"[…] I think that in order to really care about food, you have to have experienced depression, or at least great difficulties. This is not to say that everyone who's depressed is a gourmet, of course. But most of the people I know who really, sincerely happy most of the time are also profoundly uninterested in food. Food for them is just fuel to get them through the next day at the beach. Whereas people who've experienced great pain, either self-inflicted or not, sometimes come to the preparation and eating of great food as both a comfort and an affirmation of life, sometimes much needed and hard to find. Or then again, maybe everybody's fucking miserable, and some of them also like to eat."
You know, I hadn't thought about it all that much before, but I think Julie's got a point. I've cooked since I was old enough to stand on a step stool and boil water for Jello, but I didn't start to get really interested in it until my late teens, when I entered a rather deep depression that lasted several years. Right about the same time it started, I developed an obsession with fresh produce, with the right way to fry chicken, and with teaching myself to bake. (Never did make extraordinary progress with that last one, but I can make a mean apple galette.) It was a way to hold on to life in the middle of a chemical sea whose tides had gone wonky. A friend of mine mentioned the same thing a while back - during one of the worst periods of his life, he taught himself to bake bread, and stacked brioches all over the place as a way to hang on.
I've never let go of cooking, even though the depression has long since receeded. It's what I do on the weekends to relax and to remind myself that I'm alive. It's what I do when I'm happy, and when I'm sad. When I want to connect with other people, I cook for them and with them. I'm always thinking about what to get at the store, what's in season, what to make tonight and the next night. I can't imagine not living this way, which is why I'm never comfortable around people who claim, "Oh, food is just fuel for me. I never think about it." I don't know what to say to that, or to anyone who would think such a thing. I would never weed my friends along such criteria, but I can't think of anyone close to me who has this attitude - probably because I keep feeding them all too much for them to think that way.
That was really great. I loved it so much that I wrote three responses and decided they were all too wordy and deleted them. :)
Also, I think one or two may have been a little bitchy so I said to myself, Oh don't say that.
I've never thought about food being a salve for depression but I can see it. For me, it's more the center of other less desirable parts of my day. I don't particularly like this attitude of mine but I think it's rooted in the fact that my mother didn't cook much. I learned to cook courtesy of Better Homes when I moved out at 18, and my culinary guest of a guinea pig was the Hubster who regaled every dish so that I began to cultivate it as a hobby. I don't know if you recall but the first piece I produced in Exp Wr compared writing to cooking. What I like most is the tangible result you get at the end. You can step back (like your rosemary dumpling story except let's pretend the dumplings were still there) and say - Ta Da! Look what I did! And the other thing I like is that then it's GONE -- just like writing. Even if the written words sticks around, the fleeting feeling of satisfaction when just completed, is definitely gone. It's a great cycle.
Was that long enough?