"Now, after thinking about pleasures of food for weeks, all I want is a blueberry muffin" Myself

This entry will be the last message on this blog, I mean as long as my literature module is concerned, I may continue writing on this blog later. I took a lot of pleasure to write on this blog and make research about pleasure provided by food and I want to conclude with some little things.

First, I want to talk about the book I am currently reading, a novel written by Sarah Addison Allen entitled The Sugar Queen. This tells the story of a twenty-seven-year-old woman who lives under her mother's thumb and only finds comfort in sweet food she hides in her cupboard. One day, she discovers that a woman is hiding in her cupboard as well... I cannot tell you what happens next because I did not read the whole book yet but I cannot wait. I am not sure that this quick summary would make people excited about reading this book but the way it is written is very pleasant and the story is pretty relaxing even if it is not the most original plot ever. Anyway, if I am talking about this book it is because, as the title suggests, there are several excerpts about food, the pleasure provided by sugar and the important role it can play in someone's life. When the character speaks about the food hidden in her cupboard, it is as if she was talking about the best thing she has in her life, the only thing she can take pleasure from. In her case, food is not a matter of cooking, it is not about eating alone or with company, it is not doing everything for taking pleasure in dealing with food, it is having nothing else than food to feel happy.

Before concluding, I would like to cite all the books, blogs and websites I used to build my own blog.

Books

• Adler, T (2011) An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy And Grace, Scribner
• Allen, S. A (2008) The Sugar Queen, Publishers Weekly
• Blythman, J (2006) Bad Food Britain: How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite, London: Fourth Estate
• Cutler, B (2007) 211 Things A Bright Girl Can Do, Harper Collins Entertainment
• Jones, J (2009) The Pleasures Of Cooking For One, Knopf Publishing Group
• Nothomb, A (2000) The Character Of Rain, England: Mackays of Chatham
• Proust, M (1913-1927) In Search Of Lost Time, Vintage
• Ridgwell, J (1996) Examining Food & Nutrition, Heinemann Educational Publishers
• Rowling, J. K (2003) Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Bloomsbury
• Warde, A. & L. Martens (2000) Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Yonan, J (2011) Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures In Cooking For One, Ten Speed Press

Websites

• NHS Website (2012) How To Store Food Safely http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/how-to-store-food-safely.aspx (accessed 22/04/2012)
• Sadhya, S. (2011) Make Cooking A Pleasure, http://shampasadhya.hubpages.com/hub/Five-Tips-To-Make-Cooking-a-Pleasure (accessed 22/04/2012)
• Shallwani, P. (2009) Cooking By Yourself, For Yourself, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704471504574445222605435470.html (accessed 22/04/2012)
• Yonan, J. [No Date] Use It Or Lose It, With A New Attitude http://www.joeyonan.com/p/columns-writing.html (accessed 22/04/2012)

Film

• Burton, T. (2005) Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

As a conclusion, I think I would say that pleasure revolving around food is quite a tricky topic since there are many different situations and many different kind of pleasures that can be studied. I am perfectly aware that there are still many things I could say about the subject and I would love keep studying it and write new entries about this.

"What passes for cookery in England is an abomination" Virginia Woolf

As a French person living in England, I have to admit honestly that I do not enjoy English food at all. It is commonly said that English food is bad and I could check it by myself: this is not a myth. However, English people I live with do not seem to be aware of this since they never complain about what the eat and never think about eating something better. So, I wondered: why do they prevent themselves from eating good food?

Here are examples of food I tried in England (and I will never try again)

The first question is: why do British people do not give much importance to pleasure as long as food is concerned. The main reasons seem to be that:

-57% of British men and 38% of British women say they have little interest in food;

-only 50% of Britons say they really enjoy eating;

-50% of all British shoppers say they do not care where their food comes from.

Other British beliefs say that:

-eating is about refuelling, not pleasure. A part of life's routine ;

-home cooking takes too long ;

-food is not important. Pretty much everything else in life matters more ;

-a microwave is the only piece of kitchen equipment you really need.

