The nature of cooking as labour 15/10/11

Green defines Labour as being the production of a consumable, of leaving no lasting artifact with its purpose to meet a basic human need. There is no end to labour. When looking at the gathering of food it is gathered to be consumed with no permanent accomplishment as soon as the task is fulfilled “it’s being undone; it is, in principle, never completed” (p 17). Labour is cyclic in nature with “Necessity and futility.... the two fundamental and interconnected features of labor”. In cooking once it is completed it is immediately consumed with nothing left to show apart from dirty dishes. As soon as it is completed it needs to be repeated again and again for breakfast lunch and dinner. Green identifies that   “The clever food gatherer, however, does not live only from day to day.... (Man)

can attain some expectations of things to come” in the way that in the harvest season he gathers and stores for the winter”. I see this in my own cooking. Recently making a pasta sauce for myself I was already thinking two or three meals into the future, predicting inevitably that again I would be hungry and need to cook again. So therefore I prepared enough for three meals, thinking of other ways that I could reuse it such in different dishes. . Before my current task has been completed it is already being reintegrated into the planning of future meals showing the cyclic nature of the labour of cooking.

Mrs. Williams a pioneer of the late nineteenth century  as cited in Leach (1997) identifies that labour itself meets the need to be self-sufficient and. She has found labour to be joy stating “It is wonderful how, in a few months, you will find labour a pleasure and health a thing to be felt and a cause of thankfulness” (p.13). We see that when she is forced to do the labour herself and to be resourceful she gains a sense of self satisfaction that she would not otherwise experience that contributes to her own sense of wellbeing. I see a resemblance to myself and cooking, maybe it is the pioneer spirit in a smaller scale but having to make do with limited ingredients  that I felt in the posting Affordances : communication, connections and morality when faced with an empty cupboard. There is both a mental challenge to be creative but also a sense of satisfaction from the physical act of labour of doing it for myself. 

 Green, T. (1968). Work, leisure and the American schools. New York: Random House.

 Leach, H. (1997, June). Are we selling out on domestic life? Occupation, 5(1), 10-16.