Home Cooking Helps Build Family Ties Pro-Home Cooking It’s A Rewarding And Magical Experience

Holidays without home cooking would be like Hanukkah without menorahs or Christmas without the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2.

But cooking seems to be a dying art. A generation ago, grocery stores sold mainly raw materials: flour, sugar, meat, potatoes. But today, grocery stores smell like kitchens, and home kitchens smell like microwaved cardboard. You even can buy frozen pancakes, for crying out loud. Perfectly intelligent adults profess total incompetence with measuring cups and mixing bowls.

We all know why. The problem isn’t competence. It’s fatigue. After a long day at the extremely productive modern workplace, we rat-racers just don’t have what it takes to chop vegetables or bake cookies. Right?

Wrong. We do have what it takes. And there’s no time like the holidays to rediscover how profound are the rewards of taking the time - making the time - to cook for those you love the most.

Drop that sports page, men. This message is expecially for you.

Cooking is a recipe for what we all long for but can’t buy. Consider: You could purchase an overpriced plastic bin of those yucky store-bought cookies, and with the time you save, you could race from mall to mall buying trinkets for your relatives. Or you could slow down, simplify and give the gift of something made with your own hands.

Impossible? No. Take it from a guy who learned to bake bread from scratch by reading the directions in a book: Cooking isn’t hard. But it is magical; when you feel a sticky glob of flour and water turn to silky dough beneath your hands, you have made more than bread. You have passed along to watching sons and daughters one of the ancient arts of family-making.

And if you agree there’s value in a home-cooked holiday feast - one that fills your home with fragrance and your family with inexpensive, preservative-free nutrition - take it one more step. On a Saturday, make the time for pancakes from scratch. On a Thursday, take a break from cardboard and chemicals and make spaghetti. On a Sunday afternoon, call your mom, get her old recipe for Snickerdoodles and bake some cookies with your children.

It’ll take time. It’ll make a mess. It’ll yank you out of the rat race. It will introduce you to your kids. And it will make your kitchen one of the reasons the next generation someday might say, “We’re going home for Christmas.”

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Takeout should be a guilt-free option

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