The secret ingredient; emotion.

     I'm not sure where I first heard about this book, but the concept certainly grabbed me right away.  The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about a young girl named Rose that can taste the emotions that the people who prepared her food felt when they made it.  When I read the summary of the book on the online library catalog, I thought that this would be a funny interesting book and most likely light-hearted.  But the title itself should have been an adequate enough warning.  This book is sad, Rose's gift (like so many gifts) is most often a curse.  She discovers things about the people who make her food that she doesn't want to know, too much information for a young 8 year old girl to handle. 

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     This odd book is haunting me a bit, and I am feeling a hangover of sorts from reading it all in one day.  Perhaps it is because I care so much about food and enjoy so much making it for others.  Perhaps it is the chilling feeling that we get once we know something that we may or may not have wanted to know, but are unable to be blind to.  This book describes eloquently the inability we sometimes face as humans to communicate with each other, each of us coming from such a different existence, and the loneliness and isolation this can create.  The book also speaks to how difficult it is to go along once you know the pain someone is in, and the crippling effects of depression.  I know that this blog is supposed to be about baking, and I am getting a little off topic, but this book has had an eerie effect on me that I suppose I needed to talk about.  If nothing else, Aimee Bender's vivid description of food is surely inspiring.

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     Perhaps the saddest thing, is that Rose has to turn to vending machine food, or food that is made by a machine in a remote factory and the most difficult things for her to eat are the homemade goods that are loaded with feelings.  I couldn't help but think about the way we eat in the United States and how it is so opposite from the way Rose eats.  If we were all cursed or blessed with Rose's gift, then McDonald's wouldn't exist and there would be very few people who could tolerate the unhealthy and inhumane way that so much of our food is made. I would argue that everything would be organic, free range and humanely raised because the taste of the opposite, is too much for even the cruelest to bear.   So many of us have no relationship with our food, except for a dysfunctional one that involves denial.  So many of us have no idea where our food comes from, or think about how many hands it touches before it gets to our plate.  I haven't always thought about these things myself, but now that I do, I find it almost impossible to revert back to a state of un-wonder.  I think about how bizarre flour is, how it was once a wheat crop, and then it was processed and packaged and then sold to grocer and then to me.  I think about how much work is involved when I go to a grocery store and see all the produce shelves filled to the brim.  I have grown my own food, and I know what it takes to produce even one tomato.  I don't take any of that for granted, but it is very easy to forget when you can just hop in your car and drive to a supermarket and buy anything your heart desires.  

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     What this book reminded me, is that I am putting myself into the meals and breads that I make for others.  The idea that someone can taste my emotions is something that I should keep in mind and I should always bake or cook with that idea in my head.  I have prepared many meals in the past few years and I could definitely sense a difference when I was agitated, or angry, or sad or happy.  Maybe not in the way the food tasted, but in the quality of the end product or in the ease or difficulty of the actual process.  The ingredients seem to mix better when you treat them kindly, the water seems to boil over less when you are paying attention to it, and the vegetables seems to chop more uniformly when you are treating them with the respect they deserve, as the end product of a long, labored process.  

"Food is all those substances which, submitted to the action of the stomach, can be assimilated or changed into life by digestion, and can thus repair the losses which the human body suffers through the act of living"

     -The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarian(Taken from the   introduction of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake).