World of Flimmer

I enjoy excersizing. I tend to crawl around in forrests or on mountains regardless of the weatherconditions. One of the reasons is that I am very fond of the nature and all the nice people you meet when you are out walking (or running). One of the other reasons is that I like to prepare all kinds of food, cooking, baking - you name it. And it is very hard to not gain a few pounds here and there when you enjoy hanging over the stove.

But it is a very rewarding hobby to have. It contains really everything - the challenge of getting different tastes to work together, to prepare the meat and vegetables the way it should be, to avoid burning the sauce and mix the right ingrediences, creating a sallad that harmonies with the dinner, testing out new flavours and receipies - and of course: make something that everybody can like and eat, regardless of preferences.

Just think of all the different kind of foods that exists. All the different foodgroups. All the different kind of ethnic dishes that are out there. All the different kind of spices. Preparation for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert - and perhaps also an evening snack.

If we look at something as simple as one single receipe, we will perhaps find 6 - 7 different ingrediences in it. But often you have to improvise because you do not have that particular flavour or ingredience in the fridge. That is when you need to know about what may work instead. And that kind of knowlegde can really only be aquired through experimenting.

Let us take a look at a couple of examples here. One of most basic sauces is white sauce. It is basically just melted butter with some flour mixed in and then with milk added. Nothing fancy, but can be used as basis for a lot of other thick sauces. But just by adding some tomato purée and a little sugar (enhances the flavour of the tomato) and then some chopped champignong - and you have a great sauce for pastabased dinners.

And speaking of pasta - meatsauce is a very common thing to have with for instance spaghetti. But there are a number of ways of creating very tasty meatsauce that is much better than what you can get in the stores; just brown some minced meat, add some tomato purée (okay - that was the second time I used that purée - I didnt think about this when I started writing this blog), mix in some carry and add some sour cream. Then add some chopped onion and add some salt, pepper and soy (the original receipe said English sauce - but I think it depends on what other kind ingrediences you use instead). Of course - it is possible to also add some chopped champignon here as well, but the important part is to let the sauce rest after you made it.

And this is perhaps the final piece of the puzzle when working with food; patience. I believe the reason many people find it hard to cook is not because the receipies are difficult to read, but because some food can be rather timeconsuming to make. But I guess we are all different as people; I enjoy doing the initial preparations, I enjoy doing the cooking, and I enjoy preparing the food for serving when the cooking is done. It is quite simply relaxing.

But I can not help contemplating if not having time and patience to prepare dinner from the ground and up is somehow connected to our western culture. Its just a feeling I have. It *is* rather odd, you know. Books about cooking have never been as popular as they are today, chefs are the new superstars, and the net is overflowing with receipies ... but I do not have the feeling there are very many people that actually uses them. Cooking books ends perhaps up as some kind of picturebooks for grownups?

If we want to see places where they do take their food traditions seriously, we will have to go south and up to some of the rural families. It is perhaps just me idolizing these places, but from what I can understand many of these families uses the cooking as a way of socializing, they use fresh vegetables and stay away from tin cans. They may use a lot of oil and butter in the cooking, but it still seems to be a generally diet than what many of the rest of us urban dwellers tend to digest.

So why have things turned out this way? It is not easy to say, but I believe that our relationship with food in many ways reflects our attitude towards in life in general. Eating is about enjoying life, relaxing and enjoying the blend of tastes, smells and the texture of the food. But today this way of indulging has been replaced with fast food, instant dinner and after-dinner snacks. Instead of enjoying the waiting time before dinner is served and then savouring the taste - we mostly just consumes what we are served today. The flat taste is often camuflaged with spices, saturated fat replaces the healthy butter.

So is it any strange that we turn out the way we are. There are a great many things in our world that are great and wonderful. There are also quite a few things that could be improved. Let us start with one single first - take back the joy of cooking and look at the bright side of life!