Hoorah for the slow-food movement!

My family is big on cooking. Whenever we get together we basically sit around, cook, eat, talk, sleep, repeat. My mother makes the best Gujarati food you’ve ever tasted – we’re talking paper-thin rotlis, and patra and khandvi made from scratch. My brother’s specialty is hot and spicy – Chinese, Italian, you name it, he’ll find a way to put a habanero in it. My sister-in-love also specializes in spicy -- her South Indian dishes are to die for. My sister and brother-in-law, who live in the South, do everything from pork chops and korma to day-long pig roasts. And we here take advantage of all the fresh California produce, often just throwing it into the pot along with some spices and seeing what comes out. Even my father, a septuagenarian, has begun cooking. This is huge, since, having lived in India until his 40s, he never really stepped foot in the kitchen before that except to ask for more salt!

Cooking can seem like a chore, but I just read an article in the New York Times about how people are embracing it again. People – to me, demi-gods – like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan speak and write lovingly about a "new trend" called the slow-food movement: gathering fresh ingredients, taking time to enjoy chopping and cooking them, and then sharing them with family or friends. But for me, that concept started way back in the 70s during my childhood Saturday mornings. The house would be filled with some delicious smell emanating from my mom’s cooking. The whole family would be in the kitchen chatting, watching the Indian show (back then it was one show on once a week, not a selection of 24-hour cable channels), reading the paper, drinking chai and waiting for the food. And then on our plates would arrive uttapam, upma, or some other yummy thing. Today, as we try to do the same thing in our kitchen (albeit with french toast, omelettes or pancakes instead) I see the same joy in my daughter as she waits for and eats my food. It’s the simplest act of love: fresh ingredients, lovingly prepared, from my hand to her mouth. Seen from that angle, it no longer seems like a chore.