Small Potatoes

Some Notes about Cooking as Radical, Political Optimism

Nov 04, 2024

Like many of you out there, I’ve spent the last few weeks (months? years?) feeling less than confident about the state of the world. Between a global pandemic, an uncertain economy and job market, the increasing frequency of climate catastrophes, and the escalating and unwarranted violence of international conflict, it’s hard to feel any sense of control over the direction in which the world is headed. (As those in my grad student cohort often said, “If it’s all the same, I’d like to be living in less historic times, thanks very much.”) It’s even harder to maintain faith that when we get to show up every 2-4 years and decide which elected official gets on our behalf, our voices and our votes matter. This feels even more pronounced when you live in a state that aligns with your political preferences, and when you possess the economic, ethnic, and racial privilege that insulates you from the worst policy decisions that can come to pass. Because the opinions you voice are so easily affirmed by the echo chamber in which you live, they can feel even more hollow and empty, less consequential and heartfelt than they should be.

I don’t write much about politics in this space—sometimes because I anticipate being chided by others more impassioned and informed than myself, and sometimes because food/culture writers are so often told to “stay in their lane” whenever they veer into political territory. Even though food, kitchens, food writing, and cookbooks have always been political, food remains to many a resolutely neutral topic, one that pleases more than it provokes. Home cooking in particular has been framed by male writers and politics as a cozy, feminized act, one practiced by those who are too concerned with the pragmatic challenges of feeding a family to think about issues beyond the home. When we normalize cooking as an unthinking, uncritical practice, we normalize the idea that the women who do the vast majority of home cooking are unthinking, uncritical people. We neutralize more than 50% of the population as being just wives and mothers, and suggest that what they do is somehow outside of the realm of politics.

I think about these things when I’m cooking, and maybe that’s when I get into my best rage-cooking mode. (Key dishes for that: anything that requires a meat mallet.) But I also think about lots of other things. For example, about the challenge of ensuring food security for more than 47 million Americans in the face of rising costs and challenges to access. About the right of more than 2 1/2 million farm workers to unionize and secure key benefits, including health care and protection under harsh working conditions. About the freedom for children across the country to have educational equity and opportunity, where teachers are paid what they deserve, and where students are encouraged to grapple with the full complexity of American history and culture. About the necessity to take the science of climate change seriously and use it to inform environmental and economic policy. About the moral duty to use American military power in service of ending global conflicts and crises. About the ability of whomever is cooking for their families to secure high-quality, affordable childcare so that, when the kids come home, there is time to put something on the table. And about the right for all women and their partners to decide if and when to add a child to their families, and to put that decision squarely in the hands of parents, not legislators. I think about all these things because as a woman, as a mother, and as a citizen, it’s my job to think about the implications of my actions beyond my kitchen, and I do it every day. (And yes, as the great Peggy Lee said, I can think about all of this before the butter melts in the pan.)

Thinking about these things while cooking, while living a life in and through food, reminds me that just by being alive and conscious at this moment in history and by refusing to be complacent, I’m a part of the American political landscape. It also reminds me that civic engagement, much like cooking, must be driven not by cynicism and not even necessarily by pragmatism, but by a healthy supply of radical optimism. Home cooks are sustained by the belief that if they keep a steady supply of resources, consult with experts in the field, and keep showing up to do the work, their efforts will eventually pay off. (At worst, the results are edible, and at the very best, they might be responsible for transforming nothing special into something extraordinary.) Voting, especially when elections might be decided by a few hundred votes in key districts, is even more a gesture of radical optimism—a total conviction that one person showing up makes an enormous and powerful difference to how the world might be. Throughout American history, women have been underestimated as a meaningful political demographic, treated at best as +1s to their husband’s conservative leanings and, at worst, as non-citizens and non-factors in political discourse. But despite what some might wish, the 19th Amendment guarantees that when a woman shows up to vote, her vote gets to be counted.

So after I vote, instead of waiting for a decision on which way the country is going, I plan to cook—not as a means of checking out, but as an affirmation of what matters to me most. Because, as the candidate I plan to vote for knows, putting on an apron doesn’t denude me of power, erase my intellect, or negate my critical power of reasoning. But it does anchor me to a place, to a community, and to a reason to keep going even when nothing else seems certain. And that, I’ve learned, is no small potatoes.

French Fries and Martinis

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