Thirteen reasons why cooking can make you happier

 I've always been fond of cooking. But as in many relations, there have been ups and downs. Times of intense activity, and times of pure neglect. When I was a young girl, before studying in England, I didn't care too much about health, fitness, long culinary preparations. While being a student in England, I totally gave in. I snacked on Twix and melted cheese, not caring about all the other food available, never cooking. I occasionally tasted local dishes, but on a daily basis, I was a barbarian! I don't regret it. It was part of my youth, a time of freedom and carelessness. I came back to France with ten more kilos. I didn't wear the same size of clothes, my cheeks were chubby, I was happy. When I met my future husband, I started eating too much, somehow competing with his much larger appetite and stomach. And I put on weight again.
Yet I have always loved cooking and caring about food. My mom offered me a book when I was eight: la cuisine des petites filles. And I passionately cooked each and every recipe, including the slightly tricky ones. I was so grateful for this precious present! It was colourful, surprising, gratifying.
I have always loved cooking for people too. I believe that this part of my life spent alone in my own flat, as a senior student, led me to less cooking because there wasn't someone to share food with, most of the time.
I have always loved arranging dishes, making them look pretty. And I have always been a lover of good things, good food included! ;)
Several moments in my life enhanced and developed my taste for food and its cooking correlate. Becoming a mom was the most important. It started with these little carrot purees I started making for my teeny tiny babe. And it kept developing as my baby kept growing, and as my family increased in number.

Having a family made it different. Cooking reached a higher level. I became more aware of the impact of food on health. When I was on parental leave, it reached a higher level still. For the first time in my life I had several babies to take care of, and time to cook real meals. I also had a much tighter budget. So cooking from scratch became a must. And I was stunned each day to see how happy it made me!

Now the babes are growing, I am back to work, my husband still has a strong appetite, and I have acquired enough experience to feed my whole family with care, with a reasonable budget, fresh products, abundantly but reasonably, while always keeping in mind the importance of health and pleasure that, I think, are inherent to cooking.
I'm happy to share here thirteen reasons why cooking has changed my life for the better.

1) Cooking is sharing.
My kids know how to cook. My younger ones love peeling veggies and spending time in the kitchen with me, throwing things in boiling water, cutting, pouring, washing...

2) Cooking is fun.
Manipulating textures, dealing with colours, seeing food transform, making combinations. It's a bit of science class mixed with playing house! Not to forget the immense pleasure of tasting the result of all these makings and experiments! Cooking favours creativity and washes stress away.

3) Cooking means intention. It means taking care of oneself and others. In a medical sort of way. In a mommy's sort of way. In a gardener's sort of way. It makes me happier. It means doing something with intention, and this might not be far from what Sachi wrote about: honmono.

4) Cooking preserves health.
I've enjoyed reading The hungry planet. The more you cook, the more you realize the impact on your health, and on your planet's health. Since I started cooking from scratch and making a real effort to keep processed food at bay, we gradually stopped going to the doctor. After a few years, we realized this stunning reality: we are rarely sick, and recover very quickly from colds. We are more energetic, we pratice more sports than before...So much time and money saved since we stopped being sick every now and then, especially in winter time. This is really worth the effort.

5) Cooking enlightens.
I have learned so much, not only about the actual process of cooking, but about the way food is produced. From agriculture to economy, from philosophy to geography, food partakes to so many different fields of interest. Add to this all the cooking associates, like oenology, wine tasting, but also chemistry. I have a whole collection of cooking books that I keep jealously on a shelf in my living-room.

6) Cooking means playing an active role in economy, through the careful choice of what you buy. It means you can have more control on what you eat. It can even mean you refuse to eat food that comes from animals that were ill-treated. You can stop eating vegetables and fruits soaked with pesticides. Cooking more consciously, I eventually bought my own chickens and extended my vegetable patch.

7) Cooking is educating: myself, my kids, my husband. It means discovering and enjoying new flavours, it involves the curiosity of tasting food from other countries. Discovering rare vegetables, exotic fruits, new dishes. Being respectful of our bodies, our environment.

8) Cooking develops organizational skills: planning, choosing recipes, adapting them to the number of guests and to the time of the year (a nice warm soup in winter, a sweet fruit sorbet in summer, veggies of the season...). Calculating amounts, quantities, proportions, distributing, freezing, preserving. It has a snowball effect. The more you cook, the more efficient you become.

9) Cooking leads to better eating. And this involves not only the amount of vitamins you will absorb, but also the quiet time you will spend together sitting at the table, sharing jokes and anecdotes, anticipating the pleasure of eating a meal prepared with love. If you cook, you might eventually ditch the overload of industrial, processed food that has become part of our daily lifestyle. You might slow down and take time to enjoy the process of giving food to your body. You might relax and feel gratified and grateful.

