For Howard Lewis, cooking is not just a thing you do, but an expression of family and love.
I was 13 years old when my mother took me into the kitchen and showed me how to cook a steak, a chop, saute spinach, open a can of vegetables and heat them, but this was not how she taught me to cook. She taught me to cook by placing me on the kitchen counter each night as a toddler while she prepared dinner for my brother and me. This was to keep me from running around out of sight and getting into trouble. We watched Sesame Street and the Vietnam war in varying doses depending on how bloody the day had been and talked. It was a habit we fell into that lasted until I left home for college. During those days and evenings of watching her make coq au vin, soufflés (I separated the eggs), roasts, stews, and curries, I learned how to move in a kitchen, apply heat, clean as I cooked, read a recipe, and prepare various dishes to all be ready at the same moment.
I was 16 years old when I cooked for someone else for the first time. My older brother was running late and quite upset. We were each supposed to cook dinner for ourselves, another step in our training as self-sufficient modern males, but he was trying to do too many things at once so I offered to make dinner for him while he got done other chores that he needed to do before he went out. I learned two things from that experience. The first being that cooking for two, or more properly more than one, is as easy as cooking for one, and the second being that cooking for someone is a great way to care for them.
As my wife and I were preparing to marry, my father in law began insisting that my fiancée be sent to an intensive cooking program to learn all of the domestic skills that Bryn Mawr and Penn Law had failed to engrain into her. I told him that I planned to cook for us, and that she really didn’t need to learn. He told me, “I’m trying to help you kid,” but I didn’t want her to learn. I leapt at the chance to cook for her, to care for her, to provide for my family in a real physical way and also to use recipes that cannot be made for one. It was exciting. Roasts became a possibility and stews less of a burden to eat. Desserts opened themselves up as a category, and I started making soufflés, ices and more recently pies. When my wife had our son, it was a hard labor, and she was knocked out for weeks afterwards, which was the beginning of my cooking for our son.
Many may roil at the idea of heating a bottle as cooking, but the act of warming a bottle and feeding it to an infant is at its fundament the same act of caring for and nurturing another person as cooking a three course haut cuisine meal. My son was given his first solid food from my dinner plate, and each new food that he has been introduced to has been from my plate. We often share meals, including his peanut butter cookies and pretzels, which are sometimes too good for daddy to pass up. I am proud that at the age of two his favorite food was broccoli, and that when he went to daycare with lunch, my wife and I had to go into an emergency crash course to teach him how to eat sandwiches and other packable finger foods.
At the age of 44, I have found that the most satisfying thing I do and the only true north star constant in my life is being able to cook for others and myself. Work, the economy, apartments, houses, friends may come and go, but cooking for the hungry and seeing a smile on their faces is a better accomplishment than coming home at the end of a hard day with a decent paycheck. We, all humans, strive for praise from those around us and a feeling that we have done something useful in our day. We desire to be valuable to our families and our communities. We want to know that we matter. Cooking matters.
Photo credit: Flickr / bortsecristian