Ineffiecient, yet Satisfying

It was the end of another busy and draining day at work. Sinking into my Corolla in the department's parking lot, I felt like having a real home-cooked meal. I had, of late, been relying on semi-cooked curries that only have to be microwave-ed or fast food take-outs for most meals. The idea, obviously, was to save time for more important things like my research and reading. But, I had overlooked the calming effect the act of cooking food had on me.

In a recent post on an economics blog, I read a rather dispassionate article on the merits of consuming fast food or employing someone to cook. The analysis was based on the higher value of one's time that is saved when freed from the need to cook compared to what is spent on a cook or fast food. Neglecting for the moment, the fact that this only works for people paid sufficiently highly for their time, the obvious assumption is that the only reason to cook is to prepare food for consumption and that the perceived quality of the food we consume is unrelated to who cooked it. But, in my experience, this has not been so in the least bit.

The act of deciding what goes into the food, cutting the vegetables, tweaking the amount of spices and the exact instant they go into the pot, trying to appreciate the difference in tastes each step in the recipe makes, watching the food cook and feeling the lovely aroma waft through my apartment all help me de-stress after a long day. On that busy evening, I went straight to Stop and Shop, picked up Broccoli heads, Spinach, some garlic and buttermilk for this delectable Madhur Jaffrey recipe she called "Broccoli ka Saag. I took generous liberties in tweaking the recipe and enjoyed crackling mustard seeds and sprinking black pepper in the end and had it with Chappatti while being amused by Bill O'Reilly's comedy routine on TV.

Growing up, my Amma always cooked everyday for us despite working full-time, more I think, as a chore than for fun. But, in my case these days cooking only adds to the experience of the meal and is mostly undertaken just for the inherent pleasure. It would be interesting if the economists were to explore ways to quantify such feelings as the pleasure of cooking one's own food in such a way that it can be a factor in their calculations. Today, there is consensus on the advantage of spending our limited time on doing what we are best at and leaving other things to others who are better at them. However, or perhaps consequently, I also yearn sometimes to take back a little of my life. Maybe the answer then is not to find a way to quantify these emotions that are probably beyond accurate modelling anyway, but to appreciate that inefficient though they may be, it is satisfying to feel in touch with the mundaneness of life.