“Roast pork lunch at Sandown Park Hotel” by ultrakml is licensed under CC BY 2.0
There has been much activity on GP regarding recipes and food. I was thinking of this the other day after making a full on Sunday roast for my family – why are we obsessed with food?
Well, there is the obvious, that if we do not eat we will die. But there are so many family self help and children self help books that recommend eating together, with no TV on.
With our busy lives I always try to make sure we have Sunday dinner together as a family, and often invite friends. It is not always possible but we do the best we can. And dinner is not always about the food; it is about the banter between the family, the shared worries, the shared daftness, and the shared rituals. The feeling of us vs them. When you eat the brain relaxes the chemical flood of panic compounds that tell you you’re hungry. It emits dopamine to please the centres in the brain that were alerting you to your hunger.
Eating feeds your brain. Unless you are eating the prepackaged crap that is full of fructose, which gives you a sugar addiction without you realising it. Stay away from prepacked food, it is poison that messes with your brain happy and demands you feed it more and more sugar.
And here we have it, the basic family unit. MBW, 2 kids, one of each, and Daddy. Always and forever, I pledged to them when I held their tiny forms in my arms for the first time. Until they then vomited mummymilk down my best shirt.
It is the re-affirmation of these family bonds that builds the unit. Those that move against us know this and will try everything to destroy all we hold dear, beginning at the source. The family unit, the wider family unit – grandparents, aunts, uncles and so on – this is what unites us. I am not going to war for your family, but threaten mine and I will rain hell upon you.
We laugh, we joke, we connect. And for every one of you posting a food recipe on GP I know you’re not eating that by yourselves. Whether it is pictures of OT’s enormous spread or Pttm’s bacon rolls – it is all about the sociability.
The family meal is a daily reminder – and we do need these – of that which is most important to us. We plan, we conspire… To have a picnic. However, we may also plan to go for armed insurrection, such is the power of the family dinner. This is why the family must be denigrated, undermined and the matriarch of the family must be sent off to work instead of raising her children, and the patriarch must be belittled and destroyed at every opportunity.
For the rest of us though, we sit and eat together in mostly contented familial gentleness. We relax and take the load off, if you cook you don’t wash up. If you don’t cook, you lay the table. Everyone contributes a little and it is this shared endeavour that brings us together. It’s even better if the weather is howling outside, when you’re indoors with your loved ones and know you’ll be safe and warm tonight.
Really, when I cook, there is always a secret ingredient and that ingredient is love. Allergen free, non fattening and good for you.
© El Cnutador 2018
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
