More on Foodways: Mana
Sep. 6th, 2008 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutThis small discussion of another aspect of my foodways is part confession. I'm honestly embarrased by it. It sounds hopelessly superstitious and non-rational, but I can't think of any other way to put it:
Home-cooked food has mana. Other food -- from the hautest of the haute, to fast food, and most importantly, everything in between -- does not.
This is how I know:
If I don't eat home-cooked food in a certain span of time, I start to wilt. Seriously. I start to have cravings, I start to feel vaguely ill. Tired. Run down. This span of time? A week, maybe two.
I don't have to cook the food myself, mind you. Any home-cooked meal will do.
I don't know how to explain this phenomenon without referring to something akin to the concept of mana -- the idea that there's something immanent in home-cooked food that just doesn't exist in commercially prepared food, no matter how fresh, how quality, how attentively prepared.
All I know is, I recognize the wilting, its cause, and its cure.
Home-cooked food has mana. Other food -- from the hautest of the haute, to fast food, and most importantly, everything in between -- does not.
This is how I know:
If I don't eat home-cooked food in a certain span of time, I start to wilt. Seriously. I start to have cravings, I start to feel vaguely ill. Tired. Run down. This span of time? A week, maybe two.
I don't have to cook the food myself, mind you. Any home-cooked meal will do.
I don't know how to explain this phenomenon without referring to something akin to the concept of mana -- the idea that there's something immanent in home-cooked food that just doesn't exist in commercially prepared food, no matter how fresh, how quality, how attentively prepared.
All I know is, I recognize the wilting, its cause, and its cure.