(all these things about British food were taken from Bad Food Britain: How a Nation Ruined its Appetite by Joanna Blythman)

I just want to say, about the last comment referring to microwaves, I effectively did not know we could cook so many things with a microwave, I sometimes feel a bit... flabbergasted. I felt the same when I heard British people talking about their national dishes: bacon, beans, steak pies, battered cod... According to me, a national dish is supposed to be something you prepare yourself, something particularly tasty that a people can be proud of. But these dishes are only industrial food and this is bizarre to me to consider them as national dishes. The British are following the American model consisting in "no-cook eating", a concept that does not ask for any explanation... A survey showed that the approximative time a British person devotes to the preparation of a meal is 13 minutes, which is 47 minutes fewer than in the eighties. The food manufacturer Geest observed: "People generally are trying to fit more pleasurable things [than cooking] into their lives". This way of considering cooking is really similar to the American point of view. I tried very hard to make my flatmates taste French food like saucisson, strong cheese or pâté croûte but any of them really wanted to try. As Joanna Blythman writes "[their] habits are fairly constant; the odd food scare here or scandal there".

"At some point, they are going to have to knock a hole in the side of the wall and throw the rotisserie chicken out as you drive by." Harry Balzer

In modern societies, fast food and take-away meals became very popular and one of children's favourite meals. Of course this kind of food can be very useful since it is very quick to cook and eat, which is why students and workers for instance may consider it as a good alternative. Moreover, there are more and more women who work and do not have time to prepare meals ; people in general are busier than they used to be, because of work and leisure that are more and more numerous. Ready-prepared and take away food may also be an alternative for people living alone. But how is it possible to love fast food more than any other kind of food?

 

There are four main concerns cited about fast food in the book by Alan Warde and Lydia Martens: health, food quality and authenticity, personal tastes and cost. If a meal is quite expensive and made with suspect and unhealthy food, where is the pleasure in eating it?

As I said in my previous message, the first pleasure provided by fast food is the simple fact to eat out (this implies that you do not bring take-away meals home). Even if we are talking about fast food, it still implies going out to have dinner in a different place than home.

Another pleasure, going with the first one, is the fact that you do not need to cook, if you are busy or tired and do not feel like cooking. A mother said in an interview "we do that mainly on a Friday when I get so sort of fed up". As I was saying at the beginning of this message, fast food can be very useful and convenient, for instance when you're having dinner with other people and none of you want to waste time cooking, fast food permits to have dinner as soon as you are hungry. This way, being sat at a table in a fast food to have dinner with friends would provide the same pleasures than eating in an actual restaurant, except the service is quicker. After all, it is perhaps better than eating in a gloomy canteenat work or at school...

However, the idea of only "enjoying food" referred to in the previous message cannot be taken into account as far as fast food is concerned. Indeed, enjoying food implies enjoying good food, I mean well-prepared food, a meal that someone took care to make properly. And this is not really the case with fast food.

"I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs." Paul Simon

There is another major pleasure provided by food, something that my boyfriend and men in general are particularly fond of, it is to have people who cook for you and serve you. I have always known this was a pleasure and it is even more obvious since I have lived alone. I had never realized how cool it was to have my mother cooking for me. However, the most enjoyable moment when someone cooks for you and serves you is when you are in a restaurant. There is nothing like going back home after a hard-working day and hearing my boyfriend saying "don't bother zith cooking, let's go to the restaurant tonight".

Originally, eating out was only a solution to get some food when you could not be home, for instance because you were travelling or working. It is only at the end of the eighteenth century that eating out became a pleasure in England. This did not happen that often and was basically for well-off people. Nowadays eating out is a very basic leisure. John Burnett, the author of Plenty and Want: A Social History of Food in England from 1815 to the Present Day, even assumed this in 1989: "in a recent survey of leisure activities, going out for a meal or entertaining friends to a meal at home were rated as the most popular occupations after watching television". Eating in a restaurant or simply sharing a meal with people you like became one of the things people prefer.

