Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free, Carb-Free, Meat-Free … Is THIS Freedom?

 

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
― Charles M. Schulz

Has everything become verboten?

Everyone should have the liberty of free choice.

I’m 100% invested in freedom. All for it.

For millennia (and today still) we’ve worked and struggled and evolved, fought wars, disease, and terror … much of it in the name of freedom… freedom to do and be who we want.

But.

A little piece of this wonderful liberty scheisse is sending vexatious ants into my Calvin Klein’s. It shouldn’t, but it does…

FOOD.

Yes, glorious food. I love food.

I love food of almost every origin, every ethnicity, every food group, every farmer’s field or pasture from Dewar Lake, Saskatchewan to Cusco, Peru to Marrakesh, Morocco and beyond.

Childrens’ entertainer Fred Penner sings a cute little ditty about food… well, sandwiches to be truthful … but I’ll amend his words a wee bit for my purposes:

Food is so beautiful, food is so fine –
I like food, I eat it all the time.
I eat it for my supper and I eat it for my lunch;
If I had a hundred types of food, I’d eat them all at once!

.

Food is sustaining of life, the scrumptious repast for 7 billion human souls, but it’s so much more than that, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be?

.

Food is family, food is flavour, food is fuel, food is love, food is passion, food is sharing.

………………………….

Humour keeps us alive. Humour and food. Don’t forget food. You can go a week without laughing.”
― Joss Whedon

.………………………….

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So, if food is all of these wonderful things, what’s your beef (get it? beef!) Larry?

I’ll get there soon, OK?

I have this zeal for cooking … especially cooking for others.

Cooking is a key part of my socialization, my way of connecting with others. Booze helps too, fo shizzle, but food is the real glue.

Nothing warms my heart more than a group of family or friends at our decorated table with smiles and gustatory enjoyment, relishing a meal I’ve prepared.

Oh sure, I get kidded by my kids about the old Uncle Buck line :

But … in the past few years my Joy of Cooking has begun to slowly melt away when it comes to having guests. Julia Child shrilly mews from the beyond.

Today, every meal prepared for visitors seems to require a “non-consumable” list from each attendee – the list of allergies, sensitivities, likes, dislikes, dietary peccadillo-of-the-week.

If all of our society migrated like Wildebeests in the same direction simultaneously, I could handle that.

But no, each individual is just that… individual. Each plate set at the table comes with a unique dietary request.

What was once a treat for me – cooking and preparing a celebration of flavour – has become an arduous serpentine journey through esoteric cookbooks and websites in search of the acceptable meal-du-jour.

I get it, I do. We all want to feel our best … if food is a helpful adjunct to that end result, I’m happy for that.

Vive la liberté!

All this freedom, while emancipating and gladdening, has meant that at least some of us pay the price of less enjoyment when it comes to the group repast … the giddy moments of pleasure I used to feel in dreaming up culinary delights … now diluted and slipping away in the murky mist.

In today’s world, it kinda appears that food enjoyment comes more from the ubiquitous Instagram snaps of each picturesque meal, rather than the pleasure in tasting.

Change is the constant, right? Adjust and move forward.

I still thrive on making new and old dishes that encompass different ingredient choices that sometimes circumscribe and confine.

This old dog merely has to keep learning new culinary tricks.

That’s my sob story and I’ll just have to eat it.