Cooking is important, not only as a means to prepare food so we might live. It's about a great deal more than that! It's about history, culture, anthropology, science, myth, medicine, wisdom....it's about family and tradition, gathering together, surviving, celebrating....the list is endless. To say that without cooking we'd just be another set of critters at the trough is even a misconceived notion. We didn't need to domesticate animals 'til we decided to formalize our protein staples, so without cooking we'd really be just another group of beings doing what ever to survive.
What set us apart from the others out there wherever we were was the fact that we overcame our fears, figured out that fire was a useful tool and learned how to make it, then applied this technology to food and it became more palatable.
As anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote in The Raw and the Cooked, "Not only does cooking mark the transition from nature to culture, but through it and by means of it, the human state can be defined with all its attributes"*
We've come a long way since those first home fires burned. We've refined our skills, learned about spices and different ways to prepare ingredients and have arrived at a place where it is truly possible to experience the entire culinary world by visiting a food court.
Cooking has become everything, including a sport of sorts, with competitions and contests on t.v., online and even at local events
At the same time, famine has become more and more prevalent. Some of it is due to weather, but a great deal of it is a politically imposed form of genocide. When will we ever learn?
If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to submit them. Thanks.
*.Symons, Michael. "Cooking." Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 22 Oct. 2011 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
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