Cooking up a fantasy

Instead of the purveyors of entertainment cooking up a fantasy, I would love to see real cookery shows. Not competitions timed against the clock, but everyone pitching in and doing things together, learning how hard it is to make a thing look effortless, without fancy camera work. It’s time for the single-super-person / super-mum role model to be dismantled in favour of a communal, inter-personal approach to cookery that acknowledges a more realistic perspective.

I know people who drink while they cook, but rarely at any other time. Might that suggest that the cooking – the expectation of it, its relentless necessity – is the trigger? Gregarious individuals who only want company and who, instead, are dragooned yet again into a solitary kitchen filled with labour saving mod cons and who would give anything for a night off?

If Nadiya and Mary and Delia really want to inspire us they can stop pedalling the impossible mythology of cooking with all its contradictions:- 

~ Though s/he is emancipated, s/he cooks, nay, enjoys cooking all the time, alone. 

~ Because s/he is pleasing other people, cook is therefore fulfilled and happy

~ This is the way it has always been and will always be.

~ By cooking, the cook encourages sociability in others, though cook is solitary and would really love to have some help. Not to have to ask for it, just to receive it as a matter of care and courtesy.

~ You may be cook alone, but if your food is delicious – and note, if you will, the implied threat in that – you will always attract friends. None of whom will venture into your kitchen to help. But admiration is reward enough.

All I can say is, how 1950s. Viva la revolucion!

Thank you so much for listening.

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