The Eating Rebellion: Recapturing the common art of cooking
Of mice, men, and love; how (and what) to cook; booklegging for your kitchen
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The preparing, cooking, and sociable eating of food are so central to the human experience that the culinary arts may well be what made us human in the first place…There is no record anywhere of any people who have lived without cooking.
—Richard W. Wrangham, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University
“There is no record anywhere of any people who have lived without cooking”, unless you consider the staggering numbers of young adults who rely on DoorDash or UberEATS on a daily basis1, ordering everything from specialty coffees to comfort foods to their door (or bed2!). Some are willing to pay exorbitant prices3 to avoid shopping for or preparing food. We’re not referring to ordering the occasional pizza or getting help with grocery delivery when in you’re in a bind, we mean paying $31 for pre-peeled clementines and a bunch of grapes.4
The three most frequently ordered items on DoorDash are fries, chicken quesadilla, and mozzarella sticks, not exactly the picture of a healthy diet. While junk food will likely make an appearance in most households (ours included), especially if there are ravenous teens around, the regular consumption of ultra-processed food has been linked to a steep rise in cancer cases in young adults; rising rates of depression and anxiety; and poorer academic performance in children and teens. And when over half of caloric intake stems from ultra-processed foods, this is a serious concern.
Cooking and eating meals used to be a central part of daily life a century ago. As you can see in this viral clip Gurwinder shared, not only did cooking time drastically shrink (in part due to modern cooking appliances), but there is a concomitant decline in time spent eating meals, down from 70 to only 41 minutes per day (not really surprising when food is viewed as fuel and consumed out of plastic containers).
The notion of sharing meals, rather than eating alone, is literally baked into language: The English “companion”, the French copain (friend), and Italian compagno (mate), all derive from Latin cum+pa-nis, which means “with bread”. In Chinese the term companion translates to “fire mate”, a reference to sharing food over a campfire. The 2025 World Happiness Report affirms that sharing meals is fundamental to our humanness, and happiness:
Not only do we find sharing meals and dining alone to be important predictors of wellbeing compared to income and employment, but in many cases, they seem to be even more so. That is, asking people if they shared at least one meal last week can tell us more about their overall life evaluation than knowing if they are unemployed. Or relatedly, knowing how many meals someone shared last week can tell us more about their positive emotions than their income.
While there has been a steep rise in people eating their meals alone since 2003, this change is most sharply seen in Millenials and Gen Z.
In a 1995 essay for The New Yorker, Francine du Plessix Gray comments on the cultural importance of the decline in sharing meals:
We may be witnessing the first generation in history that has not been required to participate in that primal rite of socialization, the family meal. The family meal is not only the core curriculum in the school of civilized discourse; it is also a set of protocols that curb our natural savagery and our animal greed, and cultivate a capacity for sharing and thoughtfulness.
The goal of “The Eating Rebellion” is to offer a practical approach to recapturing the art of cooking, by embracing meal preparation, finding recipe inspirations via family, friends, and cookbooks, and passing on generational knowledge and joy of cooking to kids. We hope that you’ll find encouragement for making and sharing home-cooked meals a normal part of your day, and invite you to join our Eating Rebellion challenge for the month of June (be sure to take the poll at the end of today’s post)!
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Of Mice and Men, and Love
If you don’t love others you can’t cook. People who have no love to share eat poorly, and they don’t cook. If you love cooking, you will cook, at whatever level. People who like to be around a table, who like to share—they’ll try to cook, even if it’s only an egg. I would much prefer to eat an egg with friends than caviar with strangers.
— Chef Philippe Legendre
By Peco
Between the end of university and the start of grad school, I lived in downtown Toronto for a couple of years, between Little Italy and Little Portugal. Restaurants and bistros were generously sprinkled along the main strip of that part of town, and it was here that I first saw churrasqueira, a crunchy word that sounds chargrilled and which literally means barbecue in Portuguese-Brazilian. It was here, too, that I was first served bread with a dipping bowl of extra virgin olive oil before a meal at an Italian restaurant. I didn’t even ask for it. They just put it in front of me—those crazy Italians, giving food away for free. A hungry young student on a limited budget, I devoured it gratefully.
