellectually, physically and emotionally. So why has this week been so bad?

My week was thrown out by poor internet connections. Seems ridiculous doesn't it? This week, I realised just how much I treasure my connectedness to the rest of the world. It's my way of staying in touch with current events and with like-minded people. As a result of being so cruelly severed from my happy world by a poorly performing IP, I went into a tailspin of anxiety and my family were left to fend for themselves.

You'd think that would be ok. After all, LomL knows how to cook. He knew how to cook before we were married, has cooked periodically throughout our lives together and used to work in a pizza shop in his misspent youth. LomL, however, does not feel the same passion towards food that I do. He doesn't feel the sensuality of it; the touch, the smell, the textures, the combinations. He just doesn't feel it. So for him, a take-away dinner is the same as something lovingly crafted in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong. He loves my cooking and compliments me on it regularly, but he doesn't get the same joy from creating dishes that I do. So this week, we've had take-away and frozen pizza. I feel guilty and slightly nauseated just writing that!

LomL often jokes that my idea of a quick meal is to make hamburgers from scratch and I wouldn't know a TV dinner or packet meal if someone threw them at my head. Sadly, that's probably true. My inherent perfectionism imbues me with terrible guilt about not providing properly for my family if ever I'm pressed for time and find myself going for the quick option.

I've found that, over time, I've become something of a food-Nazi. Certain burger restaurants (I use the term loosely) are completely avoided by us. Not least of all because I worked there as a teenager and because I was served scrambled eggs with shell still in them...twice...in a row. Pft. I guess the up-side is that I knew they were real eggs and not the powdered stuff. Similarly, we avoid military chicken joints too. Not because we don't love the taste of the food, but because inevitably, every time I eat there, I end up with a terrible stomach upset. Which does make me stop and wonder what precisely is in that chicken to evoke my usually cast-iron stomach into violent paroxysms.

I buy fresh food which has been processed as little as possible. Where available I buy direct from farmer's markets and I choose my butcher because he can source all his meat locally. I don't buy fruit and veg from supermarkets, or meat and fish either. I limit the number of sauces or pre-prepared foods that come into the house and though I don't stop B1 and B2 from eating anything that they like, I do teach them about eating things in moderation. Increasingly, I'm finding there's a strong grass-roots movement that fits beautifully with what we're doing in our family. It brings me great joy when I hear influential people talking about the same things that we practice on a regular basis -  Jamie Oliver in particular.

I believe that food plays an intrinsic part in our functioning, our moods, our energy levels and our capacity to realise our potentials. I truly believe that. I also believe that food should be a pleasure and not just a fuel.

This week, though, it was as much as I could manage to throw something resembling food at my family and return to my mire of depression at the failing of my internet connection.