Mastering the Art of Cooking with the Butane Torch

I begin this maiden voyage of my blog into cyberspace on a note of triumph: I have finished my first ever batch of Crème Brulée without burning myself, my house, or my cat with the butane torch.

I received said torch as a Christmas present after declaring my love for the French dessert and my horror at the thought of substituting the brilliantly executed homemade version with a Dr. Oetker's boxed mix (lacking, of course, the important tappable, crackable melted sugar topping). The butane torch, however, proved to be more of a challenge than expected. I've never handled butane before in my life, and with instuctions that feature "CAUTION: THE TORCH WILL NOT TURN OFF AUTOMATICALLY IF YOU PRESS THIS BUTTON" in the torch instructions, and "CAUTION: EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE!" on the butane canister, I was convinced the whole endeavor would result in an embarrassing call to 911.

But there it is: four pristine, beautiful, neat ramekins nestled in my fridge beside a bag of lettuce, tops shimmering gold, ready for the first crack of a spoon. Glorious.

And a little secret: It's not THAT bad for you. You can find the recipe here.

So, welcome to the Feminist Foodie. I started this blog as a place to post about food: recipes, restaurant reviews, cookbook reviews, and feminism. At first glance, the two topics may not seem related. But food and feminism are inseparably intertwined. Traditional gender roles have it that the foundation of the nuclear family relies on my cooking dinner for my husband as he arrives home from work; current beauty and marketing trends suggest that as a woman, I ought to substitute my delicious Crème Brulée with a prudent low-fat yogurt (thank you, Sarah Haskins, for illustrating this point so hilariously); to splurge, why not try a cheesecake.
Now, I have nothing against a good yogurt or a nice cheesecake, or, for that matter, eating healthy (more about this later). But food, like everything else in the sexed-up 21st century has become gender-specific. Indeed, we should think about our very complex relationship to food as women. Food envelopes our concerns about gender binaries, self-image and the eco-movement. It facilitates our ability to socialize and even dictates our class strata. Food is life.

I don't puff myself up, of course, to be an expert in any of these things. I'm not a nutritionist; I follow a mediocre, rushed, and haphazard exercise schedule. And like everyone I occasionally misstep, sidestep, and sometimes binge when it comes to my diet. I'm not a master chef; I've set off the fire alarm (more than once). I've made terrible culinary decisions. I cut corners and almost always stray from my original recipe. My technique is non-existent. And I have never, ever tasted that elusive $100,000 white truffle. But when food works, it really works. I work, write and live through a feminist lens, but am still defining my own approach within that myriad of possibilities and types of feminist approaches. I grew up in a world where bonding with other women often meant cooking with them our small town or farm kitchen, then, feeling that feminism ultimately meant rejecting that traditional sphere, rejected that space for an urban, academic life that left little time for cooking. I adopted it again to calm down, and to go home. All I know at this point is that as women, we deserve and will demand to be whole human beings: Not sexed up, not sexed down, not downtrodden, not raised on a pedestal. Feminism is not a theory; it is a lens through which to see. It is the knowledge that women are independent and fully-formed human beings. We are dynamic, independent, whole, troubled, intelligent, talented, sometimes sensual, sometimes sensible and we are beautiful. And many of us like to eat tasty, tasty dinners.

What gives me authority to write a blog about food and feminism is that I'm struggling with both as much as any of you are. And I thought of it first.

Food is complex. Food is sensual. Food is terrifying. And food has the potential to be politically radical. It deserves a place in the blogosphere, and I am going to give it that place.