I lived around the corner from this culinary heaven, in a three-bedroom flat infested with mice. That might sound bad, but as far as I was concerned, they weren’t roaches, so I considered myself lucky. The mice usually kept out of sight, although there were two exceptions to this rule. The first was when our cat, a slender white narcissist named Aphrodite, caught them and savaged them, and then left the carcass on the living room floor, like some gift or trophy to be found by myself or my two flatmates. If you’re cringing just now, I don’t blame you. I have no idea how I slept soundly in that place.
The second exception happened at suppertime. Our kitchen was not so much a room as a tiny, windowed outcropping of the living room, with barely enough space for two people to shuffle past each other between the table on one side and the fridge, sink, and stove on the other. The stove was an old gas affair, and quite often, while I stood at the table chopping onions and garlic on the cutting board, a mouse would poke up between the daisy burners—not while they were burning, of course. And I only discovered this peeping rodent by chance, when I happened to turn around one day and saw the thing duck its head back down. I don’t know how it got in there, or how it found the courage to keep returning, since, at least three evenings out of seven, I would boil my pasta and fry up veggies on those stove burners. Cringe again, if you must, but I enjoyed my pasta all the same, with a wedge of cheddar cheese, a heap of blue corn chips, and sometimes a glass of cheap red wine.
My cooking never really progressed much beyond pasta and stir fries. Sometimes I made the same meal for days in a row if it satisfied, just because it was easier. Food was fuel, mostly. Salad or fruits first, for fast energy, then carbs and meat for slower energy. Why did I treat food like this? Was it a man thing? An efficiency thing? I’m not sure, and don’t get me wrong, I loved food and enjoyed new foods when I could afford it—sushi, falafel, samosas, which in those pre-Uber EATS days were pretty exotic.
My efficient approach to food continued through grad school, when time pressure was a constant menace. And being a creature of habit, I might never have changed, except that I met a young woman from Switzerland who made me my first veal stroganoff.
Her name was Ruth.
My love of cooking food started with my love of Peco.
One of my earliest memories from childhood, is sitting in the kitchen on a wooden L-shaped bench, peeling potatoes5 and chopping onions, carrots, celery root, and savoy cabbage for my mother as she busied herself at the stove preparing a Swiss vegetable soup. In the winter months we would bake Basler Brunsli (Swiss brownies) and Mailänderli (lemon butter cookies). I would watch her prepare an elastic batter out of flour, eggs, and a pinch of salt and marvel how deftly she cut “Spätzli” dough into boiling salt water. I took her culinary skills for granted until I moved to Canada at age 18 and found myself longing for her home-cooked meals. I called her up one evening and had her talk me through the steps of preparing semolina pudding as I stirred the pot on the stove. On my next visit home, I raided her cookbook collection and slowly developed my repertoire of Swiss classic dishes, breads, and cakes.
But my desire to cook was sharpened only once I had someone I loved to share and take joy in the meals I prepared. Peco was a quick devotee of Swiss cuisine and I cooked up a storm almost every day of the week. As our family grew, I took particular pleasure in preparing treats I remembered from my childhood for our children. Every Easter and Christmas season I still bake bread animals, a tradition that they’ve participated in since they were toddlers.
Every birthday I bake a Swiss-style carrot, lemon, or marble cake (usually at least two to make sure that all of their friends get a piece too). Our kids have learned to cook and bake alongside me and are frequently taken by various desires to prepare burgers, pasta dishes, cookies, BLT deluxe sandwiches, or recipes that they’ve discovered in one of our various cookbooks (in fact, as I write these lines our two sons are out grocery shopping for a lasagna dinner our daughter is hosting this evening :).
