About Cook Book With home Metaphors

 

How to make a home from the scratch? Is it cosiness that we are after? Is a jar filled with favourite marmalade enough to achieve it? Or maybe what is needed to feel at home is a table cloth and a teapot? This book gives us personal responses to those questions and presents us, modern time nomads, with a variety of solutions for to feel at home in the world.

It this cookbook with home metaphors, our favourite dishes, their smell and taste has the power to bring back memories of family home and empower us to create one in the present. This potential can lie in something that you long for, like the characteristic smell of raisins and Earl Grey tea, which back in a day filled the cupboard of your grandma’s kitchen. As Markiewicz argues, even the fairly simple act of sourcing such popular ingredients can make the geographical and time distance between us and the family feel smaller and help start a home in a place of our choice, no matter how temporary it would be.

Very much in the spirit of our times, the book is not about setting permanent roots, but finding happiness and solace in the time of travel, transition and uncertainty. It convinces us that the power of homemaking is in your hands and suggests the rituals of cleaning and cooking which domesticate space. I personally tried all of them. Also, I used to pack my parents’ house in jars, bottles and suitcases. I called on skype from distant cities for recipes of cakes which I enjoyed so much as a child and young adult. Then, I tried recreating them from a different kind of butter and a different kind of apples. The more casual was the day I was making them, the more delicious they were.

The empowerment that comes with cooking goes beyond the issue of home. It forms our spines. Possibly the most famous example of this phenomena was a recent Beyoncé’s album Lemonade, 2016. The title refers to grandma’s recipe for a refreshing drink which in this album becomes the metaphor for the heritage of strong black womanhood. This sweet and sour beverage, meaningfully featuring in the saying – When life gives you lemons, make lemonade – become the perfect recipe for survival against the odds. In this book as the metaphor of strength figures the recipe for a breakfast dish ‘mamałyga’, provided by Markiewicz. It contains millet flakes, apples, ginger and raisins. Markiewicz always takes them with herself when she hits the road. It is a perfect combination of sweetness and spices to keep you awake and warm all day. It is a way of making your stomach your home, your stove. What a wonderful shout out to all the travellers out there. Home is in your bellies, home is in your hands. Find it in this book and your own rituals.

  • Sylwia Serafinowicz