Brittany Balsiger: Summing Up "The Nourishing Arts"

In “The Nourishing Arts,” Michel de Certeau and Luce Giard argue that while cooking is done mostly by women and considered a menial task, it in fact requires a lot of thought and work. They start by stating that women are usually assigned the duties of housework because of their sex. They go on to say that the work women do around the house is not considered work at all. As men, the writers never put much thought into cooking and as such only realized what they had at home, when it was missing. They noticed that when they had to begin cooking for themselves, they remembered things they didn’t even know they had seen or heard in the first place. They discovered that the manipulating of ingredients into a final product was much more satisfying then one would assume. It was soon discovered that cooking is its’ own language that can be passed down from generation to generation and keep unappreciated women alive. Woman who have been suppressed long throughout history have carved a niche for themselves. The kitchen and home will forever be the domain of women. Women are almost always in charge of feeding a family, guests, or themselves. There is a transference of knowledge via cooking that hands down a degree of excellence that would otherwise be unattainable. Having the exact temperature for the oven, taking off the burning at precisely the right moment, knowing when to serve what, all these things require and intelligence that is not often perceived. While eating is a basic necessity and cannot be ignored humans can choose how they want to nourish themselves or even whether they will or not. The preparing of these meals that keep a family or a person from starving, require a great deal more thought than one at first realizes. The cook has to be sure and include what is required for bodies to continue to function at their fullest. The must be proteins and vitamins and sugars and carbohydrates and all those other pyramid of nutrition factors, so that the many food illnesses are kept at bay. While what is considered edible is up for debate depending on the culture, Michel de Certeau and Luce Giard make it quite clear that women need to be given more credit for what they do in their households and especially in the kitchen.