I'm Looking for Corny

The year I turned three, my father died, some months before my actual birthday. That Christmas, there's a photo of the Christmas tree, surrounded with a lavish array of gifts that my mother probably couldn't afford.

One of the unwrapped gifts, the Important Gift, was an Easy-Bake Oven. It was Tiffany blue, or turquoise, and it figured largely in my life for the next several years. I used it to bake my first apple pie (I moved on from the provided mixes soon enough), when I was five. That's when I found out that pastry requires fat, and apples for a pie need sugar, even sweet apples.

I've been cooking and baking for as long as I can remember. It's an urge I inherited from my father, whom I don't remember. Mom would tell us that Daddy was a gourmet cook, but that he would make a wreck of her kitchen. She was a good plain cook, but she didn't really enjoy it, and she grew up in the 40s and 50s; she liked pre-packaged things; scalloped potatoes from a box, Bisquick, and so on. I didn't cook with fresh garlic until I was in college and decided to buy some for the lasagne I was making. I don't think I've used dried garlic since.

Food--especially if someone you know prepares it--is so much more than fuel. It's love, and yes, I know that's a bit corny, but I don't particularly care; as Kate Winslet's character, Iris, says in the film The Holiday, "I like corny. I'm looking for corny in my life."

We could all use a bit of that in these mad times. COVID-19, personal difficulties brought on by the pandemic, or those made so much worse...loneliness, or being driven half-mad because the people with whom you live who are never not there these days--everyday life is more difficult than usual...we all need something comforting.

So we cook, and bake, and make jellies, and jams and chutneys and bread, and cakes and ice cream and cookies, and pickles and pies, even if we have no one else with whom to share them. We'd still like to share them, and while standing in the kitchen, we daydream about putting these things in front of friends and family, and imagine their responses...we plan a picnic, though all the usual events which encompass picnics are off for the present.

Food and cooking and baking are love. Long-live corny!