I used a book entitled Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure written by Alan Warde and Lydia Martens to study the idea of pleasure in eating out.

 

They mainly say that people wanting to have a meal in a restaurant is first and foremost a wish to break daily life and do something different, avoid cooking and eat something different, in a different place and, sometimes, with different people. Moreover, the only fact to get ready is a pleasure in itself, instead of staying home wearing pyjamas. Usually people enjoy special occasions like birthdays, celebrations or anniversaries to eat out, because having dinner in a restaurant is still a privilege -not everyone can afford it- but a couple who was interviewed just said that they do not need any occasion: "I think we eat out obiously because we enjoy eating". You do not absolutely need to have an actual meal, even having a coffee or a drink is a deep pleasure (especially at a table outside when the sun shines).

 

However, this pleasure becomes different when we are talking about take-away meals...

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are" Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Now I want to talk about a book I particuarly enjoy and that I was planning to use since I started this blog: it is The Character of Rain (Métaphysique des Tubes) by Amélie Nothomb, a Belgian writer.

In this book, Amélie Nothomb imagines the beginning of her life in Japan when she was a baby who did not realize she was alive and behaved as a plant, according to her parents, or a tube, according to her. The Japanese tradition even says that a child under three years old liker her is a god. During the first two years and a half of her life, she does not consider herself as a human and calls herself "it" or "God" ; as a baby, she does not make a move or a sound. Her parents and the doctors worry about this and unsuccessfully try to make her react. She just needs to eat and execrate, she has no desire, which makes her perfect. Finally, they have no choice but doing with it until this ordinary day when the baby starts to cry out and never stops. Here is the moment when she finally discovers something that puts an end to her screams:

The grandmother took something out of her travel bag and marched stalwartly into the arena.

Two and a half years. Cries, rage, hate. The world was beyond the hands and voice of God. Encircled by bars, it wanted to destroy everything and couldn't, so it took revenge out on the sheet and blankets, hammering at them with its heels.

At this moment of the book it is perfectly clear that the character does not consider herself as a being, she says "it" to talk about herself and feels completely powerless. A terrible anger seized her after more than two years spent motionless, probably because she does not manage to define her own identity.

[... ] Suddenly its field of vision was filled with an unfamiliar face. An adult, of the same kind as the mother, from the look of her. After the moment of surprise had passed, God express with a bloodcurdling yowl.

The face smiled. God knew what she was trying to do. Pacify it. This would not work. It bared its teeth. [...] It prepared to bite.

[...] the hand approached, but it was holding something unexpected -something unknown- in its fingers. A white stick. God had not seen such a thing before and forgot about biting.

"This," said the grandmother to the child, "is white chocolate from Belgium".

The only word that God recognized was "white". Walls were white, milk was white. The others were obscure -"chocolate" and "Belgium". Pondering these indecipherable sounds, it realized that the stick was near its mouth.

"It's for eating," said the voice.

"Eating." A known word. Something it did often. Eating was the bottle, carrot puree with small bits of meat, crushed banana with chunks of apple.

Eating involves familiar smells. The odor of this white stick was unrecognizable -but better than soap and applesauce. God was afraid and tempted at the same time. It made a grimace of disgust yet salivated with desire.

The reader now sees how new things attract the baby and understands that she is not really living because she does not enjoy what is around her. She speaks about familial people like ennemies, she describes usual food as tasteless ; but a good-smelling new thing attracts and tempts her more than anything else. She just wants changes and needs a little something to discover her identity.

In a leap of faith God took this new thing with its teeth, and was going to bite down hard except doing so turned out not to be necessary, for the strange white substance melted on the tongue, and instantly took command of the mouth.

Sweetness rose to God's head and tore at its brain, forcing out a voice it had never before heard:

It is I! I'm talking! I'm not an "it" I'm a "me"! You can no longer say "it" when you talk about yourself. You have to say "me". And I am your best friend. I'm the one who gives you pleasure.

