An article from Friday's National Post caught my eye on Shabbat morning. The End of Food talks about a new product, Soylent, which is reported to be able to replace all your food indefinitely with a drink. The name immediately brought to mind the 1973 sci-fi thriller, Soylent Green. In the movie, due to overpopulation, the world of 2022 exists on food rations produced by the Soylent Corporation. I'm sure creator Robert Rhinehart, a software engineer by trade and clearly a sci-fi geek by choice, was being cheeky when he named his product Soylent. However, without a movie spoiler, suffice it to say that I don't want to eat anything produced by the Soylent Corp. Beyond that food is so much more than nutrition. I know I am not saying anything new, and I don't mean to be one of Mr. Rhinehart's naysayers. If he can feed people for less, great. I just find it sad that food is something sacrificed to time. It has been going on a long time now, from TV dinners to fast food. Microwaves and new appliances were supposed to free up time for leisure, but most of us only run around more and more like hamsters on an exercise ball.
I do not work Fridays. I spend the day, and I really do mean the day, preparing for Shabbat. There is house cleaning to do and sometimes an errand or two. However, mostly the day is spent in direct food preparation for Shabbat. Everything is made from scratch. We bake challah every week. Usually we have chicken on Friday night. Often we have soup. Shabbat lunch is sometimes leftovers, sometimes cholent, but often salads and tuna or something like lasagne or quiche. The only regular "prepared" food is gefilte fish. We use the frozen loaves, which still need to cook for over an hour. We make homemade dessert- cookies, brownies, or cake. We cut fruit to have with it.
There is so much more to these meals than just the sum of ingredients and cooking and cleaning up time. There is love for family and friends who will share the meal. There is a peace in chopping and cutting, a focus in stirring and sauteing. Most of our weekday meals are home cooked too, although we do use more prepared foods. One night a week is usually burritos/tacos. We use the Yves veggie ground as a base. Still, there is the chopping of tomatoes and onions, the washing and shredding of lettuce, and setting the table. Food is visual. A Big Mac (I am not recommending you eat this) will taste better n fine china than sitting on its wrapper. For taco night everything is laid out in bowls. It is colorful beyond the scent and taste. On calzone night, we can smell the stones heating up. The table is set for us to eat together. If I make garlic knots, they are placed on a plate in the center of the table like a centerpiece. Even leftovers are something special if presented on a platter instead of warmed in the plastic storage dish. We eat together almost every night. Some nights we divide in half due to overlapping schedules, but no one regularly eats alone. I think much of that is due to the way we think about food. It is a process that begins with preparation: preparation of the food and of he table, and ends with everyone doing his/her share of clean up. It is interactive. It leads us to conversation. I shows love and caring.
Soylent may feed the body, but it cannot nourish the soul.
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