To Serve Woman: How To

Jess and I have decided to start a feminism and cooking blog to counteract both the idea that cooking is essentially ‘feminine’, and the idea that feminism is anti cooking.

This is not a cooking project for feminists, we don’t just want recipes or care if you enjoy cooking (I know, we’re total bastards)– in fact, you don’t even have to be good at cooking to be involved.

The point of this project is to bring the intersections of cooking and food and politics and feminism. These will be split into two loose groups, one covering aspects related to food and the other using food as a launching point to discuss feminist topics.

The labour aspect of cooking
the chef vs cook conversation (different versions of the same recipe custard/ creme anglaise)
cultural and religious intersections of food
feminism and veganism/vegetarianism
communal cooking/eating
cooking for families/

puntastic titles: the pastryarchy, for example

seasonal breakdowns: halloween, valentines (discussions around advertising, media representations)
sauce[y] sections (dissecting women and sexuality)

We ask that you provide a recipe and essay combo, or an essay at this point. If you beautiful pictures, all the better.

Essays should be 300 – 800 words long.

It doesn’t have to be deadly serious, this is supposed to be fun, but we’re hoping to get some prime cuts of your best work. Puns are legitimate –particularly in titles. If you have good titles but no recipes just pass on the titles, if you have no title we’ll write one. Everyone will be noted and thanked for their contributions.

Everything will go on the blog toservewoman.wordpress.com and pieces will be extracted to form the basis of a cookbook we plan to put together in the future.

We may source further recipes towards the actual publication of the book to balance the essays but the point now is to provide a gateway to interesting feminist conversations through food.

Eating Salad Makes Women Happy, FACT!

At this time of year when women are being bombarded with messages about losing weight to make their lives better I can think of nothing better than to laugh in advertising’s face.

The Hairpin notified us to this hilarious collection of images depicting women laughing alone with salad. Because nothing makes a woman burst with glee more than the notion of eating a refreshing healthy snack.

Enjoy your joy.

Solar-powered restaurant

NASA image of the sun, taken in 1973 from Skylab-3

Via Treehugger, this is an interesting interview (in Spanish only) with a woman who runs a solar restaurant in Chile.

All meals are cooked with solar ovens.

Solar ovens are normally slow cookers, and can have a liberating effect on women in some communities, meaning women don’t need to gather and cook with firewood. Of course, it is good for the women’s health and the planet’s health, because it replaces dirty-burning fossil fuels with a totally renewable solution.

Solar ovens are not a high-tech solution – you can find out easily how to build your own on the internet (for example, eHow has some instructions). Although the sun sets at 4pm here in London today, so I’m not going to be cooking in a solar oven for quite some months to come. The solar restaurant in Chile enjoys 300 sunny days a year on average, Treehugger reports.

Image of the Sun via NASA, shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Bread Sauce, Thanks for the British Twist

Every now and then we can just share a recipe.

Over here in America land most people will be celebrating Thanksgiving in two days and so most Brits will be digging out their Christmas favourites for this Christmas dinner pre run (as I like to think of it)

There’s a lot to consider about Thanksgiving and for the feminists out there (I know, all of you!) you can check out the wonderful Ms. Magazine for some history – No Thanks, No Giving, Part 1 – and to my own organizations site Women’s eNews for some jolly information on the diversity of feasts across the country – Give Thanks and Please Pass the Potato Fudge.

But here I just want to share a little British classic recipe, that of bread sauce. It makes the driest of turkey’s bearable and the moist joy turkey I’ll be roasting this week an even better fare.

Bread sauce is one of those things most of us know from a packet mix. Add milk, mix, job’s done. But making bread sauce from scratch is excitingly easy and relies less on forward planning as long as you keep a few key things in the house. Milk. Onion. Bread Crumbs. Butter. Cloves. Bay Leaves. Cream (optional).

