by Leslie Morgan Steiner (Two Cents on Working Motherhood)
No kidding – 99% of the food I make, even when I follow a recipe scrupulously, is not edible.
I once made a brisket that was as tough as my computer keyboard.
Coq au vin that was all vin.
Noodle casserole that after four hours of shopping, chopping and baking and one bite went straight into the trash can.
Fortunately, I can make chocolate chip cookies, which redeems me in my kids’ eyes.
However, a recent article in Harvard Magazine tells me cookies would never have been enough to attract or keep a man. There’s a new book out called Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human that explains how transformational fire was to homo sapiens.
In simple terms, here’s the argument: Raw food does not have enough calories to sustain our bodies and our brains over time. Cooked food is easier to digest and increases the number of nutrients and fats available through the human digestive system. Cooked food may in fact explain why humans’ brains developed to be larger and more complex than other mammals who couldn’t master putting raw meat over fire.
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Leslie Morgan Steiner authors Two Cents on Working Motherhood on MommyTracked. She is the editor of the best-selling anthology Mommy Wars and the memoir Crazy Love. Steiner is a frequent guest on the Today Show, MSNBC, and regularly contributes to The New York Times, Newsweek and Vanity Fair. She lives with her husband and 3 kids in Washington, DC.
