Last Sunday, I prepared noodles with vegetables and soy sauce for my whole family. First, I wrote down all the vegetables and spices I wanted to use to prepare this meal: carrots, cabbage, broccoli, mushrooms, green chile, potatoes, snow peas, radishes, onions, garlic, ginger, black pepper, salt, oil, and soy sauce. Then I searched the cabinets and my refrigerator for all the ingredients and found that I was missing some vegetables I wanted to use, like radishes, snow peas and broccoli; therefore I took a trip to the nearby Woodman's and bought all that I needed and some unnecessary items.
Once I arrived home, I started cutting the vegetables into long and thin pieces after washing them well, and I realized that it takes a really long time to nicely cut vegetables. My mom always helped me cut when I made noodles in the past, but as I wanted to do it all by myself it took me a considerable amount of time to finish cutting everything (about thirty minutes). While I was in the process of cutting the vegetables I had to get the noodles ready. I used wheat linguine pasta and added it to salted boiled water, and drained it after it was cooked. Once I was done cutting the vegetables, I put a big pan on the stove with about three tablespoons of oil in it. Once the oil made a cracking sound, I added the onions, garlic and ginger. Once the onions turned a golden color, I added in the green chile and potatoes. A while later I added the carrots and radishes. I let the pan sit, stirring often, until the vegetables looked partly cooked. Then I added in the cabbages and green peas. Afterwards I added in the soy sauce and the salt to taste. All there was left to do was to mix the noodles and the vegetables.
Once I finished doing everything I was famished! Once everyone was served, I started eating and was pleasantly surprised and happy because of the pleasant taste. It is quite rewarding to know that you made the whole thing by yourself and the end result is pretty satisfactory. After filling myself with noodles, I realized there was still cleaning to do. I used homework as an excuse to get out of cleaning and it worked. I could not clean as the whole cooking process was exhausting.
If I was asked to describe my feelings afterwards, I would say that I felt pretty great as the experience is rewarding and it really lets you see the effort one puts in cooking for others.
Michael Pollan says in his book, In Defense of Food, "Like sex, the need to eat links us to the animals, and historically a great deal of Protestant energy has gone into helping us keep all such animal appetites under strict control." There are claims that eating is more than an animal instinct as Pollan says. But if you ask yourself why you eat, the answer is simple: because you are hungry or just plainly want to eat food; there is nothing more to it. Pollan also says that people have developed the idea that healthy food (food that is good for you) does not taste good. This is what lead to "a flood of damaging innovations...such as low-fat processed food." After I had prepared my meal, I felt satisfied because of the taste and also because I was satisfied with such a "healthy" meal with lots of vegetables. I am totally under the spell of nutritionism even without realizing it. I purposely chose this meal because it seemed healthy with all these vitamins and other things that were going to help me live longer.
I found an article called called Instinctive Eating in Gaia Yoga. This article says that if one follows their instinct in choosing what to eat, they will be well off as our bodies are so complex in that they start making a certain product taste bad after you have had a certain amount of it. "Essentially, instinctive eating yields tremendous clarity, liberation, and the security that you’re eating the best foods for you – and only in the quantities that you need – as well as generating profound, long-term health benefits. And it all happens through following your pleasure!" This sounds so great and believable as all of us know that even though chocolate tastes extremely delicious, after two bars you kind of feel sick.
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