I care a lot about what I eat, and so I subscribe to a number of food blogs. These blogs are maintained by similar food enthusiasts, who try out different recipes from different sources and then reproduce the recipe word for word in their blog along with pictures of the result. Many of them also quote their recipe source. When I first came to the US, I had one of these blogs too. I lost interest in it soon after I realized what a waste of time and effort it was. Besides, I stopped having much free time at hand too. But thats not the what I wanted to write about... one of the blogs I read had a recipe for a dessert which was sourced from a book named "How to be a Domestic Goddess". The name caught my eye, and since I had given some thought to the whole idea of what good house keeping was, I decided to check out what this author thought was a successful homemaker.
What I found did not surprise me much. It was a book full of desserts. Every recipe seemed to have the same sets of ingredients in various ratios - all purpose flour, sugar, eggs and butter. And then a few other ingredients would be added -perhaps strawberry, pista, coconut etc, to add color and vary the flavor. Much like how they do for ice creams. There was not even one recipe I would consider an every day recipe. And there lies the probelm. Somehow, as a society, we seem to think that good housekeepers are those who can cook foods that resemble products from a bakery or a restaurant. The whole concept of "homemade" seems to be twisted out of form, with many bakeries professing to provide goods that resemble "homemade" and many homes trying hard to imitate the bakeries. One wonders here, who is imitating who? I know some food bloggers who bake a cake again and again and again until it looks just perfect, so they can photograph it, and then end up eating all the different versions. I wonder what makes them do that. What is so "homemade"y about buying industrial products such as all purpose flour and refined sugar and mixing them together with a stand mixer and baking it in an oven that looks like it belongs in a bakery? Arent you just recreating a bakery at home? And why is that a good thing?
For years, I thought cakes were great. Now things have changed, I am all about cooking foods that can be eaten everyday. Well, I mean food that can be eaten everyday without worrying about going overweight or developing heart disease. In some sense I am sort of trying to go back to cooking the way they were doing it in the pre industrial era. I dont know where I got this notion that pre industrial diets were better for health.. perhaps it is this book I read about indigenous diets and how they can prevent disease that was written by a doctor who travelled to different parts of the world to find out what the health secrets of various indigenous people were. She chose 7 different places in the world which she found were "cold spots" for certain modern diseases such as breast cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease etc. At first she was trying to find something common through all the diets to figure out what we could recreate to achieve the same health benefits. What she found however was that there was no secret ingredient - the indigenous people ate both vegetarian and non vegetarian depending on where they were from. For example, in iceland, people mostly ate fish, while in mexico, the diet was corn, rice and beans. The indigenous people were sometimes overweight, but they showed no symptoms of the kinds of diseases that is common in most developed and developing regions. The conclusion she drew from all of this was that it was cooking and eating traditional recipes, which seemed to be complete and balanced that kept them in good health. So the answer in the end was simple - try and cook the meals your great grand mother made, from the scratch. And make sure you combine foods the way she told you they must be combined...
Gee.. long story. What I am really trying to say is... I think at some point we lost our traditional knowledge of what keeps us healthy and what does not, and ended up looking to corporations and businesses for ideas on what the right thing to eat was. And it resulted in us slowly changing out diets until it became the mess it is today. Dont believe me? Look at some of ads they show on TV... Just a few days ago, while I was reimaging my laptop, I happened to wander around the office and watch some commercials on TV. The first one was for pizza. And the next one was a stool softener. So first the businesses market their foods to you and make you ruin your bowels, and right after that, another business tries to set your stomach right with some more artificially ingested chemicals. I wonder why there are no ads which say..."The only thing you have to do to make sure you are "regular" is to eat the right a balanced and complete home cooked meal".
Hmm this is getting to be a long rant, so I guess I will stop now. Either way, I dont ever want to be a domestic goddess and ruin my bowels.
What I found did not surprise me much. It was a book full of desserts. Every recipe seemed to have the same sets of ingredients in various ratios - all purpose flour, sugar, eggs and butter. And then a few other ingredients would be added -perhaps strawberry, pista, coconut etc, to add color and vary the flavor. Much like how they do for ice creams. There was not even one recipe I would consider an every day recipe. And there lies the probelm. Somehow, as a society, we seem to think that good housekeepers are those who can cook foods that resemble products from a bakery or a restaurant. The whole concept of "homemade" seems to be twisted out of form, with many bakeries professing to provide goods that resemble "homemade" and many homes trying hard to imitate the bakeries. One wonders here, who is imitating who? I know some food bloggers who bake a cake again and again and again until it looks just perfect, so they can photograph it, and then end up eating all the different versions. I wonder what makes them do that. What is so "homemade"y about buying industrial products such as all purpose flour and refined sugar and mixing them together with a stand mixer and baking it in an oven that looks like it belongs in a bakery? Arent you just recreating a bakery at home? And why is that a good thing?
For years, I thought cakes were great. Now things have changed, I am all about cooking foods that can be eaten everyday. Well, I mean food that can be eaten everyday without worrying about going overweight or developing heart disease. In some sense I am sort of trying to go back to cooking the way they were doing it in the pre industrial era. I dont know where I got this notion that pre industrial diets were better for health.. perhaps it is this book I read about indigenous diets and how they can prevent disease that was written by a doctor who travelled to different parts of the world to find out what the health secrets of various indigenous people were. She chose 7 different places in the world which she found were "cold spots" for certain modern diseases such as breast cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease etc. At first she was trying to find something common through all the diets to figure out what we could recreate to achieve the same health benefits. What she found however was that there was no secret ingredient - the indigenous people ate both vegetarian and non vegetarian depending on where they were from. For example, in iceland, people mostly ate fish, while in mexico, the diet was corn, rice and beans. The indigenous people were sometimes overweight, but they showed no symptoms of the kinds of diseases that is common in most developed and developing regions. The conclusion she drew from all of this was that it was cooking and eating traditional recipes, which seemed to be complete and balanced that kept them in good health. So the answer in the end was simple - try and cook the meals your great grand mother made, from the scratch. And make sure you combine foods the way she told you they must be combined...
Gee.. long story. What I am really trying to say is... I think at some point we lost our traditional knowledge of what keeps us healthy and what does not, and ended up looking to corporations and businesses for ideas on what the right thing to eat was. And it resulted in us slowly changing out diets until it became the mess it is today. Dont believe me? Look at some of ads they show on TV... Just a few days ago, while I was reimaging my laptop, I happened to wander around the office and watch some commercials on TV. The first one was for pizza. And the next one was a stool softener. So first the businesses market their foods to you and make you ruin your bowels, and right after that, another business tries to set your stomach right with some more artificially ingested chemicals. I wonder why there are no ads which say..."The only thing you have to do to make sure you are "regular" is to eat the right a balanced and complete home cooked meal".
Hmm this is getting to be a long rant, so I guess I will stop now. Either way, I dont ever want to be a domestic goddess and ruin my bowels.
