Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Dinner is dying and I don't like it one bit...

I feel like I should preface this by saying I’ve read way too many articles lately that start to talk about the Julie & Julia movie and just end up talking about Julia Child. And beef bourguignon. And butter. And spies. Really, I like anything that mixes cooking and espionage. It makes for good reading.

You know that feeling you get after you eat a REALLY good meal? You spend the fifteen minutes after the meal thinking about the flavor, texture, and aroma. You are content to bask in the feeling of fullness and even welcome to food coma that will set in shortly.

My next step is usually to figure out how I can recreate the meal. What spices and ingredients went into the sauce? What was the meat marinated in? Would I change anything? How can I make it better? How can I make it mine?

I find that I am too often alone in this next step. My friends don’t cook. I mean, some of them heat up, bake, or microwave, but none of them actually cook. Some of them try, but they don’t try on a regular basis. I get phone calls asking about everything from baking (which usually involves me telling them to read the box they’re most surely using more carefully) to what is missing in this salsa I just made (it was salt). I don’t know when cooking fell out of vogue with the 20-somethings. Sure, we didn’t really cook in college, but we were probably too drunk to operate the stove safely. But not that we’re starting our careers and have our own places, why does cooking still not happen?

I grew up cooking. Really. I lived next door to one grandma and not far from the other. Both of my parents are excellent cooks (like their mothers). I can remember watching dinner being made and wondering about things:

How do you know when the chicken is done?

How do you know how much salt to put on the raw meat?

How do you know when the bell pepper is bad?

How do you know if the steak is well, medium, or rare?

How do you fry things without burning your arm off?

How do you coat the pan with caramelized sugar without dripping the candy on your hand? (Oh, the successes, failures, and scars of flan…)

I mean, I really watched, and as I got older I started asking questions. All those years of watching, combined with food television and the power of the internet, developed my culinary skillZ. (Yes, I just invoked the “Z” because sometimes you need that bit of sarcasm in your morning.) But apparently I was alone in all of this developing. I mean, my friends WATCHED Nigella, Emeril, Rachael, etc. but they didn’t think to replicate what was happening in their own kitchens. As I think about it, I have ONE friend who cooks every day, which to be fair is more than me right now. And he COOKS. Yes, I said he, not she. I like it when my friends confound expectations. We compare culinary skillZ and I can’t wait to leave my sublease and have a kitchen of my own again so we can compare skillZ in my own home. I love these nights where we plan meals and make them happen. They’re fun. Cooking becomes the main event of the evening and while we’re waiting for something to finish we can have cocktails, play games, and just enjoy the company of our friends.

My dad and his friends have Iron Chef challenges (I’m not kidding, they pick the ingredient and everything. I gave him a roll up case for his knives last year because of these gatherings.) The wives encourage this behavior and sit like judges at the counters with martinis and watch the entertainment. I am jealous of this bit of my parents’ lives.

The idea of “grandma’s kitchen” is a popular one with its cozy warmth and delicious surprises simmering in pots and pans on an ancient stovetop. I have very old memories (yeah, all 23 years of me and my very old memories) of dinners in family kitchens. I can remember what was served, what I was wearing (proof that my love of clothes was nature, not nurture), who was there, but mostly you remember a feeling…of comfort? But not comfort the way a blanket is comfortable or the way you feel when you settle into the couch for a movie. It’s a different thing. It’s like comfort combined with safety? Security? Love? Sometimes there’s melancholy mixed in if the people starring in your memories aren’t with us anymore. Comfort with a cinnamon-sugar-nutmeg-pecan topping?

My worry is that such memories are behind me. The kitchen isn’t a place where things happen anymore. Usually my cooking involves cooking for myself and eating leftovers for the week because I cook in quantities for families, not for individuals. Let me tell you, eating alone is not happy. I look around the dining room or kitchen and find myself wishing for people to be there, to share dinner with. I miss the daily ritual. More than that, I worry that it’s dying out, that other friends don’t miss it, and that when we have families of our own, the idea of “dinnertime” won’t exist.

So I’ll fight the dying ritual of dinner in my own way. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, cooking parties. Even just having a friend over for dinner. Slowly, I’ll bring dinner back like Justin brought sexy back (you saw that coming and couldn’t do anything to stop it…poor reader). I’ll go finish planning my housewarming party menu now.

No comments: