Before I launch into my rant, i want to apologize to all my readers for being away from the scene for so long. I was afflicted by a writers block of sorts and by this massive expectation of my self to write something totally profound and original or something hilarious.
I started many posts and always deleted them cause they never fit the bill. Well i have removed that sort of expectation from my self now and I ll just write whatever I am thinking of at the moment without censorship, it may be funny but again it may not be.
So this brings me to today's post. It is about food which i love, I love to eat and I love to cook. Cooking for me is like creating a master piece I feel deliriously happy when I am in the kitchen making some concoction or the other and non of my recipes are ever the same cause I always end up making some change to the original depending on the ingredients at hand. I am very lucky that I was taught how to cook, this skill has served me well it helped me to establish a very successful business and it helped me to survive when living on my own, when I had a seriously tight budget but my knowledge of food and cooking helped me stay healthy. you must be wondering why I am telling you all this, well the reason is that lately I have been watching TED talks and I was shocked to learn that apparently in the USA for the last 4 generations women have literally stopped cooking at home. Its mostly take out, canned food, tv dinners. On top of this most women don't know how to cook. I know its very un fair to pin cooking and house work just on women, men should learn all these life skills too, but more on that debate later.
The health of this country has gone down drastically over the last few years, by the year 2020 more than 70 percent of the population will be obese. Right now new born children are being born obese. What has all this got to do with women cooking you may be wondering, well let me do a quick re cap of history here apparently in the early 1900's women were mostly at home they did the house work bought locally produced ingredients and cooked the food at home over time as more and more women got into the work force tv dinners and canned food was marketed to them to ease the house work load. These foods were generally meat based with tons of other kinds of additives and not fresh ingredients over time this became the norm. The sad part is that as women went into the work force the house work and cooking were still primarily considered their responsibility and hence they were sold on the idea of quick fixes.
I am writing this post for a few reasons one is that cooking is a very under appreciated skill. The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about how perceptions have shifted now. In Pakistan knowing how to cook and keep a good house is considered a very important skill and it is valued. Women who cook well are appreciated and lauded and encouraged. A woman cooking and keeping house here is not really considered to be doing "real work." As more and more women start working the quality of home life will get affected it is key that the men realize this right now and pitch in, if you expect your wife to work than make sure you don't expect her to do all the house work and the cooking. If you don't know how to cook, learn it and most importantly teach your kids, boys and girls to cook. Cooking and food knowledge is key to staying healthy.
The other important thing to remember is what we eat, in Pakistan meat is still considered a luxury so having it once a week is a big deal for some, here meat is much more readily available so our diets change drastically, where we ate meat once or twice a week we end up eating meat on a daily basis. This trend needs to change, eating meat once or at max twice a week is more than enough for our body. It is imperative for health to eat as much vegetable and plant based food as we can.
