What ‘Avatar’ taught me about cooking

December 23rd, 2009 by lynn under Humour and Leisure

*spoiler alert* Spoilers for Avatar 3D ahead!

Ha, seriously, what COULD a sci-fi film teach me about cooking? Food isn’t even a big deal in the movie – the only time you ever really see food is when Jake is hurriedly scarfing down scrambled eggs. ‘Julie and Julia’ this ain’t.

So it doesn’t actually tell you HOW to cook food, but it sure gave me a new perspective on food preparation. Or rather, why I should seriously bone up on my cooking chops, because “all energy is borrowed”.

Things die so that you can live. This is true not only of meat, but also of vegetables, fruit and grains. Of course, you can eat fruit without killing the tree, but you can also eat eggs without killing the chicken. Same thing. If you eat rice, the rice plant doesn’t regrow. You eat a carrot, the carrot doesn’t regrow. To me, plants and animals are just different forms of the same thing – energy. We borrow energy from the earth to feed ourselves, and when we die, we return this energy to the earth. That’s what I interpret the Na’vi standpoint to be, anyway. Caveat: this doesn’t mean I gotta eat everything on this earth. I reserve the right not to eat humans, pet animals, certain yucky plants, etc.

So what’s this got to do with food? Just that I should really be a competent cook, so as to do justice to the plants and animals that died so that I may eat. I also don’t like wasting food, because it’s tantamount to throwing away the sacrifice of the living thing that produced what is on your plate. Just as Jakesully gave thanks to the deer for its sacrifice to feed his people, so should we give thanks to whatever animal or plant ended up on our plate. But of course I don’t think they have any spirits going off to live in whatever sacred tree.

It just boils down to one word: Respect for your food. And being a bad cook is really just disrespectful, because it perverts what should have been tasty into something that is not. Imagine if you were a chicken and you died to make chicken curry, but it was a really horrible curry. Wouldn’t you be pissed to see that your sacrifice amounted to this?

I’m taking “food worship” to a whole new level.