And thus it was that I was born in Japan at the age of two and a half, in February of 1970, in the province of Kansai, in the village of Shukugawa, under the benevolent gaze of my paternal grandmother, and by the grace of her white chocolate.

[...] Pleasure is a wonderful thing, for it has taught me that I am me. Me: where pleasure is. Pleasure is me.

[...] I am as powerful as the sweetness that I can taste and which I invented. Without me, this chocolate would be nothing. But when I put it in my mouth it becomes pleasure. It needs me.

At that moment, the baby who did not understand the purpose of her life finally finds something making her alive. As in the madeleine de Proust this excerpt shows how strong pleasure can be since it is thanks to it that the character fins her identity and actually comes to the world. In the first excerpt pleasure helped to remind memories, in this extract it is the source of the character's life and what helps her to become herself and see the sense of being alive.

I love this excerpt and each time I read it, I cannot help thinking about Willy Wonka as a child in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he tastes his first chocolate and decides to devote all his life to candies and chocolate. In both cases, the pleasure provided by food, and especially sugar, helps the characters to to discover who they are and what their life is aimed at.

"I get quite lazy about cooking because when I come back from work it is the last thing I want to do" Prince William

As I was saying in my previous message, I love cooking when it's for my family or friends. Because I like having comments about what I made, I like it when my favourite people enjoy my dishes. I have been living alone for the first time of my life since last September and I realized that I took no pleasure to cook only for me. I have quick meals for noon and when the evening comes, I really do not feel like cooking since no one but me is going to enjoy it. I do not know whether you agree or think it is stupid, but it is exactly how I feel.

I made reasearch and found a cookbook entitled The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. The author wrote this book after her husband passed away. Here is an extract from an interview she gave to the Wall Street Journal in 2009:

The Wall Street Journal: After your husband, Evan Jones, passed away, what was it like adjusting to cooking and eating by yourself?

 

Ms. Jones: We both cooked together all our lives. He wrote several books on food and we collaborated on a number. So it was the part of the rhythm of our lives. [I thought] I would not find pleasure in cooking alone and sitting down alone.  And it was interesting to me, because it was quite the opposite. I found it a very nice moment to remember, to feel the past and the present, and to play with food, because it was only me. 

WSJ: What made you want to cook again?

 

Ms. Jones: It was preserving a good memory and thinking how much [my husband] would enjoy this garlicky sausage I just made. But I have known people who have been divorced or widowed, and they can't sit down at the table. They just stand from the refrigerator and eat. It wouldn't be as pleasurable to me if I didn't really love to cook. 

WSJ: Who is this book intended for?

 

Ms. Jones: It's for people who have the cooking genes. It's not for people who want the quick and easy. I wanted to reach people who live alone, that's 51% of the population [in New York City]. I want them to stop wasting their money on bad food.

WSJ: A lot of what you talk about in your book is relationship to food. What's your relationship with food?

 

Ms. Jones: I love food. I think some people have the genes and others don't. They just want to fill their gut and get it over with it. I am one of those people that starts thinking, "What am I having for dinner tonight? How am I going to play with it?" To me it's a creative thing. I think when we are sitting at desks all day in horrid little penitentiaries, it's freeing.

I am particularly interested in what she says about people eating bad food because it is something I noticed since I began to cook my own meals every single day. As I'm alone, I don't feel like cooking ; as I don't feel like cooking, I want to eat something quick and good ; but at the end of the meal, I almost always realize that I did not really enjoy it. I am coming back to the university after Easter break and decided to try to act as Judith Jones says: take more time to cook for myself in order to eat healthier food that I will far more enjoy. I seriously think about buying her book, this could help...

However, I noticed something really annoying when you are living alone and cooking for one, it is the way most of the fresh products I buy go off before I can even think about cooking them. This problem is highlighted by Joe Yonan, the author of Serve Yourself: nightly adventures in cooking for one, on his blog where he says "even if you manage to buy in smaller quantities, you have to shop every day or two to keep on top of fresh produce before it goes to waste".

