Thursday 11 November 2021
Odd Connections
While sipping my morning coffee this morning, I began to wonder about home cooking and how uncertain the results can be. Is it cooked all the way through? Has it set properly? Have I used the right quantities? Does it matter if the flour is three years past the sell by date?
There is usually a degree of uncertainty about home cooking, especially mine. Buy a packet, a ready meal, order a takeaway, dine out - these take away some or all of the uncertainties. We’ll be off out for a coffee and a cake shortly. Both will be identical to what we had last time.
I don’t know why, but it occurred to me that a drift away from the uncertainties of home cooking is also a drift away from uncertainty itself. We become a little less familiar with uncertainty as a core aspect of real life. And real life becomes a little less real.
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6 comments:
Suggested reading: "Hazard" by J.G. Bennett
Yes, I think that once something becomes predictable, we simply stop paying attention to it. A standard meal out, same quality guaranteed, no upsets - that's just refuelling. The mind goes to something else, which is why people in restaurants - unless it's a big night out for them - play with their phones. With home cooking, the process is more important than the product because one is actually alive during the process. And in our house, I'll eat nearly any of the products, no matter how bad, because I'm so mean...
If you want a bit of unpredictability in your cuisine just buy avocados, or pears, or peaches. Or, last winter for the first time we can remember, potatoes. Especially baking potatoes.
Pablo - thanks, I've bookmarked a link to it on Amazon.
Sam - I eat virtually anything produced at home too. Probably something to do with being brought up in the fifties.
dearieme - yes, even though I like them I've given up on pears and peaches because they are so unreliable. Not ripe and won't ripen is a big problem. I've had more luck with avocados though - we still buy those.
We've at last found a solution to the avo prob - "wonky avocados" from Morrisons.
dearieme - we have no handy Morrison's but I may try the Co-op which we like for a number of odds and ends.
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