If whoever paints is a painter and whoever writes is a writer, why don't we call women who have been cooking at home for decades cooks? The task of feeding the family, like so many other tasks necessary to live and to inhabit a house, has historically fallen on women. So much so that, for example, archeology has identified that remains of vertebrae from pre-Hispanic times belonged to Mexican women due to habitual wear and tear caused by manual grinding of corn, a task that they were in charge of.
We only consider cooks those who carry out this job in front of the public and, thus, this and other scenes of the domestic have never been perceived as important, despite the fact that in this country, the domestic kitchen still feeds many more people than the professional kitchen.
For these and more reasons, today, March 8, we look into 4 Spanish kitchens and interview the anonymous women who willingly and/or out of obligation have had to stand in front of the stove once or twice a day, with no escape, exercising the act of cooking, helped or not, with a main objective: to feed.
María José Jiménez, 68, grew up in Villanueva del Trabuco (Málaga), lives in Mollet del Vallès (Barcelona), worked in a production line for the New Pol electrical appliance company and in her own clothing store for 24 years and has been cooking daily for 46 years. “I am an orphan and I grew up with an aunt, who was the one who taught me to cook. I learned from her from a very young age and from the cookbooks that I have been buying”.
"More or less, at home, we have cooked," says Jiménez, a phrase with which he downplays having cooked every day and fed his family in a rich and varied way -according to one of his daughters, Laura Cabana-. All the women interviewed in this article agree on this and, paradoxically, also on the following: that cooking takes up a lot of time and that, in reality, they don't like it, to the surprise of their two sons, who are astonished to learn the truth that there is. behind the delicious recipes that their mothers prepare.
Jiménez explains that both she and her husband have always worked and to share the tasks and by schedule, he was in charge of dinners, which tend to be simpler. Macaroni and spaghetti stand out as quick dishes and, for more special days, their hits are fricandó, Catalan-style roast chicken, monkfish in sauce, cannelloni or zarzuela.
But I don't like to cook. I don't enjoy cooking. I see Maria Nicolau and I think: 'She really enjoys it!'. But not me. I don't consider myself cooks. Of course: I am satisfied when something I cook likes others. For example, my daughter-in-law, who is from the United States, always likes everything I cook and says that she has never eaten so well. They, who don't want to eat bread, one day I made them chicken with plums –which needs bread– and they finished with everything. And I like that".
The Galician empanada, which she prepares together with her husband, a native of Matodoso, in Castro Rey (A Coruña), the fideuà or the rice, are other dishes that they usually prepare on weekends, when they receive a visit from their daughter and His couple. “It's not hard for me to cook, but I don't have a good time thinking about what I'll cook and stuff. Every day is the same task, day and night. What I do like is to give them joy with a more special meal”.
“Besides – Jiménez points out – buying is a sacrifice. I don't like going shopping at all: it wastes a lot of time. I like to go to the plaza to buy, because that way I can go to each store and ask for things the way I want them, but that takes time. I almost prefer washing the dishes or ironing than cooking, perhaps for fear that my food will turn out badly,” Jiménez acknowledges, “who probably hasn't had a stew bad for decades,” her daughter points out.
Galician broth is prepared at this cook's house, and she uses it as an example to highlight a change she has detected in relation to cooking: “lately, when we eat it, we find bits of bone, and this is the fault of whoever cuts the pieces. It seems that she is missing the job of butcher and it is not like before ”. To organize herself, she comments that the ideal is to buy for several days and think about what she will cook with what she has previously purchased. “That way you don't have to think about recipes every day. Having foresight, having a pantry and having a freezer is essential. I don't understand ready meals from the supermarket: cooking basic things, for day to day, doesn't take so much time to justify those purchases. Today simple food is coming back and they say you shouldn't eat so much fish and meat. Some lentils don't cost that much to make”.
Mari Carmen Longás, 70, has spent her entire life in Zaragoza, where she worked in a public works machinery company and in her own haberdashery, with the usual long hours for the public. “My husband had better hours than mine (and more vacations), so whoever arrived first would start cooking, and he is a very good cook. Normally, I was in charge of the middays and he, of the nights”.
Longás began learning to cook at the age of 10. “At that time, your mother was teaching you the basics of cooking. Then Simone Ortega would come and hers 1080 cooking recipes of hers, which was what you used when you wanted to prepare a more special recipe. And when I got married, I also started making recipes that I had never made before.
"But cooking takes a long time and the results disappear very quickly," complains the woman from Zaragoza. She argues that, for her, it is not the most bothersome of the tasks that take care of a house requires, that the worst is ironing, dusting or washing the dishes or the countertop. "The best thing about cooking: being told that it is very tasty and that they eat it all without complaint." She longás explains that in the face of possible complaints, the lack of time of the two parents who worked was a sufficient response. "He ate what was there, there was no time to make two different meals, and that is also a learning experience for children." Now, once retired, when her children visit, she cooks what they like.
Asked about the pressure of having to cook every day, she answered bluntly: “If one day I didn't want to cook, we went out to eat. But, in general, I haven't even considered the pressure, because you have to eat. You eat and have dinner, and in my house we have never made sandwich dinners, we have wanted to eat first and second. Also, I have never liked leaving food ready, except for stews, which always win from one day to the next. I have been able to afford it, because I had a 3-hour break at noon, and I know that now many people do not have that time and cannot return home to eat. So, we ate vegetables first and something grilled, whether it was steak or fish. On weekends, paella or legume stews”. For her, the lack of time is no excuse: “If you like it, you will always find time to cook. And if you don't like it, you won't find it."
Longás comments that the organization has been fundamental to being able to cook and eat as he liked at home. “When we both worked, we did the shopping one day for the whole week. Now that the five of us are not at home, we have a tiny notebook where we write down what is missing and, when we go out for a walk, we go for it”. On the other hand, he says that “for many years, I have had a large capacity fridge and freezer. This allows me to always store and take out anything when I need it, whether due to lack of time or the ingredient”.
The life of Charo Cremaes (69 years old) has been a roller coaster, as she herself defines. Born in Miranda de Ebro, she grew up in Pamplona, where her father died when she was very young, and for this reason she was sent to a boarding school for railway orphans in Palencia. She returned to Pamplona to study Teaching and left for San Sebastián and Barcelona to work for the RENFE. She was there for 12 years, in which she got married, she had her daughter and divorced, and she went to live and grow vegetables in a commune in the Calpe countryside, organized by a sister of Mariscal. After this, Seville welcomed her for 11 years and, finally, she returned to Pamplona to work as a high school teacher. “I have been adapting my kitchen to the places where I have lived. In Barcelona I learned about celery and aubergines and in Andalusia I missed lamb, because they don't eat it. But there I learned its two stews: stews and stews”. Cremaes says that arrests are not lacking and that she has dared with life, which she does not regret. With gastronomy, she does the same: "I have always liked learning about cuisines from other countries and when I visit my daughter we always go to eat at international restaurants."
How did you learn to cook? She explains that although her mother taught her the basics, when she really began to cook, it was her when she saw herself alone, with her daughter, in Seville, at age 35, far from her family. “I made friends with a neighbor, who had a very messy husband, and we hung out a lot together. She passed me the recipes that her mother had written and I copied them entirely by hand. It was marvelous to have a vision of the kitchen from day to day through the eyes of a Sevillian lady who knew the products from there, the fish that have different names, etc. I still have those recipes.”
At that time, Cremaes worked and took care of everything. “I took work home to correct, I had to do the shopping, take care of my daughter Nerea, the dog, the house and cook. She had once been very tired and she had not left dinner ready in advance. When she arrived, I found my daughter who, very hungry, had begun to eat a stock cube (before we did not know that this was not as good as we thought). The world was on top of me because I lacked time for everything. Sometimes I was poorly organized and sometimes I would go to my mother, who spent some time with us, or to a neighbor that I hired to help me, from whom I also learned to cook. Being from Navarra, we loved vegetables, and that lady was surprised, she laughed and called us cows because we ate a lot of grass ”.
Before, during their marriage, they both ate out for work. “He cooked on weekends and I saw it as an excuse to show off: he had all the time in the world to make the recipes he wanted, with the book in front of him, and with the best products, because he spared no expense for that. He invited friends to eat and I saw myself as a scullery and having to clean up a kitchen that looked like a battlefield. At that time, I knew the basics, but had no interest in cooking. My mother had tried to teach me, but I paid very little attention.
“I make ajoarriero cod that turns out delicious. Or the squid in its ink. Or the Russian salad, to which I put a bit of Serrano ham and a dose of vinaigrillo (little onions and pickled gherkins), and I let it rest overnight because it usually comes out better the day before. When I feel like it, it works out for me. But I don't know how to cook”, says, paradoxically, Cremaes. “I don't live it with pleasure. I prefer ironing than cooking. It's a bit of an uphill battle to cook, especially when I have to do something special. I don't like spending an afternoon in the kitchen because the next day I have guests. But I do it thinking that the people who come and eat it will like it”.
Cremaes explains that over the years she has seen how vegetarianism and the concern for healthy nutrition that her ex-husband practiced has been imposed. “I remember that he commented on the premises of eating healthy, the recommendations of Dr. Capó, although on the weekend we ate what we wanted. I ended up a little fed up with that and when I got to Seville I did what I could and, for example, I didn't eat as much fruit as I do today. Now, my partner has also been a vegetarian and we have a very rational diet, and since I am a producer of colon polyps, with a family history, we take great care of ourselves. For example, we avoid red meat, which is widely abused in the north; don't see how they ran txuletones this weekend ”.
Mari Carmen, who remarried last December, shares her life with a lover of cooking. “Now I live with another cook and since we retired, he cooks,” she says. Now freed from this task from which one cannot escape, just as one cannot escape from hunger, she remembers what advice she gave her daughter to organize herself in the kitchen: “I gave her a cookbook for beginners, but she had already put attention in the kitchen and how his father cooked. But if at some point we have discussed the subject, I have told him that there are many interesting things in life to be stuck in the kitchen and spend many hours on it. I have had to cook a lot but I have not done it with joy: I have done it because we needed to eat”.
Francisca Márquez, 62, was born in Montalbán (Córdoba), from where she traveled to Badalona in the 1970s. She worked for 40 years in the Panrico factory and has cooked since she got married in 1983 and after her divorce. “I have learned from my mother, from older people, writing down recipes from cookbooks and, more recently, searching the internet.”
His best dishes are cannelloni and paella, and his daughter Estefanía Navarro attests to this. However, Márquez agrees with what other women who have been interviewed in this article: “The kitchen, for me, is an obligation. I don't do it with pleasure, I don't like cooking. It makes a big mess to cook. It's worse than other housework. The time you dedicate to the kitchen is the time you lack for yourself. But we have to eat, we have no choice, and that's why we cook”.
The woman from Badalona affirms that she has often felt the pressure of this obligation that cooking has been for her, although her ex-husband helped her with dinner, that the good thing about cooking is being able to eat homemade food and that the only way to organize yourself well is the following : know the day before what you will cook the next day and agree on tasks with whoever you live with, if you live together.
