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Gather round the table (or TV)

A beautiful art“Since the beginning of time, food has always meant the gathering of the clan, loved ones chopping, stirring, kneading together, and that second most intimate of acts, feeding each other, for food is not so much about cooking as it is about love and sharing.”

Loving the recent addition to Huffington Post, the HuffPost Food section, above quote from their Introducing HuffPost Food slideshow. Take a look – hours of riveting reading on edgy food topics.

Food in my house at the minute is the only mode of communication, as we are attempting to plant our own vegetable garden. Our chicken laid its first egg – a beautiful little brown speckled thing. A friend came over for dinner last Sunday, came out to the garden and struggled to find words to express how lovely it all was. “It’s so…it’s so…organic,” she finally said. I’ve begun to feel a strange contentment that I never got from buying two for one at Tesco when the paucity in my purse dictated it so. I think I’ve started on a journey or something God damn it!

I’ve written about food for a while now, with many publications, but I always berated myself for never quite getting the passion. Coming from a gaggle of sister-chefs who devour cookery books as novels, I always felt like the one least qualified to write about food. But we are all qualified. I get it now. It is our main concern, whether it’s feeding our family, looking out for cost-effective ways to feed ourselves nutritious and delicious food, or trying to find a way to help the starving millions across the world. So, the next time I get intensely annoyed at Masterchef or Come Dine with Me or Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares because they are all too noisy and shout too much (these programmes are never off the TV in our house and they haunt my dreams) I’m going to adjust my thinking to one of gladness. At least we’re talking about food (alot). At least my 11-year-old stepdaughter is fascinated with cooking and not McDonalds. The more we talk and blog and reply and respond about food the more educated we will become, and so all the better for our quality of life.

So, to refer back to Meathead from the Huffington Post, food is not so much about cooking as it is about love and sharing. Spread the love wherever you can today. And tell me about it!

9 Comments

  1. Come Dine with Me annoys you? I could watch it all day, and on Sundays, I do! I long for the day when E4 start showing episodes from around the world.

  2. I know, it annoys me in the way chocolate annoys me for being so damn eatable

  3. I would love to see an Irish Come Dine with Me!

    How hilarious would that be?

  4. I suspect alcohol would play a starring role in it…
    Jacqueline

  5. The girls in work and I are doing CDWM at the moment. So far, the booze has indeed been as integral as the food. I got home at 10am after the first night!

  6. I have no idea what CDWM is, other than I gather it must be a tv show?

    I do however know that I love this post 🙂

    I love your passion for the newly discovered joy of eating from your garden or even the notion of eating from your garden because it will prob take a while before it all blooms into edibles.

    I haven’t grown my own food for a few years now for a variety of reasons however I did grow up with half our home garden set in food – spuds, cabbage, onions, strawberries etc and I loved going out with a scissors at lunch time to get scallions or with a bucket to dig some spuds from the clamp – they are wonderful memories and I will garden again when other things in my life take up less space and time.

    Well done you 🙂 Enjoy your passion and your home grown food!

  7. Jacqueline we’ve had chickens for nearly two years now they’re the best. I love this post – last night I invited my neighbours around for dinner. Really!!!!
    Anyway that was me spreading the food ‘love’…btw have you seen New Zealand Masterchef?

  8. Aw..thank you Scribhneoir. I love that snapshot of you as a child picking stuff from your homegrown garden; I want my (yet to be born) children to have a life like that!