Written by Pamella Malva
When it comes to food, some people only like to eat, and some (I believe a small number) only like to bake it. But when it comes to some girls form Cásper, cooking is a lot more than just eating or baking it. Even though some of them sell what they cook – the girls I interviewed mostly like to cook either for sharing with their friends or to make their family happy with it. For them, cooking isn’t like an obligation, is more like a hobby, where they can make people feel good about what they do.
For the girls, cooking is sort of a soothing activity. They combine it with the college and, for those who are working, with their jobs. Nataly Paschoal, for example, loves to cook since she was 13 years old – her first-time cooking –, but nowadays, being a sophomore in Journalism, she only has time to cook when she gets a free time from work. As the same time, Julia Martins Alves, who is in the same course, and likes to cook pretty much since she was a child too, besides cooking for hobbie, also cooks to sell and help her parents with the money.
The kitchen is where they can stay calm and do what they like to do. For some, the love for cooking started with a family member – mother, grandmother, grand grandmother – like it was with Ana Beatriz, who spent a lot of her childhood with her grand grandmother learning a lot of family recipes that she does until nowadays. Or like it was with Kelly Silva: her mom used to take culinary courses ant used to take Kelly with her, in those courses the girl found out her love for cooking and started to cook since that.
All stories have their own particularity, but in Ana’s and Kelly’s cases, it’s different from what we hear very often. Ana grew up believing that women’s part in the society was cooking for their husbands and family, because she had only seen her female relatives in the kitchen. But now, knowing that she only cooks because she likes it, and fighting against wrong thoughts, she no longer has the same believes. In Kelly’s case, she grew up watching a famous cooking show from Gazeta channel, called “Mulheres” (women, in Portuguese) with her grandmother and got to know her passion about cooking and, as a bonus, she got to meet our college, Cásper Líbero, which happens to be in the same building as the Gazeta Channel.
In another hand, some people may think that those who love to cook only started it by watching moms and grandmothers, but with Sofia Costa it wasn’t that way. Of course, she has her memories with her grandmother cooking, but who helped her loving the kitchen was her father. She has a lot of memories where she and her father cook together, with the same love for cooking and eating.
As lovers of the art of cooking, the girls I interviewed love to test new recipes and to share their results with the people they like. Elisa Villaça, for example, loves to try new recipes until she gets it the most perfect way – never forgetting that it always can be better – and, now, after trying the same brownie recipe over and over again, she sells it for friends, bringing some happiness with a sweet cake. At the same time, Nataly, for example, has her own blog, where she posts the recipes she tests and a Facebook page where she posts all her plates. You can check it out right here: http://natypaschoal.blogspot.com.br/?m=1
When asked about some comments that follows their own about cooking, most of the girls said to always listen things like “you can get married now” or “your husband will be lucky, because you know how to cook”, just one of them did not remember that kind of comment. While Elisa believes that those thoughts are a common sense between elder people, Ana Beatriz believes that those comments between younger people tend to glorify boys who also cooks, when this should be something regular and not a exception.
“The women’s place is in the kitchen?”, certainly a philosophical question. Happily, all of them answered basically the same genius answer: the place for a woman is where she to be in. It’s the idea of having a choice: if you want to be in the kitchen, you have the same right as the girl who wants to be in a NASA space ship, it’s all about wanting and having the same right to get it. So, what do you say about doing what you love?