FBEL: Judgmental Cookbooks

I belong to several writer’s groups on Facebook, partly because I like to connect with other authors and partly to hear about new opportunities when they come by. One of the groups I belong to is run by a very successful cookbook author (who I’m not at liberty to talk about in public, as the group is private and very bougie). The owner posted this video, and then left us to comment on it before coming back. I’ll skip to the good part: if you watch about five minutes of it, you’ll get the whole gist.

Basically, what she says is cookbooks are training you to think you’re bad.

That’s right folks, the recipes you’ve been enjoying in your family for the last umpteen years, the ones you’ve snatched off the internet? They’re apparently actively attempting to strip you of your abilities. I can’t make this shit up. Here’s a quote:

“I want to show you that your cookbooks are more than just lists of instructions for how to cook your next meal. Your cookbooks are in fact deeply judgmental stories telling you that you are not already good enough at doing mundane household tasks.”

What I got from the half of this travesty that I managed to watch is that because a cookbook usually contains a story, it’s only a vehicle for the author to tell you that you’re a failure, because if you weren’t a failure, you wouldn’t need to read the cookbook. As a secondary message, apparently we’re also being told that if we cook like Rachel Ray, we’ll look like her and be rich like her. As near as I can tell, the only thing cookbooks aren’t communicating to you, is how to cook. She’s adamant that people cannot possibly learn to cook from a book, and that it must be transmitted from person to person.

I’m aghast that this woman, Dr. Rachel Rich. She’s a doctorate, so that means she has a PhD in this stuff. Per her own words, “…I’m a historian at Leed Becket University and co-editor of the journal Food And History. I’ve been researching and writing about cookbooks for over 20 years…”

So, is there enough information out there to keep a food historian busy for over 20 years? Absolutely. It’s a fascinating subject, and one which has important connections with today’s world. Not only are food historians bringing the past to life in a way that no other historian can, they’re also behind the revival of several old types of food, plants that were popular in the middle ages or earlier but that had faded into obscurity in modern times. That’s important because we can learn about plant genetics, and how to better feed our growing population by studying those plants and the recipes that they were used in. So yes, there’s a ton of information out there, and a solid researcher could spend a lifetime tapping it.

Instead, this Dr. Rich is handing out this pap.

Tell me, when did TEDx talks get so crappy? I’ve always liked TEDx, because they brought out intelligent, thoughtful people who I might not otherwise hear. I thought for certain, when I saw the TEDx logo, that this was going to be another fantastic piece of information which I could then pass on to those who follow me. Boy, was I wrong.

Rich goes on to say, “…that is actually the subtext there. So the food that we eat is really tied to who we are, and that means that our cookbooks can play on all our fears, our anxieties about getting things wrong. But when did that start? When did we start letting these judgmental books into our homes?”

I’m not even going to get into the point that a book itself cannot be judgmental. I have never in my life encountered a cookbook that “plays on all my fears and anxieties about getting things wrong.” While there are definitely some more challenging cookbooks on my shelves (because I have several shelves of cookbooks), they don’t bring out my anxieties. They encourage me. They fill me with stories about the recipes, warm my heart, and with a bit of practice, they fill my belly.

I cannot believe that this woman spent an entire TEDx talk on the horrors of cookbooks. What kind of person… no, what kind of historian would make such claims? If that’s what she’s spent her 20 years on, I don’t understand why she’s being paid. Her “research” (and I use the term lightly) is useless. It’s a grandiose version of underwater basket weaving.

This is exactly the reason that I told my kids that they didn’t need to go to college if they didn’t feel pulled to a career that insisted on that type of education. They could attend local colleges, do trade schools, apprentice with someone, or get on the job training. What mattered was that they ended up in a workplace that fed their soul and their body adequately, with the least amount of debt available. One kid’s doing a 2 year stint at a small college for plumbing, and the other is in a big-name university pursuing a goal with a full ride. They’re both happy with their choices.

When we force everyone to go to university, we end up with people who research “the negative effects of using cookbooks” as their thesis (I have no idea what Dr. Rich researched; that was just a dig on my part). Dr. Rich appears to be saying that cookbooks arose from a burgeoning 19th century middle class who wanted to cook above their station, as it were. That’s a pretty poor supposition coming from someone with a PhD in food history.

Cookbooks became popular in the mid 18th century, as people were leaving behind their families to pursue land and hopefully wealth in different parts of the world. They couldn’t bring their mothers with them, so they wrote the recipes down. This allowed them to continue cooking their family recipes when they got to their new world. Cookbooks were also used to teach people to cook when the society around them had made it unusual for them to do so. Consider London of the 1600s, with its thatched roofs and wattle and daub walls, so very prone to fire. Cooking wasn’t done indoors, because it had the unfortunate side effect of causing your home to burn down. Many of that growing middle class chose to eat out rather than risk their building, or to pay someone to bring them food. They didn’t learn at mother’s knee how to cook, and so they had nothing to pass on to their children. Cookbooks were emerging as more than just instructions for preparing food, becoming tools for home management and cultural transmission.

If I, with my self-taught food history, know this… why does the PhD not know it? The answer is, she’s either manufactured her stance in order to be offended (which seems to be a popular sport among today’s young folk), or she’s been so brainwashed by whatever professors she had that she can’t think and research for herself. It’s a sad comment on intelligence in our world. This is what a “good education” gets you: irritation and offense so bad that you have to take it to TEDx talks.

I’m so disgusted by it that I don’t even know what else to write on the subject. Luckily, the authors I’m spending time with are just as horrified by this woman’s video. Ugh.