kinesthetic cooking

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done in about 35 years. I took a cooking class. The last time I had formal cooking lessons was when I was in junior high school. In exchange for being allowed to use one of my class periods to work the the school office (for free and where I learned to file), I agreed that I would also take home economics (what is now understood as domestic science). In my school home economics involved learning to sew from a pattern, and some very basic cooking skills. We learned, for example, how to overcook minced beef and the proper doneness of green beans. Yesterday’s lesson was somewhat more inspiring. Continue reading →

Tonight, for dinner, I made a family favorite: a modified version of “Proper blokes’ sausage fusilli”. My version is an adaptation of a recipe in Jamie Oliver’s “Cook with Jamie“, which he wrote to help people “learn to cook properly and enjoy it (back cover).” I originally purchased the book (cost $16.99–though I think I might have gotten it for less at Cosco) to give to my son so he could feel confident in a kitchen. This dish is the one thing he has ventured from the book, though I have made many other things from it with good results. The book was written about the time that Jamie Oliver was beginning to try to have a food revolution in the UK, certainly before he really started talking to people who might consider themselves “ordinary folk”. As a result, the food, despite the ordinary and everyday language of the book and the best intentions of the author, is really not sympathetic to the economic needs of those “ordinary folk”. Continue reading →