Because Cooking isn’t as Simple as Reading

Lori Alexander has said that in order to cook all you need to do is to know how to read! Yup, its just that simple.  If you can read a recipe, surely you can cook. As usual in her black and white style of thinking, there can’t possibly be any other reasons that can get in the way of that goal. Ya know like distractions from smaller kids, husbands who don’t come home on time, not having enough money for fresh or organic ingredients,  picky eaters, and emergency or “out of the usual” events that get in the way (and often with small kids this is everyday- someone is sick, someone had an appointment run late).

Not only does a woman have to cook, the  cooking has to be healthy, tasty, and aesthetically pleasing. The woman’s meal is suppose to be so super amazing that her family flocks to the dinner table, drops whatever they are doing, and is salivating for good food and good family time.  A failure to attract the family to the dinner table in this way trickles down to a failure of that woman as a person.  Culture doesn’t let you forget it and godly women will practically hang you for it. It was once suggested to me that if my husband isn’t home in time for dinner that must mean my meals aren’t very good.

There is what looks like a really good book just out on the market called “Pressure Cooker – Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve our Problems and What we Can Do About It”. 

I love the subtitle because godly women love to assume that if women just quit work and get back into the kitchen, home cooking will absolutely solve problems. All problems in the world stem from women not being in their proper place of home and kitchen.

From the book description on Amazon:

In this riveting and beautifully-written book, Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott take us into the kitchens of nine women to tell the complicated story of what it takes to feed a family today. All of these mothers love their children and want them to eat well. But their kitchens are not equal. From cockroach infestations and stretched budgets to picky eaters and conflicting nutrition advice, Pressure Cooker exposes how modern families struggle to confront high expectations and deep-seated inequalities around getting food on the table.

Notice how it says all these families love their children. Lori has been quick to point out that if you aren’t cooking healthy meals from scratch every night that you don’t love your children. Most moms do have very good intentions, but Lori will assume they don’t unless they are living the lifestyle she mandates.

Also note the phrase “high expectations”. Just this week Lori asked for a reader to show her a bible verse where wives are suppose to have expectations of their husbands. A few chimed in with the verse of do not deprive each other of sex and a verse about men providing. Those are some basic expectations women should expect. Lori didn’t like that there was an reasonable answer. She thought she had stumped everyone so instead she moved the goalpost and said she meant “high expectations”. With that rephrasing, sure- it was hard to find a verse in the bible that explicitly says women should have “high expectations” of their husbands. So there. Lori finally won that round and got the last word.

With that exchange fresh in my mind the “high expectations” in this book review stuck out.  I also don’t believe there is a bible verse that says we should have “high expectations” on how are meals are cooked or prepared.  But yet our culture has absolutely placed high expectations on women when it comes to meal planning. I think family should expect food, but that its not healthy to have high expectations on how the food comes about.  Its not enough for a woman to feed her family, it has to be done at the level of an executive chef for it to be considered acceptable and godly and it has to pass all the benchmarks of healthy, tasty (for ALL members of family), and aesthetically pleasing.

More from the book description:

Based on extensive interviews and field research in the homes and kitchens of a diverse group of American families, Pressure Cooker challenges the logic of the most popular foodie mantras of our time, showing how they miss the mark and up the ante for parents and children. Romantic images of family meals are inviting, but they create a fiction that does little to fix the problems in the food system. The unforgettable stories in this book evocatively illustrate how class inequality, racism, sexism, and xenophobia converge at the dinner table. If we want a food system that is fair, equitable, and nourishing, we must look outside the kitchen for answers.

And it is exactly these romantic images, the Norman Rockwell life, that godly women promote and place undue pressure on women. They are fiction and they are super fiction when you have babies and toddlers at home.  Lori loves to fill her instagram with images of her healthy meals, but sure its super easy to prepare meals when all your kids are grown and out of the house, when you have tons of time to drive to various farmers markets for organic ingredients, and when you have a husband supply a large income to buy those ingredients.

Don’t let godly women pressure you into feeling like you have to cook from scratch every night or you are a failure. I went through those feelings for years and I am still recovering from their relentless pressure to have dinner just so or “you don’t love your family”.

Related to this book is a good podcast that can be heard here.