Cloves and bay leaves should be in cupboard. You can buy them in glass jars and they will last a lifetime. And the choice is yours as to whether you buy a box of dried breadcrumbs and keep them in cupboard or as to if you blitz up some dry bread DIY style.

The recipe goes as such. Peel and halve onion. Push cloves into. Put into a pan. Cover in 3/4 pint milk. Throw in a bay leaf. Leave on the side for 2 hours. Heat slowly on the hob until just boiling. Remove onion and bay leaf. Add 3oz breadcrumbs, pinch of salt and 1oz butter. Stir on low heat until breadcrumbs expand and the stuff in the pan resembles, well, bread sauce. Remove from heat and pop cloved onion and bay leaf back in until needed. When ready, warm through adding 1oz of butter and 2 tablespoons of cream if desired. Check out Delia’s fail safe recipe if you want a better step by step.

As I’ve somehow arranged to cook for eight on Thursday I’m making mine two days in advance and once thoroughly cooled it will be going into the fridge with a reminder to add more butter and cream when heating up — as like all human beings I would forget.

OK, so it’s not as easy as adding warm milk to a packet but the recipe is so easy you could let your child, kitchen disaster self or friend do it and not worry about the outcome. Plus it’s an easy step into doing more things on the hob — like custard — and from then on in you won’t have to worry about running out of treats when the apocalypse comes and you can’t get to the corner shop.

I will try and get some more Thanksgiving recipe fun on here for you as we make it.

Giving up veganism

Formerly vegan food blogger Tasha has posted about her agonising decision to re-integrate animal products into her diet for health reasons:

I lied to myself, to my readers, to the world saying I felt healthy and fine, when in reality I felt worse than ever. During this time I saw doctor after doctor and tried every suggestion and recommendation, desperately hoping for a cure. I was determined to make veganism work; I was always convinced that just around the next corner I would find the solution.

Ultimately, Tasha explains, she had to accept medical advice and start eating meat, fish and eggs again, after more than three years of a vegan diet. Not only a vegan diet, but as she admits, she was an “oh so judgmental vegangelical”.

Tasha’s had a conversion to the other side, and now argues that meat eating can be essential to keep people in good health.

Along the way, she makes some interesting comments about women and veganism, and the expectation she had internalised that her own health and body was of secondary importance to the cause (in this case, animal rights):

I refuse to play the game that so many women (vegan or not) are forced to play by our violently woman hating society; I will never feel shame or guilt for eating what my body wants and needs to be healthy.

Certainly this makes a lot of sense: it’s true of course that women’s bodies are in general considered public property. The notion that we should make ourselves sick for “the public good” by eating a diet that fails to provide enough fuel to keep us going, that seems almost similar to the perspective of anti-abortion, anti-choice advocates who advocate forced pregnancy.

She carries on:

As a revolutionary feminist and anti-imperialist, veganism seemed to be yet another way I could fight the injustices we are facing. But as the years wore on and my body began devouring itself for the sustenance that my vegan diet couldn’t provide, I began to lose the will and the energy to do the vital work I had so loved. I no longer had the mental clarity to write my famous scathing exposes, or the physical energy to teach, organize, and build solidarity. I was sputtering out, grinding to a screeching halt. I realized that veganism, my choice to buy ‘cruelty free’ foods, was quickly becoming my only avenue for activism. It was the only thing I really had energy for anymore. As a staunch radical I’ve always been opposed to capitalism’s emphasis on the personal solution, I refuse to buy into the mainstream myth that we can shop our way out of catastrophe. And yet…with my dwindling energy reserves and devastating health problems I realized that was exactly what I was doing. When I stumbled along this quote about veganism by Megan Mackin it seemed as if it had been written for me: “It begins, eventually, to look like a very effective way to co-opt a movement: take the most passionate activist-minded, girls especially, and get their focus on a way of living that drains energies and enforces conformity in others. The Big Boys still run things, but now even more freely – with out much interference.”

