Religion in the Kitchen - Aidan Travis

The book, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition by Elizabeth Pérez is a very interesting Anthropological look at different Black Atlantic religions. The readings from this book lead me to thinking in an introspective way about what I eat and how I eat, as well as what I cook and how I cook. 

I eat a lot of meat, I would say that I average somewhere between two and three meals a day with meat in it, but I have never killed an animal (besides the one bird I killed while driving), butchered an animal or cleaned an animal for meal preparation. Reading about how much effort goes into these steps, hunched backs of people plucking chickens, the spoons being separated to their pot with electrical tape and the significance that each part of the animal has to the Lucumí religion, makes me rethink how I prepare and eat food. It makes me think about how I treat cooking in my life, and all of the purpose that I lack within it.  

In my household, food has many different purposes and origins. My father was born in Portugal, and when we are with his family, who mostly live in Canada now, we have large meals with lots of people that are in a somewhat unorganized fashion. Large dishes of food are left out and people just take food as they please. My older relatives have encouraged me to try the different dishes and they encourage all of the younger people in my family to try all the food. Also, whenever you enter someone’s household, you are offered whatever food or drink that they can put together for you at that moment.

 On my mother's side, we as a family only all meet together for certain holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter Sunday. These meals are much different, everyone waits and watches T.V or whatever they want to do, as the women cook the dinner. This gender separation is very similar to that of the Lucumí religion. When everything is finished, we assemble at the table, pass around dishes with different foods on them, and then create our plates. When all is finished, we say a prayer and then eat. 

After reading this book, I notice the lack of spirituality in my food. The lack of purpose when it comes to what I do in the kitchen. I believe that I have a slightly better understanding of the spirituality of food in my life, that there is a balance between what the food represents, and the raw numbers of calories, fat, protein, and carbohydrates that the food is made up of.  So often we disassociate our meals with the animals and places that it comes from, bringing our minds back to where the food actually comes from wouldn’t hurt.