Pleasing people through food

Last week, my friend Steve came over for dinner. Steve and I go back a long way. He's one of my dearest friends. It doesn't matter how long it is since I last saw him, it always seems like it was just yesterday. He's what I'd call a "kindred spirit".

I made Steve lamb shanks — wonderful winter comfort food. (I'll post a recipe when I make it again and get a decent chance to photograph it. Sometimes photographing food just interrupts the flow. :-) ) When Steve arrived, almost everything was ready and there were just a few finishing touches to be made. He watched me bustle about, finishing things off, for maybe a minute — then he cracked up laughing.

I looked askance at him and he said, between bursts of laughter, "Do you remember when I used to visit you in Bullsbrook, and [your ex] was making dinner and would describe to me what he was cooking, and your eyes would just glaze over…?"

Hrmph. :-)

But it's true. It's only since my marriage break-up 3½ years ago that I've showed any real interest in food and cooking myself, and it was a while after that before I became aware of the Slow Food movement and all it stands for. I am still very much learning as I go along, so it's kinda sweet that Steve noticed the difference between then and now. (And is still alive to tell the tale!)

It's about people

Over the weekend I installed the free Australian Gourmet Traveller iPad app and purchased the (thus far) three available magazine issues. I had subscribed to the print mag for a while but had let the subscription lapse in the last few months. Getting the iPad app seemed like a worthwhile experiment, to see if the magazine worked better for me on the iPad than in print…

It definitely does. I now want all my foodie magazines like that. I really do! It's so well done. I'm so impressed! But that's another story and I digress. More to the point, I was reading a comment in the June 2010 issue by Eamon Sullivan, Olympic swimmer and Celebrity MasterChef. He said:

If people respond well to your food, it makes you feel good. That's the sort of thing you get addicted to: pleasing people through food.

That so aptly describes where I'm coming from. Living alone, I find there is little pleasure in cooking just for myself. The food may taste good but the experience is somewhat lacking.

So I've become aware of just how much, when I cook, it's for other people. Enjoyment of food is inseparable from the enjoyment that others get from the food, and the pleasure of spending time with them. The terms "cooking from the heart" and "cooking with love" sound so corny and almost ridiculous in this cynical day and age, but that really is what it's about for me and for many people. When that's the case, I believe it shows — not just in the food, but in the total experience of eating with the folks you cooked for, and perhaps also with.

This is why, of course, in the absence of a live-in guinea pig, I like to invite others over for meals. And that doesn't seem like a bad thing, as addictions go. :-)

Posted by Vicki on Monday, August 02, 2010 at 10:58 AM in General and Slow Food.

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