I enjoy reading cookbooks at the breakfast table, gathering inspiration for dinner, a practice that has helped me develop an eclectic approach (and ability to work with what’s in the fridge). When hunger gathers in late afternoon one of the kids might ask what’s for dinner, and my response is always the same, “öppis guets!” —something good. After almost three decades of preparing meals, I’ve not tired of cooking, but have grown in my love of sharing food with family and friends. Sometimes it’s fancy and labor-intensive (sushi), other times it’s simply a table spread with home-made bread, cheese, and salami, but it always does taste better when eaten in company.
What (and how) to cook
A friend related how she and her daughter enjoy watching certain cooking shows on Youtube, but she was struck that even the ones that were most wholesome —with the chef walking out into the kitchen garden to fetch a pumpkin, for example—seemed to miss much of the process and work involved in cooking. All the laborious parts are skipped (transforming a pumpkin into small cubes takes no more than 2 seconds…), and the final product is so perfectly stylized that attempting the same at home may end up making you feel discouraged and incompetent.
Consulting AI for recipes may leave you with a bizarre feeling that something seems off (like adding a fried egg into your cookie batter…):
While 70% of Gen Z regard TikTok as their “most valuable platform for food recommendations”, I would suggest starting with family instead:
School of the Unconformed readers related various ways their family recipes have been passed on, including:
books created based on recipes collected by all family members
keeping recipes in a binder with plastic sleeves (safe from spills)
collecting recipe cards in a box
“…my grandmother’s tradition when a granddaughter gets married is to give a huge wooden box full of all of laminated family recipe cards she’s typed up and saved for the last 50 years. She formats them and laminates them all herself. There are several hundred in the box she gave me.” ( Allison East)
“My mother collected all of her recipes, and those passed down to her, in a leather-bound book. Each recipe was handwritten in the bound book, but not necessarily in any particular order. I have kept the leatherbound tradition for myself, but instead of one that is bound, I have one that is more binder style (entitled My Favorite Recipes). I handwrite some recipes completely, but I also have a lot of recipes gathered over the years that I have printed out and then added handwritten annotations (e.g, add more cayenne or less milk, or how to double or halve the recipe). I like the binder format so I can keep recipes organized thematically.”
Read the full list of ideas for passing down family recipes in the responses to my note here.
Another wonderful avenue for finding new recipes are your friends! Fellow Substack writer and friend Tommy Dixon6 brought us some of his sourdough starter last spring, along with a hand-written recipe that lives on our fridge door. I’ve been turning out four to eight loaves of sourdough bread per week ever since, and it’s a perfect gift to bring along for any occasion (be it Sunday potluck at church, a “thank you” for a neighbour, a friend’s birthday, or an extra “tip” for your hairdresser). I had baked four loaves early this morning and two are already gone…
Booklegging for your kitchen
Fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone, and discovered that something more than energy and good-will is necessary to make a cook.
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I vastly prefer cookbooks over online recipes, mainly because they are limited (can’t fall into scrolling endlessly for the best one), contain no ads, and I can turn to them without falling into distraction. In our post A Guide to Booklegging: How (and why) to collect, preserve, and read the printed word, Peco and I recommended that, “we turn our homes into book monasteries, populated by silent monks who stand patiently on their shelves, waiting for us to commune with them. We can preserve and carry on the best of human society, one that will live on long after the floodwaters of digital dross fade away.” We’ve already offered recommendations for books on history, fiction reading, and children’s books. Today we’ll add the favorite cookbooks of School of the Unconformed readers to our collection.
