Food Is Art

This article was originally written on August 6th for the Northern Sun News.

My husband has been sick for the past several days with a nasty summer flu. I must have sympathetic flu symptoms because I too indulged in a full-fledged movie marathon with him, watching hour upon hour of movies (3 out of 4 of them had Johnny Depp in them…yahoo!) and begging people to bring us chocolate cake via Facebook (everyone laughed but nobody took action). Two of the four movies we watched focused on the power of food to enrich and delight not only the sense of taste, but life itself.

Food is art; it brings up emotions and memories just as a painting or photograph does. It taps into that deep rooted desire that transports us to another time or place. Every time I eat a beet, I can’t help but feel proud of my Ukrainian heritage. I also think of all the times as a child that I turned up my nose to my Baba’s wonderfully rosy creamy borscht, thinking it looked weird (Pink soup? Really?) and smelled a little bit like dirt. Little did I know that I was probably breaking her beautiful heart by doing so, since we all know that food IS love in the Ukrainian household. Every fall when I harvest my roots, I take pride in knowing that my father-in-law is anticipating that first fresh pot of earthy, homemade goodness. I give him borscht for Christmas. Seriously.

And I think about the work that is invested in the harvest. Just as an artist goes through a meticulous process to get to their final creation, so too does the gardener;  breaking the earth with the hoe, nurturing the soil with bone meal and compost that was slowly created by the perpetually munching red worms that feast away in a dark, moist bin in our basement all winter, the careful placement of each seed considering depth, width, placement to the sun, the proper amount of soil, keeping the bugs away, ensuring the birds don’t eat the seeds before they’ve erupted as a seedling…..it’s all so much work to get that succulent, red tomato. And so worth it. 

That is why it is so delightful to go tromping through the forest and come across a batch of grape sized blueberries, or luscious raspberries. No work was involved in this discovery, but the mind knows just how much work and thought Mother Nature put into these delicious creations. And we Northerners appreciate this and take photographs of our findings and share our blueberry jam with our friends and neighbours without once ever giving up our “secret hiding spot”. The process of seeking out the wild mushrooms or the fiddleheads is part of the art of harvesting and not sharing our picking spots is just plain common sense!

On a side note regarding photographing food, I always find it entertaining when people post copious amounts of pictures of food on social networking sites. I understand it; I too have taken photographs of food. But when you go to a baby shower and post photos of every single hors d’oeuvre that was served and don’t take any photos of the baby, then you might want to reconsider why you went to that shower in the first place and perhaps just go to a restaurant next time instead. Haha

Food as art; it’s too big of a topic to cover in one article, and as I brainstormed my ideas on a piece of scrap paper, I thought, “This is impossible! There is too much to write about!” Then when I talked to my husband about my dilemma, he too said that it was impossible and that there was too much to write about, and then commenced to prattling off a series of other topics I could talk about that I hadn’t added to my list regarding food as art. *Sigh* Perhaps I will branch off on my article writing to bring you a series based on food and art, so that I can explore the various aspects of this topic thoroughly. But until then, if you want to watch a fantastic movie or two, (or it you’d rather READ the book which these movies are adapted from) then I highly recommend reading/watching, “Chocolat”, “Julia & Julia”, “Ratatouille” and my favourite, “Like Water For Chocolate”. They truly capture the concept of the passion that is absorbed into the fantastic foods that we eat.

 

Next time you’re thinking of popping an easy “slider” into the microwave and quickly filling your gullet, stop and think about the connection between food, feelings, creativity and life. Perhaps you’ll decide to nourish yourself instead with something that is a bit kinder to your body and your soul. Bon appetit!