May the food be with you
Several weeks of MasterChef Season 13 are done. I saw Season 12 Back to Win through to the end. Perhaps lockdown helped. Perhaps it was the skill and knowledge of the past participants or was it the new judging panel - empathetic, kind, empowering. Or that I wanted to see hope for the future of food and our food culture after closing my food business a year before.
This season I am seeing things differently. The world has changed and we need to be honest with how we are living and creating a future we want. For me it starts with the hours I won't be spending in front of the TV having the life force sucked out of me.
I’ll be channeling that into other creative pursuits. Like a small allotment at the local community garden, some study and continuing the food traditions in my household by cooking for my family while building our collective food literacy. Yes I still have a few things to learn - I want to improve my pickling and preserving, and my cellaring of my root veggies. I want to be resilient, to have the life skills that will get me through times of shortages, to be low plastic and zero carbon in the food I eat. To be local where possible.
I thank MasterChef but it is time to move on before the dark forces playing behind the scenes in reality television lure me back to opening another food business in the hospitality industry. And it is an industry - make no mistake. Much of the food media represents the dark side of our food culture. Sucking the creative life blood of passionate home cooks like a dementor.
Mel, Andy and Jock mean well I am sure. And the breath of freshness they brought to the entertaining food spectacle of MasterChef is great. I do see them as the recruiters for the dark lord, trying to find Jedi-like home cooks with deep food cultures and turning them to the Dark Side of our food culture - the hospitality industry.
Stay at home you passionate cooks. Don’t turn your creative pursuit and passions into a job. You are enough as a home cook. In fact you are more. You are the holder of our food culture, the trainer of future home cooks, of resilient healthy offspring with life skills and the knowledge to turn a $12 fresh chicken into three meals and a bowl of Pho and the $3.80 tray of frozen chicken livers into all the macro and micronutrients you need for the week.
How to balance the household economy, keep chooks, grow some vegetables, trade with your neighbours and forage for the free seasonal abundance then preserve this for eating in times of struggle or emergency. These are life skills that will not be taught on a cooking show. Is there a cooking show that demonstrates how to grow and preserve the household food you’ll need for three months? That's the minimum amount of food you need to have in your house to be truly resilient as a household.
We know we are moving in the right direction when the stories we tell, hear and watch are on the cost of the dishes, the traffic light health rating and the carbon and waste rating of the food produced. When the food is accessible to all, when collectively we have the food literacy to grow some of our food, source it locally, produce the dishes and the palate to eat simply yet appropriately for the planet's sake.
Our food culture has been outsourced to the hospitality industry. Now this is nothing against the good people battling away to make a living in these times of pandemics, food delivery, rising utility and insurance costs. We can help these good folk out by building our food culture at home and in our communities. Improve our food literacy and those around you. Create your own mini food culture. Focus on health, social and physical activity and you’ll find yourself mastering the creative art of building community and a rich life. Because we will be defined by how we organise ourselves.
Along the way, the diversity and resilience you create in your household and your community ensures that when times get tough - and they will with the challenges of decarbonisation and climate change- we’ll all thrive.
This season I am seeing things differently. The world has changed and we need to be honest with how we are living and creating a future we want. For me it starts with the hours I won't be spending in front of the TV having the life force sucked out of me.
I’ll be channeling that into other creative pursuits. Like a small allotment at the local community garden, some study and continuing the food traditions in my household by cooking for my family while building our collective food literacy. Yes I still have a few things to learn - I want to improve my pickling and preserving, and my cellaring of my root veggies. I want to be resilient, to have the life skills that will get me through times of shortages, to be low plastic and zero carbon in the food I eat. To be local where possible.
I thank MasterChef but it is time to move on before the dark forces playing behind the scenes in reality television lure me back to opening another food business in the hospitality industry. And it is an industry - make no mistake. Much of the food media represents the dark side of our food culture. Sucking the creative life blood of passionate home cooks like a dementor.
Mel, Andy and Jock mean well I am sure. And the breath of freshness they brought to the entertaining food spectacle of MasterChef is great. I do see them as the recruiters for the dark lord, trying to find Jedi-like home cooks with deep food cultures and turning them to the Dark Side of our food culture - the hospitality industry.
Stay at home you passionate cooks. Don’t turn your creative pursuit and passions into a job. You are enough as a home cook. In fact you are more. You are the holder of our food culture, the trainer of future home cooks, of resilient healthy offspring with life skills and the knowledge to turn a $12 fresh chicken into three meals and a bowl of Pho and the $3.80 tray of frozen chicken livers into all the macro and micronutrients you need for the week.
How to balance the household economy, keep chooks, grow some vegetables, trade with your neighbours and forage for the free seasonal abundance then preserve this for eating in times of struggle or emergency. These are life skills that will not be taught on a cooking show. Is there a cooking show that demonstrates how to grow and preserve the household food you’ll need for three months? That's the minimum amount of food you need to have in your house to be truly resilient as a household.
We know we are moving in the right direction when the stories we tell, hear and watch are on the cost of the dishes, the traffic light health rating and the carbon and waste rating of the food produced. When the food is accessible to all, when collectively we have the food literacy to grow some of our food, source it locally, produce the dishes and the palate to eat simply yet appropriately for the planet's sake.
Our food culture has been outsourced to the hospitality industry. Now this is nothing against the good people battling away to make a living in these times of pandemics, food delivery, rising utility and insurance costs. We can help these good folk out by building our food culture at home and in our communities. Improve our food literacy and those around you. Create your own mini food culture. Focus on health, social and physical activity and you’ll find yourself mastering the creative art of building community and a rich life. Because we will be defined by how we organise ourselves.
Along the way, the diversity and resilience you create in your household and your community ensures that when times get tough - and they will with the challenges of decarbonisation and climate change- we’ll all thrive.
Comments
Post a Comment