Why You Should Cook, Part 2

In the previous blog post we explored some of the individual benefits of cooking. This post will focus on the social and relational benefits of cooking. In particular, we will see that cooking can be used to help make introductions, to show you care, and to build community.

Breaking the ice with food

If you think about it, we orient our schedule around meals. Breakfast kicks off the morning, lunch starts the afternoon, and dinner marks the beginning of the evening. Food in general and mealtimes in particular are an important part of how we structure our day. For this reason, inviting someone over to eat can be a great way to get to know them. After all, we all have to eat anyway - why not share that meal with someone else?

You could go out to eat at a restaurant somewhere instead, but restaurants often have atmospheres that are loud and rushed, which is not what you want if you’re trying to make introductions. By contrast, a meal at home gives you more time to slow down and talk to your guest(s). Additionally, by inviting someone into your home you are showing that you trust them and that you have nothing to hide.

Now, there is probably a caveat that should be given here. We live in the South, where inviting people over for dinner is a pretty common occurrence. If you live in a place where inviting someone into your home is considered creepy instead of hospitable, don’t despair! Hosting isn’t the only way to share food with people. Read on for some other ways that food can be used as a tool to build or strengthen relationships.

Home-cooked food can communicate when words fails

If you’ve ever been with someone who is grieving something tragic, you know that often what they need more than your words is your presence. In an analogous way, food can communicate things in a way that words can’t. After someone has experienced a major event (it doesn’t necessarily need to be a negative one), a home-cooked meal can be a beautiful way to show that you see that person and that you care about them enough to meet one of their basic needs so they can focus on whatever they need to focus on. Let us give a couple of examples to show what we mean:

At our church, it is common for people to bring meals to families that just welcomed another child into their home. We do this because we want the parents to be able to focus on spending time with their new baby and adjusting to new routines without the added stress of having to cook or go out and buy food. The people who prepare and drop off food usually don’t stay around to talk for the very same reason that they are preparing the food in the first place - they want to give the parents space to rest and learn. Yet the act of preparing and dropping off food speaks for them.

To give another example, cooking can be a great way to support a sick loved one. Usually someone who is sick needs to focus on resting and healing, so a long conversation is not always the best idea. However, a warm bowl of chicken soup shows that you care about that person and want them to feel better soon. Plus, if you make it with the right ingredients, that bowl of chicken soup might help them recover faster by giving them the nutrients their body needs to fight off whatever is causing their sickness.

We could go on, but we think y’all probably get the idea. We have (hopefully) all experienced the care and support that homemade food brings. Cooking enables you to extend that same care to others.

Cooking helps you build community

We live in a fast-paced world, and one that is often selfish. We want things, we want them quickly, and we don’t want to struggle. Just think of the rise of mobile ordering and food delivery services. From the comfort of our own homes, we can select what we want, order it without having to deal with the friction of interacting with other people, and then have it available for pickup or delivery in a format that requires the least amount of interaction possible. While these technologies are not bad (and they have many helpful use cases), there is something that is lost when we cut out our opportunities to see other people: people.

In contrast, home cooking is often a slower, more deliberate process. Consider the following:

• The home cook rarely has the resources to customize every aspect of the meal to the preferences of everyone who will eat it, but this teaches those of us who eat such meals to learn to compromise.
• Kitchen mishaps can delay meals, but this provides an opportunity for the guests to talk and for all involved to learn to deal with the inconveniences of regular life.
• Cooking bigger meals (like for parties or holidays) will often extend beyond the capabilities of a single cook. This turns the meal into a team effort. When everyone is united in working towards a common goal, it brings them closer together.

Making food at home presents challenges and inconveniences that our fast-paced culture doesn’t like. Yet these same challenges provide valuable opportunities to learn how to live and work with the people around us. Without obstacles there can be no stories. This is why time spent preparing and eating home-cooked meals can be such a rich source of memories (think of the holidays, for example). When we share memories with other people, we have the foundations for a community.

Conclusion

Learning to cook is not just about getting the fuel your body needs to survive. Cooking is a valuable tool for anyone who is looking to build or strengthen social ties. Whether it’s bringing a casserole to a friend who is going through a tough time or bringing everyone together for a feast, food is a connection point that allows us to show we care, even when we have a hard time finding other ways to communicate it.