 

The solution suggested by Tamar Adler, himself being the author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, is to cook all the ingredients as soon as they are bought and store them to be used later. I did not test this suggestion yet but I am personally not sure that food keeps a good taste when it is cooked and kept a long time in a fridge. On the National Health Service website, it is even written that cooked aliments should not be kept more than two days in a fridge. I am not sure that what Tamar Adler proposes is the perfect solution to the problem.

"Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained" Maurice de Vlaminck

Not only does food conveys pleasure through eating but also through cooking. I'd go as far as saying that cooking is my favourite part in a dinner. It is such a great feeling to gather many ingredients and see what we are able to make with them. Of course cooking requires patience and determination: sometimes, no matter how hard you try to follow a recipe, the result is not what you expected and you have to try many times before succeeding. It is like a challenge., an adventure unless you are a professional or used to cook a special dish.

However it is interesting to see that cooking is not always a pleasure. My mother would totally disagree if she heard me saying that cooking is enjoyable. It is more a fatigue than a pleasure for her and it is understandable because making two or three meals a day for a whole family requires skills, time and imagination to cook different dishes everyday. Indeed, I am sure most of you have read Harry Potter, and you must know that those who cook the meals for the Hogwarts pupils are the house-elves, that is to say, slaves. Making food is a task left to those who are supposed to do the housekeeping and everything the others do not want to do.

I found a blog (http://shampasadhya.hubpages.com/hub/Five-Tips-To-Make-Cooking-a-Pleasure) where a woman writes that cooking is "unavoidable" and she gives a list of ideas to "make cooking a pleasure". Here is what she suggests :

- add a special touch to a dish, which means change something to the original or usual recipe.

- remember what people you love love eating, in order to cook the dishes they like the most.

- take as much time as needed to cook, not to be pressed for time.

- choose what you will cook in advance, in order to be sure you have all the ingredients required and be prepared when you begin to cook.

- have a real will to make it good in order to make it as a goal to reach. You'll be even prouder of yourself and happier to succeed.

I especially agree with the first tip she gives because I do love adding my personal touch to recipes, for instance peanut butter in my cookie dough, sauce béchamel to my croque-monsieurs (the sauce béchamel is actually part of the croque-monsieurs recipe but my mother never cooked them with sauce béchamel, which is why I consider it as a personal touch from me) or a green icing on my lemon cake.

This idea of personal touch makes me think about a book I read entitled 211 things a bright girl can do. There is a chapter where the author Bunty Cutler explains what to do to pretend a ready meal is homemade and this is everything about personal touches, like frying a onion - the smell will make your guests think you spent your day cooking and the onion adds a special taste to the dish -, take off all packaging and serve the food in your  nice crockery, add herbs, add little extras like cherry tomatoes, cheese or olives, these little things that give personality and singlarity to the dish, which will make your gests think you cooked it yourself.

This is a way to avoid cooking and not really a solution to enjoy it, but I found this excerpt funny and original and I enjoy so mch the idea of personal touch that I wanted to share it.

By the way, I was talking about croque-monsieurs and I don't know if it's something you are familiar with, which is why I want to give you my recipe :

for 6 croque-monsieurs

Take twelve pieces of toast. Spread a thin layer of butter on each.

Prepare the sauce béchamel: mix 80-100 grammes of melted butter in a saucepan with flour, add flour until you get a thick texture. Then put the saucepan on fire at low heat and add milk and whip until getting a creamy substance. Add salt and pepper.

Pour the sauce on each piece of toast. Then, put a slice of ham on six pieces of toast and grated cheese on the other six. Put a piece of toast with grated cheese on it on each piece of toast with ham. You obtain six sandwiches.

Put them on a tray and bake them in the oven until they look golden.

 This is delicious and one of my favourite recipes when I have to feed many people. Because most of time, and as for me, cooking is a pleasure when I cook for the others.