TO COOK OR NOT TO COOK . . .

Cooking Dinner Every Night Is Boring & Meaningless

Or perhaps I’ve read too much Sartre

First, let me say this piece is tongue-in-cheek. I started writing it at the start of the Israel/Gaza war, then put it aside. Complaining — even in a light-hearted way, about cooking when populations are growing increasingly desperate seemed inappropriate.

But perhaps we need a little perspective, a moment to take a breath and maybe even smile. True, Sartre seems an unlikely choice, but bear with me — your reward will be an intriguing recipe at the end. Not if you skip ahead though.

Don’t get the impression (you won’t) that I regularly read Sartre, usually he proves too taxing for my brain — which also applies to Proust and any books with more than 300 pages.

I do often turn to Julia Child — either her memoir, My Years in France, or her encyclopedic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I peruse other books too, but I like reading about and eating food. Just not cooking it every night.

Reading Julia Child falls somewhere between aspiration and inspiration. While I aspire to effortlessly whip up something gourmet like Julia’s recipe for bœuf bourguignon, I’m frequently uninspired to make the effort.

Recently, as I slaved over the laptop creating exquisite pearls of infinite wisdom, the dinner hour loomed ever closer. Lacking aspiration and a complete lack of motivation, I needed some quick inspiration.

Et voila — canned beef stew to the rescue. I know. You’ve lost all respect for me, haven’t you? But my partner quite enjoyed it. Probably just as much, or more, than if I’d spent hours slaving over Julia’s recipe. If you’re wondering, I dined on Brussels sprouts and mushrooms.

Although I once enjoyed cooking, I find it increasingly difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the nightly routine of bringing dinner to the table — or rather to the TV trays where we only take our eyes from the screen long enough to see whether we’ve stuck our forks into a piece of protein or plant matter.

Which brings me back to Sartre. His writing, simplified to the level of my comprehension, is all about how life isn’t really what we assume it to be. The dining table, where we didn’t sit to eat our evening meal, is really just a piece of chopped-up tree and although we give names to the vegetables we stuff in our mouths — potatoes and carrots, or pommes des terre et carrotes as Sartre probably said — they’re just plant matter.

I bet Sartre was difficult to live with. Short, blind in one eye, and indifferent to personal hygiene, according to one biography, yet he liked his women to be pretty. But Simone de Beauvoir — whose memoirs and books I’ve picked up on occasion, even read bits here and there, had a fifty-year relationship with him. They’re buried together in Paris. Coupled for eternity.

I read about their breakfast conversation in the The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook, amusing though the recipes are questionable.

Simone: “Breakfast, darling? An omelette, perhaps?”

Sartre — “Non. Omelette in its traditional form is bourgeois. I will make one out of cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones.”

Simone may have packed her bags at that moment, but they both liked to drink and talk hang out in Parisian cafes, so maybe they just went out to eat.

Surely though there must have been some nights when Jean-Paul demanded that Simone rattle the pans? Or vice versa. A few nights when they just stuck their legs under pieces of a chopped-up tree and enjoyed a home-cooked meal?

Tuna casserole, for example — frequently my default meal when I’ve exhausted the supply of tinned beef stew. I think my tuna casserole recipe is better than the one in the Sartre cookbook. But here’s JP’s in case you’re interested.

Tuna Casserole a la Sartre Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish Instructions: Place the casserole dish in a cold oven.

Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever.

Think about how hungry you are.

When night falls, do not turn on the light

A review? While this recipe expresses a void, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish?

Oh boy. I did promise a mouthwatering recipe, but, now it all seems so meaningless. Still, if you insist — the ingredients for Black Forest cake. Five pounds of cherries and a live beaver. Do with it as you see fit.

I must find my way to the room where food is sometimes prepared. Perhaps there will be a cylindrical metal object containing plant matter.