Top Cookbook Recommendations
A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price
Around Our Table by Sarah Forte
Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook
Classic Italian Cookbook by Marzella Hazan
Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach
East by Meera Sodha
Flavor It Greek! A Celebration of Food, Faith and Family
Grains in Small Places: Fresh Milled Flour Cookbook by Kara Britch
How to Cook Everything: The Basics by Mark Bittman
I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken
Japanese Cooking: The Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji
Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
Les Halles Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain
Lost Recipes: Meals to Share with Friends and Family by Marion Cunningham
Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
More-with-Less Cookbook: Recipes and Suggestions by Mennonites on How to Eat Better and Consume Less by Doris Janzen Longacre
New Best Recipe by Editors of Cooks Illustrated
Nights and Weekends by Alexis De Boschnek
Once Upon a Tart ... : Soups, Salads, Muffins, and More by Frank Mentesana and Carolynn Carreño
Repertoire by Jessica Battilana
Sally’s Baking 101 by Sally McKenney
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Small Victories by Julia Turshen
The All New Good Housekeeping Cookbook by Susan Westmoreland
The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
The Complete America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook
The Fanny Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham
The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by deb perelman
The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon
Together: Memorable Meals Made Easy by Jamie Oliver
Twelve Months of Monastery Soups by Brother Victor D’Avila-Latourrette
What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking by Caroline Chambers
Yiddish Cuisine: A Gourmet’s Approach to Jewish Cooking by Robert Sternberg
You can view the entire cookbook collection at our
Unconformed Bookshop here.
For recipe resources on Substack see:
Betty Williams — Betty Eatz Newsletter
Sheryl O'Connell — Just Really Good Recipes
Holly Coppedge — Detour Ahead!
Sophia Real | Real Simple Food
10 essential recipes every home cook should master by Kerry Faber
Signature Drop Biscuits by Dixie Dillon Lane
Why Would You Make Homemade Cheese Crackers?!? by Hannah | A Feral Housewife
Kerri Christopher shares the easiest way to cook a whole chicken and recipes that allow for Sunday rest
You can find the complete discussion of cookbook and online recipe site recommendations in this note here.
Cooking with Kids
When I asked readers how they teach their kids the art of cooking and hosting, I received wonderfully varied and detailed responses, but most seemed to agree that it is “something that is caught rather than taught.”
Start with curiosity:
Get them excited through stories that involve food:
Keep them around you in the kitchen:
Allow them to experiment:
Teach them independence:
Make cooking “normal” and enjoyable:
There were many more wonderful suggestions and examples. Thank You to everyone who contributed! You can read the whole conversation in the comment section of my note here.
Here are some kids cookbook ideas for additional inspiration. Our favorite has definitely been The Redwall Cookbook by Brian Jacques!
Blueberries for Sal Cookbook by Robert McCloskey
The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook by Kate Macdonald
The Catholic Kids Cookbook by Haley Stewart
The Complete Children’s Cookbook by DK
The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen
The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker
The Little Women Cookbook by Wini Moranville
The Silver Spoon for Children by Amanda Grant
What’s Cooking at 10 Garden Street? by Felicita Sala
This June, join us for The Eating Rebellion!
Starting this next Monday, June 1st, until June 30th, we are committing to preparing a home-cooked meal once a day. It can be as simple as scrambled eggs or fancy as a three-course menu!
In addition, we’d encourage you to try this (if you haven’t already:) :
Ask someone in your family how to prepare a favorite dish
Ask a friend to share their favorite recipe with you
Try preparing a recipe that is completely new to you
Invite a friend or extended family member to join you for dinner
Create a beautiful dinner table setting, complete with table cloth and candles
Host a potluck
Start creating a binder or recipe box with to collect your favorite recipes
If you have children, invite them to join you in preparing a simple meal
Invite family or friends to join you in The Eating Rebellion!
The enticing smells of the lasagna my daughter is baking for our special dinner guest this evening are drifting up from the kitchen, and it’s time to set the table. Like every evening, we’ll share our meal, laugh, (squabble), talk about life, the universe, and everything, and look forward to doing it all again tomorrow.