The subheading of this blog – fuelling feminism – springs to mind here. As does the repeated misuse of the phrase “the personal is political”, as a way to distract from what feminism is really about, to get women to focus yet again on questions such as: are these shoes feminist or not? I am not a revolutionary feminist, but I also agree that individual women can’t and shouldn’t be encouraged to believe we can on an individual level combat kyriarchy and liberate ourselves: and we’re failures if we don’t do that.

Can veganism – and ethical consumerism in general – be bundled together into this category of efficient distraction techniques?

I was also put in mind of this recent animation about the limits of ethical consumerism, by philosopher Slavoj Zizek:

On a personal level, I’m vegetarian, and feel pretty healthy with it. As Tasha enthused about the benefits of eating meat again, even I wondered for a second – about 10 years down the line, my vegetarianism is largely a matter of habit over ethics, inertia rather than an active decision.

Unfortunately, I do feel bound to mention, although it is not food-related, that Tasha later in the post argues that population control is a replacement for converting the world to a vegan diet – I’m not going to rehash that argument again, as I’ve already written about it repeatedly. But it’s yet again disappointing to see population control uncritically espoused as a feminist solution to climate change, as even TreeHugger alludes to.

Meat is Fun?

Frank Kachanoff of McGill University thought that meat would make people more aggressive; you know what happens if you try to take it from a feeding animal. Instead he found the opposite. Find out how relaxing meat is From TreeHugger.

Having Your Cake and Telling Someone to Eat it

Someone missed a trick. I saw the review of this book on the Guardian today and was shocked that the first paragraph did not make more a smirk about the fact that a book called “How to Feed Your Man” makes a sly suggestion of what you hetero women should be feeding your man.

The book looks like utter shit, and the reviewer Vicky Frost makes a point of the gendered issue with Stasha’s ingredients and recipes. They rather missed a trick in my opinion and could have gone on and on about putting sausages in baps and getting your man to chow down on your moist cake.

Guest Post: On Screen Kitchen Dreams- Nigella Lawson

Our first guest post! Annie Mole wants us to know she really likes Nigella Lawson, and she wants us to know why…

Nigella Lawson by Paul Harvey http://www.stuckism.com/Harvey/Index.html

Nigella Lawson is an extraordinarily beautiful TV cook, newspaper and magazine columnist, mother and Domestic Goddess.

Hold on, I’ll correct that, she is the Domestic Goddess.

Very few people have a bad word to say about Nigella or her series.

Her story has added poignancy when you learn that her first husband died of cancer and that her mother and sister both died of the same illness too.

Nigella gets my vote because she cooks in the most normal way under the sun.

She doesn’t wear an apron, she doesn’t tie back her flowing locks and she’s always eating tonnes of her food while she cooks it.

Nigella uses stock cubes plus you can see her on TV with her hands in dish water, elbow-deep in dirty pots and pans.

In short, she does her own washing up.

TV cooks in the main are extremely irritating. Most of them think we’ve all got the time and inclination to make stock from scratch, that we’ve got a garden brimming with fresh herbs and that we all own a ‘magi mix’.

The worst are Jamie Oliver, Ainsley Harriott and Antony Worrall Thompson.

The best are those who just get on with the cooking and let the food do the talking. Like Nigella’s mate Nigel Slater (melted Toblerone over icecream – what a perfect dessert); pure and simple, Delia Smith (chocolate bread-and-butter pudding so easy and delicious that even I could make it); and enemy to fish everywhere, Rick Stein.

However Nigella stands out from these for the following reasons:

1. She’s beautiful.

2. She’s not as skinny as a twig

3. She takes an almost orgasmic pleasure in food.

4. She uses stock cubes.

5. She advocates the use of frozen peas.

6. She doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a supermarket chain.

7. She makes cooking risotto look almost worthwhile (why anyone should want to stand around stirring a pot continuously for about half an hour to produce a generally tasteless yet savoury version of a rice pudding, has always been beyond me).

