The impact of food

The other day I was reading a book which made me think about food. Not thinking about food in the sense of what I would like to eat, but more about what impact food has on our lives. Or rather: my life. I eat a lot of strange things, but there is also a lot I refuse to eat… from various reasons. I eat from different reasons, and I am sad to say most often I am not really hungry.

In parts of the world people spend their days trying to find something to eat, anything at all. In our part of the world we spend a lot of time wondering what to choose to eat, where to order it from or how to prepare it.

I am not very good at ordering take away. I am good at ordering food at restaurants, but to tell the truth I prefer to eat at home. When going out the part I treasure the most is: I don’t have to do the dishes. I confess I’m not a good housewife; it’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just… I know it isn’t pointless, but when someone says they don’t see the point because it looks just as bad in a few hours anyway, I totally understand where he or she is coming from. The house is fairly tidy when I go to bed, though. The thought of getting up in the morning knowing the kitchen looks like a raided area is really not cool.

My kids love McDonald’s! They don’t get to eat there often, but when they do it is a treat! People and campaigns keep telling what disgusting ingredients you get served in your food there, but let’s get real: people have eaten all parts of the animal for as long as humans have eaten food.

In Scotland they eat Haggis, here in Norway we have something called “Lungemos” (= hashed lung), old fishermen around the globe enjoy to suck on a fish’s eye, oysters is a delicacy (to me it tastes like still water… and they are part of the sea’s brilliant refuse disposal service), boiled pig's trotters; the list of delicacies with not denominated origins or ingredients is very long.

Still… I leave it to my kids to enjoy the happy meals there (at McDonald’s). It is purely based on taste, smell and texture. It is nothing “personal” or a specific disliking; I am just generally not very fond of processed food.

There isn’t a lot I’m not fond of, but there are some dishes I have problems with. The thing I have the most problem with is how some use garlic to kill all other tastes in the food when they cook. I don’t mind garlic, but I don’t understand how some can make everything taste like… well, garlic.

Don’t misunderstand me; I use garlic from time to time myself, but for a purpose. Not for the garlic itself. Thinking about it, there is a good chance my cooking is rather old fashioned. I don’t really mind, though, as long as people eat what I cook.

I love to watch TV shows like Masterchef, Hell’s Kitchen and other similar shows. First of all I can’t get over how everybody seems to paw about and handle the food… I can’t for the life of me understand why topnotch chefs and cooks should break an egg in their hand, in order to separate the yolk from the egg white. Is there anything wrong with using the halves of the eggshell? And the constant breathing on the plates, from 10 cm away, when the dish is plated. Touching the hair, then back to fingering the food they have prepared… I would rather not know.

And how come the smaller the dish is, the more exclusive it is?

Do people eat in secret at home before eating out? Just wondering, because when I went to visit my parents last week, she invited the entire family to a barbeque. Then she told me she knows nothing about barbequing, so she left the planning, shopping and cooking to me. I was not very pleased, nor was I surprised; it is always like that. Every time I go there I end up cooking and baking on a large scale.

I sulked for a bit, thinking so much for being the visitor. Again. But after a while sulking is boring, so I started preparing for the feast. 20 people were coming, so I bought 3 kilos of chicken fillets, 3 kilos of salmon fillets and 2 2-kilos beef rib steaks. Along with the baked potatoes, broccoli salad, potato salad, garlic bread (yes, I bake a great garlic bread), the watermelon-/feta cheese salad, green salad and olives, I thought it would be enough food. Now, my family does not consist of heavy eaters, and yet they emptied their plates. They were full, but there were no left overs either.

It’s always like that when I cook, so how come the really good chefs insist on such small portions? Don’t they want people to leave their table full and content?

I love long meals with lively conversations, discussions and jokes. I like to gather people around a table and have meals. Most days I have two or more extra kids for dinner, but I don’t mind. It is nice. We talk with each other instead of to each other. I think it is important for kids to learn that. Having conversations, I mean… and it is important for them to learn to appreciate tastes.

Otherwise they will eat at McDonald’s while thinking they are eating a nice, adventurous meal out, or, they can be travelling around the world and miss out on half the travelling experience.

Because: “To him food was identity, culture, family, how you define home and love and who you are - all of it at once....It's not just the pie. It's the chemistry and physics. It's place and time and history and religion and music...I felt blurred by his presence, overwhelmed with double vision - the world as I was seeing it and the world as Henry would have.”
― Bridget Asher, The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

If I change you must too.

To pay attention to people in your surroundings means you get to know their many ways on how they respond (including what buttons you need to push to get the reaction you are looking for), when they are serious or not, their moods, what causes they believe in, their habits… and their bad ones. They become predictable and you have this notion of what you can allow yourself to expect from them.

They say people don’t change, but circumstances do. When circumstances change, traits in people (which you, of course, suspected they had in them) go from a latent potential to a strong characteristic. OK, maybe not really strong; but at least a lot more conspicuous than before.

I see this “change” in people I think I know well… until they give up something which used to be part of their lifestyle. It is good to give up things you feel decrease your quality of life in any way, what I don't think is ok, is how negative they often become to both my bad habits and others', even though they previously had the same lifestyle.

People who become vegetarian, stop smoking, go on strict diets, who start taking the bus in the morning instead of driving their car or in any other way changes their ways very often become unpleasant, almost to the point of unbearable, in their criticism of those who choose to pick up, or continue, doing what they used to do themselves before.

Strange how people do that.... and I dare say most do, purely based on my own experiences and observations. I wonder why they do, though.

Like, when people go on strict diets they start commenting on what other people eat and count other people's intake of calories.

It is really annoying to be with friends and have a good time when everything we eat or drink to add more joy and enjoyment to the get together is just commented upon as something negative. How can carrots possibly replace crisps, nachos or chocolate, for that matter? And since I often feel they communicate too well with my bad conscience, I can’t help but thinking they come very close to sound vindictive, revengeful, deceitful, conniving, resentful and angry.

I know it isn’t fair to think like that since they only want what is best for me, but… Controlling your thoughts is very hard and I feel guilty for my harsh thoughts and I can’t just tell I just felt like that and the whole thing just gives me a bad mood and I turn into really bad company.

In everyday life: Yes, one should not indulge oneself to uncritical pleasure and comfort. There are such things as health risks and problems tie your own shoes, but there is such a thing as own comfort zone and a middle way. Too much and too little of anything is equally bad.

There should be room for conversations about how to improve your lifestyle. After all, we don’t always see how we can improve our lifestyle and still feel good about ourselves.

Lifestyle is often chosen based on what is familiar to us, what we find as means to calm discomfort, financial situation or what we think other people expect from us. And all of those reasons are important. We may not like it, but it is true. We can’t just change because somebody tells us to. If we are to change a lifestyle we need to find something compatible to us first. Only then we can consider remove something from our life to make room for something new.

If we search for a better lifestyle, we have already understood we need a change. If we have come to that conclusion we have issues we must be allowed to figure out. Comments not thought-through, said in a content tone of voice, could very well add to the problem… no matter how well-intended