10) Cooking is love. It shows love. It shares love. It is family. It is friends gathered together.

11) Cooking is celebrating. It means Christmas. Thanksgiving (an event we don't have here, but I am slowly integrating it in my family's culture). Birthdays...

12) Cooking helps you lose weight (or keep your weight stable).
I once read this book and was struck by how true this might well be: traditional French cuisine may actually lead not to overweight, but to a stable, healthy silhouette. Though this is gradually losing ground in France, our traditional way of eating implies several courses, smaller portions, a little bit of everything: entrée, main and side dish, cheese, dessert...A meal cooked from scratch, with some variety, will lead you to eat more of everything and less of one thing. Hence a healthier lifestyle, a safer check on vitamins. I am a fan of French cook Cyril Lignac, because I think he's unpretentious, reasonable in his advice, and wise in his approach. Like him, I think young people shouldn't be forbidden to have a quick snack, but should be educated and slowly guided toward fresh, home-made food.

13) Cooking is beauty. Shall I say more? It is beauty on the outside. It is beauty on the inside. Sometimes both, sometimes not. How does it matter? There is the beauty of all the work involved in the preparation. There is the beauty of showing it, like a declaration. And sharing it.

Some ways to live cool

Last time, I wrote that there are other ways to live cool in order to survive the hot and humid summer, but I'm happy to introduce some of them this time.

Most Japanese are likely to feel cool when they look at the flag above.  The Chinese character drawn in red in the middle means "ice" and the one in blue in the bottom represents "wave".  The tiny green objects drawn near the Chinese character represent  a lot of birds flying over the sea.   The wave and houndstooth designs are drawn as a symbol of coolness for Kimono, cotton kimono for summer, and pottery as well.

Morning groly and golden fish in the picture below are also popular design to represent the summer, and they are used for various things dating back to the olden times.

Now, I'll also introduce popular food in the summer. 

First one is shaved ice!  I introduced the flag of the ice earlier, and if you see this flag hung in front of a restaurant, that means you can eat a bowl of shaved ice as in the photo below. Right? You will probably understand it's becoming cool when you see the "ice" flag.

The shaved ice of this photo has combination of toppings; adzuki beans (we call this Anko) with sweetened condenced milk on top, powdered green tea sauce (Maccha sauce), and white bolls made of rice powder.  However, it used to be simpler in the past; there is no topping but only with the sauce of strawberry, melon, and lemon.

They really help you to feel cool, but please be careful not to eat a mouthful of it, or your head gets pounding!

Next one is Soumen, white Japanse noodles made of wheet flour. This is a common dish in the summer.  They are served cold and eaten with Tsuyu, kind of a light seasoning soy sauce. We dip the Soumen into the sauce.  I often make this dish for lunch.  They go down well even when there is no appetite.

The last one is eel (Unagi).  It has been eaten by Midsummer Day of the Ox (Doyo) for a long time...

It is said that Doyo is the name for the special period that separates each four season from the next; which came from the ancient Chinese five elements idea.  In the very hot dog days of summer, we eat nutritious eel, which has been thought as good for our health in the summer.

It is very tasty and makes me feel healthy for sure, but recently, it is no longer readily available.

This Monday was the Ox of the dog day and we were able to eat eel for the first time in a long time, and I've got the energy to update the blog.

Make it cool!

I really agree with making it as simple as Val says.

Year by year, too many things have gathered in rooms. Too many thoughts have been accumulated in minds. Most of them are not indispensable. They just end up sufforcating us. A simpler life gives us space in which a nice breeze can go through.

It's the height of summer right now. You know, Japanese summer is incredibly hot and humid. So we need to contrive some ways to live cool and comfortably to survive the summer. Making the room simple is surely one of them!  Sitting in a simple, clean room and setting a wind chime at the window, it can make you feel a bit cooler. The room full of things won't be very successful.

Space is a crucial point to survive the terrible summer.

Come to think of it, cutting thick plants before the midsummer is my every year task.  After cutting the plants, I plant some blue-colored flowers and cool looking foliage.  Visually, it helps to feel cool.

(By the way, morning glory, bell-shaped flowers, is very popular in Japan as summer flowers.  They open their flowers in the morning and give us their lovely refreshing smiles. We call it Asagao and write in Kanji as "morning face")

Shaping our daily lives comfortably is associated with our blog's main idea, right?

There are many more ways to tell you, but  it would become very long, so I will write them another time.

I hope you all enjoy your summer!