Cooking and Baking - The Approach

It has been another fasting day for me here - and a welcome break from all that eating and cooking - well sort of a break because I am still cooking for everyone else here and baking bread most days. Recently I came across mention of how if you like cooking, usually you would not like baking - and vice versa.

I was floored by this - mainly because there probably isn't one aspect of food, cooking, baking, preserving or eating that I don't enjoy. I even like the washing up after wards - because I like a clean kitchen and to have everything back in it's place.

Of course, you know me, I have been mulling this over ever since. How might someone enjoy baking and not cooking....hmmm. Then it hit me! It was because they have put these two activities down as being separate from each other.

That baking is somehow separate kitchen magic from ordinary cooking of meals for instance. So, I guess it must all be in the approach. I would bake up a storm before any feast days. Baking bread is something I do nearly every day, and I would use the oven to cook some meals such as stew in the Tagine.

Baking therefore is not separate from any other meal for me. But there is more than this - for others baking conjures up visions of sweets, chocolate dripping off of cakes and cookies that make you fat just by looking at them.

It is an entire separate food group (which would not even register as food as far as I am concerned) crammed with as much sugar and other nonsense as possible for your enjoyment and dining pleasure. Then, that would depend on your idea of pleasure. 

Giving children sweets full of sugar and other junk and watching them act up and get a sugar rush - is not something I would take pleasure in. I know enough teachers and others who work around children who would say the exact same thing. 

The poor child would then be yelled at or some other negative response because of this behaviour and we are well into a vicious cycle here. 

So, I  enjoy baking yes and cooking - what I enjoy far more is the fact that any of my cooking can be eaten without concern of sugar or other nasties. It is certainly not a behaviour altering experience to eat good, wholesome organic food - unless having extra energy changes your life!

April

Cinnamon Cake 

The Scary Part of Halloween, the Sweets

I remember a few years ago when I was completing a diploma course in Nutrition, one of the many things we learned during those years was some of the specifics about Halloween candy. Yes, apparently there are brands of sweets that you might only see around this time of year and they are nasty...

Actually I think I can remember some of them... not that there were many sweets in the house where I grew up. However, at Halloween it was expected, right? I mean children come around to your door and you provide them with the material to degrade their gut bacteria, rot their teeth and otherwise cause harmful effects on their health. 

It's a great time of year all around. 

Of course, if we really stop and think about it - no one wants to be party to any of these negatives listed above. We would all like to think that we know better, so we can do better. But how many of us really do - or do we still choose to take the 'easy' way out?

And for the life of me, I am not certain why caving in to the marketing campaign, then handing out sweets to unsuspecting little children is an easy way out... who wins in the end? Parents putting hyper strung out sugar drunk children to bed or the children themselves with sore tummies and worse?

The interesting thing is it doesn't have to be this way. We all know by now you can have your cake (sugar free) and eat it too....What better message to send to children then to be, act, live and do - in as responsible manner as possible. 

Perhaps here is as good a time as any to remind you of some basic energy laws - it's never about them, it's always about us. So, if we feel the need to cave in and fill up our families with sugar or any manner of rubbish - what need in us are we filling? 

And who is really in charge here, of you and the foods you choose to eat? 

April 

Pumpkin vines in the garden...