Cooking is not just about the taste and quality of the food, and it’s not even just about the social connections that you form and strengthen by regularly sharing meals; it is what Peco and I have called a “generative” act, a way of passing on to our children and next generations a pattern of living, and a set of culinary skills and knowledge, that keep us human.
Please share your thoughts:
What are your favorite recipes, cookbook recommendations, tips for cooking with children, hosting advice, and additional suggestions for recapturing the common art of cooking?
We’d love to hear from you :)
Now available: The Reading Rebellion Masterlist
This portable 4x6 volume includes several lists of book recommendations, including short fiction, classic long reads, and books for young readers. Join the Reading Rebellion, and restore your deep reading attention, empathic centers, and the quiet eye of imagination!
Further Reading
Food Against AI On Letting Go, and Holding On, and Being Human by Jordana Rozenman for The Front Porch Republic
But I’m too exhausted to enjoy family dinners! by Dixie Dillon Lane
Seventeen Ways to be Hospitable That Don’t Require a Tidy Home by Liturgy in the Home with Maria
Soul work for the ‘end of the world’? Set the table by Elizabeth Oldfield
The Catechesis of Children’s Birthday Parties by Regina Doman
Food for Thought by John Schwenkler for The American Conservative
In Favor of Child Labor - Like chickens, children want to work by Brett Gallagher
A Diet of Convenience is Killing Young Adults by Cole Douglas Claybourn
How to Shop and Cook Real Food on a Reasonable Budget by andrew gruel
Peco and I will be speaking at Another Life is Possible: Living Well in the Age of the Machine at the Woodcrest Bruderhof in Rifton, NY! Consider joining us for the weekend of July 10-12 where we plan to explore the far-reaching effects of technology, the promises and dangers of transhumanism, and the search for meaning in a world increasingly defined by machines. These gatherings are truly inspiring and include not just fantastic presentations and panel discussions, but potluck meals, lively debates, sing-alongs, dance, and conversations that will stay with you for months to come! Hope to see you there! See here for details.
According to DoorDash trend data, 21% of GenZ eat their orders in bed.
Credit to Christopher Hall who used this phrase in his book Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head, and Heart
Fittingly, a large portrait of Albert Anker’s Little Potato Peeler was hung prominently in my childhood kitchen. As a young woman, my mother had purchased a heavily framed reproduction of the painting at an estate sale at the side of a road in a Swiss village (often wondering whether it might actually be the original, which of course it was not). It remains my favorite painting.
You might remember Tommy from his viral post the end of our extremely online era.
Oh, I love everything about this post! New cookbooks to try, a fun challenge, and discussions about the importance of cooking and eating together! My children (ages 13 and 15) and have been in the kitchen with me, since they were toddlers.
After feeling overwhelmed with all the things (homeschooling, cooking from scratch, running a Nature School, and homesteading), this New Year's, I suggested we try something new with meals. Each person in our family is assigned a night to cook dinner, and I have a cute paper meal plan calendar that I hang on the fridge for reference. I meal plan on Mondays and require everyone's recipe list for shopping on Tuesdays. It has been a GAME-CHANGER and has made this season of life so much easier!!! One kid LOVES recipes and enjoys trying out something new and delicious each week. The other often slaps something together and is learning how to season better. I am so proud of both of them and am excited that when they both leave this house, they will have YEARS of cooking experience.
My mother became burnt out from cooking from scratch for 8 people daily and since I didn't show interest at 12 in cooking, she didn't bother to teach me how to cook. Learning how to cook in my 20s was not easy. I think teaching ALL the children in our lives how to joyfully cook nourishing foods with inexpensive ingredients is one of the most important things we can do.
Looking forward to exploring all these wonderful links! Many thanks for all you do.
I have always cooked from scratch and yet, I don’t enjoy cooking at all. For me, cooking is a chore like vacuuming or dusting. What I do appreciate is that I can control what I’m eating. There are no chemicals or preservatives in the food we eat. I can use less salt or none at all. For the most part, it’s about making healthier choices and the food tastes better.