Professional help is being sought

  Carrying on from yesterday, have a think about how you remember eating at home growing up. Who got involved in the preparation and cooking? Were you helping out or kept out of the kitchen? Did everyone eat  the same food, at the same time round a table? What happened when you went round to the houses of friends and relatives?

  What about eating? Do you remember eating a broad variety of foods? Was delicious food cooked by people who enjoyed cooking? Were you made to eat everything on your plate? Implicit somewhere in these questions is a suggestion of an idyllic childhood where everyone cooked and ate joyfully together, probably using a lot of food grown in the garden. Surely anyone enjoying such an upbringing would grow up being a natural cook and loving it. But what about everyone else?

  I'm willing to bet all my knives, (No fucking way! -Ed.), that our early experiences have an enormous and lasting effect on our relationship with food, cooking and eating. Can you imagine what it would be like if it was normal for people to go to see a therapist to undo the damage of a traumatic culinary upbringing? You'd hear folk saying stuff like, 

 "I've learnt to forgive my mum after she never let me help her cook. Then she'd make us eat her shitty food and we couldn't leave the table until we'd eaten everything." 

 "At least she cooked, mine fed me endless microwave ready meals, the bitch!"

  I'll return to this tomorrow cos I want to tell you about some very lucky kids who I was hanging with today. Fortunately for them, cooking is important for their parents so they had arranged for me to visit for a private pizza session. Sleeves were rolled up, dough was kneaded, tomato sauce was gently simmered, toppings were prepped and the oven was cranked up to eleven and a half. (See today's pic for a glimpse.)

  I made sure to be as hands off as I could so they learnt as much as possible and I'm confident that by the time I ducked out, they were fully armed with all the skills to be able to make their own pizzas from scratch. If that sounds like the sort of food upbringing you missed out on, I'll have a word and see if they're open to adopting a slightly grown up child like you.

Kirk out

RevoltingFood.com