Where are the Chefs?
“Is There a Connection Between Woodworking and Cooking”
My Dad was a master electrician who participated in the other trades as well. He made the cabinets in my grandparent’s house. He built the addition onto the house that I grew up in. He installed the plumbing in the two new bathrooms in the addition. He patched the holes in the sheetrock that we kids made. And he could cook.
My mother was a stay-at-home-mom, raising us ten children. She did the bulk of the cooking Mon-Sat with Dad helping out on Sunday. Sometimes it was just making the biscuits. Sometimes it was more. Sometimes it was breakfast on Saturday.
When we went on camping trips, Dad would push us to eat well. We learned to carefully make breakfast over a campfire if we didn’t have a stove. We learned how to pack different types of foods, sometimes starting off with them frozen. When we took canoe trips, we were able to pack the Dutch oven and boy did we feast!
But Dad wasn’t a chef. His go to line (that I later adopted) was that he “enjoyed eating so he figured he probably should learn to cook.”
Learning to cook so we could eat was ingrained in us. Even though the five oldest children are boys, we were responsible for helping out in the kitchen with meals, baking, and even canning. When we hit the teenage years, we learned to make a few meals on our own to feed ourselves when the parents were out.
Later, it became less of a chore and more of a hobby. If I’m going to cook and eat, I might as well learn to make some good food and eat well. Currently, I do the majority of the cooking and my wife is “a very gracious diner who doesn’t complain because she didn’t make the food”.
As I get further into meeting and getting to know other woodworkers (and trades people), I’ve seen the same pattern. The welding instructor and I swap recipes at lunch time as we notice what each other eats. He does most of the cooking in his house too. Chris Schwarz shared his recipe for chicken pot pie on his Substack and it’s known that he does the majority of the cooking in his house. When I get together with other woodworkers, talks of food and cooking often come up and many of them are like us, the cooks in the household.
Is there a connection here or is this just a sign of the times? Have we realized that we don’t want to be like my grandpa who (many, many years ago) had to ask my mother to bring some food over when grandma was in the hospital? Or is it a connection between working with our hands and realizing that this set of skills transfers easily into other trades, including cooking? Dad wasn’t a chef but said that he wasn’t going to be like the many other men and depend solely on other people to provide him a meal. He took pride in working with his hands and being smart resourceful enough to be an electrician (and learn other trades), so he figured he could learn how to cook too.
I talk frequently to my students about how much easier it is to learn other trades or other skills once you start to master one trade. It can be daunting to try something new but working with your hands is working with your hands. Problem solving is problem solving. Following instructions, recipes, and procedures can be applied to anything being learned.
So… Now I’m curious to poll the readers and see how many of you are also cooks, “master” grillers, or bakers. Or is your role the gracious diner? Is there a correlation between woodworking and cooking?
"Or is your role the gracious diner?"
I'm the garrulous drunk clinging to the table with gravy down my shirt.
I also cook for my family, though that role predates my wood working. I was fortunate to be raised by a mother that didn’t believe in traditional gender roles (she taught us all how to cook, clean, do laundry, etc at a young age). I also have the mindset of “how hard could it be?” which helps in all manner of things, but definitely helps with furniture making.