Food and freedom

Preparing the meal for a family is something which may take an hour or two out of the day, or it may take all day. It depends so much on what we know, what kind of a philosophy we may have, and how we organize our knowledge and apply the philosophy. A good cook is one who spends little time in the kitchen, yet, through some magic management, serves very perfect meals. While the size of a family is an important factor to be reckoned with, and may materially increase or decrease the time required for cer- tain detail operations in connection with the cooking and serving of meals, it should not affect to any great degree the time required for preparing the food for the day as a whole. Although the accomplishment which combines good cooking with little effort calls for both training and clear, reasonable thinking, the results are so gratifying, have come to be so important to the world, and are, from every point of view, so liberating that they are worth striving for. We cook our food because, broadly, it is nec- essary to do so. Cooking makes many foods more digestible — such as starchy foods, cereals, many vegetables, some fruits, and the connective tissue of meat. 112 FOOD AND FREEDOM Coolcing develops or modifies flavor, making many foods more palatable, and makes increased variety and attractiveness, as well as many economies in the use of food, possible. Cooking is a means of sterilizing food, when this is desirable or necessary. Different methods of cooking are commonly practised — 'boiling, stewing, steaming, toasting, broiling, roasting, braising, baking, panning, sau- teing, frying — all of which serve many good ends in the preparation of food, although certain meth- ods of cooking are better for some foods than others. To make food more wholesome and more acceptable is the principle underlying all good cooking. Any method that will accomplish this end without food waste, retaining as far as pos- sible all the original nutrients in the food, is a good method; other factors being equal, that requiring the least efifort and time, combined with fuel economy, is always the better method, while food that is good without cooking is usually best served in that way — except where variety may be particularly needed, or where cooking may prevent food waste. Cooking is a necessary, profitable, and en- nobling occupation up to the point of making food more wholesome and more acceptable. Be- yond this, when it reaches the point of spending COOKING THE MEALS 113 the better part of the day converting clean, honest food into compHcated, over-elaborated dishes, which are neither wholesome nor digestible and are carelessly eaten in a few minutes, it is hardly profitable. When practised to the exclusion or neglect of other necessary thought and work — sacrificing, as it can, home happiness, health, even the wealth of the country — it is enslaving, and very rapidly deteriorates into that drudgery which many believe is its true and only rdle. In order to cook so that the work is a great health and happiness giving service, so that it enriches and does not exhaust, it must be understood and organized in the mind just as home-making as a whole must be understood and organized.