8. She comes down to the kitchen at midnight and wolfs down huge slices of chocolate cake.

9. She has a body that looks as though she comes down to the kitchen at midnight and wolfs down huge slices of chocolate cake (although not on a daily basis).

Try to make a slot for Nigella’s shows if you can.  They’re camp, they’re kitsch and they’re full of Nigella doing what she does best – loving the camera and being very naughty in a sort of saucy English nanny ‘I won’t tell your mum if you want to lick the chocolate cake mix from the bowl’ type of way.

You’ll drool as she scoops a mound of creamy risotto onto a huge golden platter.

You’ll salivate as she runs her finger round the bowl of her silken chocolate cake mix and licks it longingly.

You’ll gasp as she throws back her head, flicking her long dark tresses, and then drops perfect morsels of food into her perfectly shaped cherry red mouth (oops, you can tell I used to work for Harlequin Mills & Boon).

You’ll swoon as she gives the camera remarkably knowing looks about the joys of cooking with whole pats of butter and full cream.

It may all be an act … but it’s a class act (oh, did I say she had a lovely voice too?) and one certainly not to be missed.

New recipe: Boobie Cakes

Boobie Cup Cakes

Our first recipe is by Jemimah Knight, and provides step-by-step instructions on how to cook a cornucopia of cakes that resemble breasts. These Boobie Cakes come in different sizes, shapes and colours, with nipples large and small, pierced and unpierced.

Jemimah says:

“It’s not easy to create that sort of diversity – so I guess it must be something special. The icing is all hand-made and mixed to vary shades and texture. The cherries, though similar in taste are natural in size and shape. The piercings are edible.”

She also offers some wise words on the mixed up relationship we often have with food, particularly extravagant and delicious food such as cake. Why do we feel guilt for eating cake? How can we let go of fat shame and eating shame, and just take a glorious bite? Read her essay and recipe here.

We’ll Send You Somewhere Else

It’s a complicated business, eating. And one made knottier by the idea that some foods are masculine (hamburgers, steak), while others (yoghurt, quiche) are strictly for girls. Were these ideas of gendered eating originally generated just for ad campaigns, or could the cliches point towards a deeper truth? Do men and women need different diets? How many of our views on what constitutes “women’s food” come from how we’re brought up, and how many are tied to something genetic? If men are from meat, are women from cupcake? Eva Wiseman, The Guardian.

Of course, I eat the pie followed by the pudding — but not a fruit tart, kiwi fear. So what does that say about me? Nothing probably.

Play With Your Food

Carl Warner’s Food landscapes, shown here at the Guardian, put the fun back into food but you can take more from them than eyeball enjoyment.

It’s possible that years of microwave dinners and cheats sauces have ushered imagination out of the kitchen making it a boring chore. The process of opening, pouring and waiting five minutes may be a supposed helping hand but I see it as more of a hindrance.

It encourages kitchen apathy and lowers your basic understanding of what goes together, what you can make out of a cupboard of leftovers and a handful of spices. It takes away your independence to eat without the supermarket.

I don’t think everyone has oodles of time on their hands but time-saving products give the impression that cooking from scratch is an epic battle. It’s not.

Adverts aimed at mum – -because she’s always the one shown in the kitchen — play on fears that working in this day and age is already making you a bad person. But worry not, your sins can be cleansed by heating up this traditional looking meal and acting like mothers of years before who with little choice stayed in the kitchen baking all day.

Removing the guilt trip means mothers at home can enjoy feeding their family anything they want, spending no time at all making it and having a bit of fun with it.

Be Creative With Limited Ingredients and Time Recipe Suggestion:
Chopped tomatoes (fresh or tinned), garlic crushed, mushed or sliced, a shake of paprika, salt and pepper in a pan for 15 minutes will make you a delicious sauce to throw over pasta cooked in the same amount of time.If you keep frozen veg in the house you can add a handful of that for colour and extra food groups.