Cooking beans at home is incompatible with 21st century ways – 02/21/2024 – Cozinha Bruta

Before taking my son to school, I prepared a very Brazilian lunch for both of us: minced meat, rice, beans, fried egg and onion farofa.

I only had the farofa made. The beans, the most time-consuming element, I soaked the night before. He started cooking at 10am, after we got back from a baby appointment.

The rango was ready at noon sharp. We ate and left for school.

It took three paragraphs to say that preparing lunch took me all morning. Okay, I cooked enough beans to feed a troop – and that will be saved for future meals, without the charm of freshly prepared beans.

The point is: if I had urgent and unpostponable tasks, I would need to get rid of the pans and go to a restaurant. Or to some food delivery service.

I still bring up the subject in the repercussions of the interview with Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of iFood, to Folha. The executive stated that, in ten years’ time, the price of delivery will be so attractive that people will stop cooking their own meals.

The article generated a lot of fuss, with people accusing iFood of wanting to exterminate home cooking and the CEO retorting with “you see”, “I was misunderstood” and “those who know me know”.

Despite iFood’s megalomaniac plans, the annihilation of homemade food is not on the far horizon. On the other hand, it is impossible to deny the decline in food prepared at home.

It is not something recent and, the richer the country, the more pronounced the trend.

In the specific case of Brazil, our food culture makes it even more difficult to maintain traditional habits. Only a demented person like me will start cooking beans on any weekday morning.

A typical Brazilian meal is made up of four, five, six different foods served together on the same plate. Very different from Italy, for example, where a pasta kills the ball in the chest on its own.

We owe it to the colonial slave heritage for the fact that we eat rice, beans, mix, eggs, farofa, fries and salad as if they appeared by magic.

A meal with so many elements, made every day at home, requires at least one person – who is usually a woman – working for free or for poor pay in the kitchen.

In clearer Portuguese, a housewife or a domestic worker.

Homemade food is not going to go away, but I suspect that rice and beans are already on the verge of extinction in Brazilian households. The typical Brazilian meal, varied, colorful and nutritious, is incompatible with the ways of the 21st century.

In addition to the structural changes in society – in the middle class, mothers and fathers work outside the home, but they no longer have the funds to employ almost captive maids –, there is added the pressure of big money to plant soybeans where there used to be beans.

There are fewer beans to eat, and they are mainly found in restaurants by the kilo and bars.

As for the liberation of the cooks, whether they were employees or housewives, there doesn’t seem to be much to celebrate.

Labor exploitation has only transformed. The former cooks are underemployed in other sectors, they eat snacks and noodles and give the same diet to their children. Husbands spend their lives whizzing around on two wheels.

Servitude now falls to those who spend the day on motorbikes, in the hellish traffic, going from one side of the city to the other with other people’s goods.

Food, including.

LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access five free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.