For as long as I can remember, food has been an important part of my life. I enjoy eating it and most of all, i enjoy coocking it. For the longest time however I’ve not been able to put my finger on exactly why coocking gives me so much pleasure and happiness. I’ve come up with several explanations over the years, that it is a creative outlet, that it’s meditative or even an exercise in mindfullness. None of these however feel genuine, they’re more like an attempt at justifying a hobby to others that don’t get what I get out of the practice.
Now don’t get me wrong, the statements mentioned earlier are still true, I do find cooking to be a meditative experience and it does allow me to stretch my creative muscles, but they don’t truly account for the strong emotional bond I have to food. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a particular YouTube video that made me realize what it is that really keeps my passion for cooking alive.
In their video What’s the point of cooking at home anymore? food YouTuber and journalist Adam Ragusea poses the question if coocking at home makes any sense in a modern, industrialised world where food scarcety is a distant memory and a meal prepared for you is as cheap or cheaper than making it yourself. They go over some very intresting points, I highly reccomend watching it but in the final minutes of the video, when statistically most viewers would have already clicked away, Adam starts talking about their own relationship to cooking. That it’s not simply a mechanism to refuel our flesh machines, but its a cultural crossgenerational link, a living artifact and reminder of from where we came and a reassurance that a part of us will carry on into the future. “The stove is the shrine where I convene with my ancestors”.
It’s important to me to keep those cultural roots well maintained. Not because I belive that I should be proud of where I’ve come from, but because I personally want to stay in touch with my cultural and familial heratige. Why? For one, I just think that diversity is neat and if I have some cultural diversity lurking in my ancestry you bet I’ll incorporate it in my life. Second, some foods are the bonds that keep me connected to the people and memories that are important to me, which brings us to the titular pankake.
While many of the foods that I cook hold no more significant place in my mind other than that I enjoy their taste or the technical challenge of making said food, there are are some that are special. They do not only ground me in a loose sense of cultural beloning but are also loaded with personal meaning, memories and nostalgia. Whenever I make Borsh (beat and vegetable soup) or Vareniki (slavic dumplings) I’m taken back to my grandparents appartment in Kiev, to loud obnoxious new year celebrations with extended family and friends sitting around the diningroom table or to lunch in the tiny kitchen while granma or granpa told stories from ww2. Whenever I make waffles I’m taken back to weekend mornings with mom popping them out faster than we can eat them and pankes takes me back to dad doing the same.
So why now? Why the strong emotional response now and not the other countless times I’ve made theese foods? I think the explanation is simple. I now how a greater understanding for why I feel the way that I do about these things, which in turn intensifies the feeling since I’m more aware of it. And ofcourse the simple fact that for the longest time, I’ve lacked the tools to make these pankakes. Now that I can, a flood of nostalgia that’s been building up came crashing down over me.
Sergej Tanja Brändén 