Dan and I just finished the documentary mini-series, Cooked, and we can’t stop thinking about it.

“Explored through the lenses of the four natural elements – fire, water, air and earth –Cooked is an enlightening and compelling look at the evolution of what food means to us through the history of food preparation and its universal ability to connect us. Highlighting our primal human need to cook, the series urges a return to the kitchen to reclaim our lost traditions and to forge a deeper, more meaningful connection to the ingredients and cooking techniques that we use to nourish ourselves.”

First of all, it’s Michael Pollan, who is great. But I think the best part of the series is getting to see people cooking in different cultures and countries. From India to North Carolina, it’s nice to see how cooking varies around the world. In Morocco, bread is considered sacred and served at every meal. I also loved that they have communal ovens they take the dough to so that can be baked. Bread is back, y’all! Just check out this article in the Wall Street Journal. In every episode there’s a big push to actually cook your meals at home, with real ingredients, which is something that I think is incredibly important. Since we’ve been married, I’ve tried to make a big point of cooking most nights of the week, but this encouraged me even more. Dan always gets home from work later than I do, so it’s nice to just be in the kitchen preparing a meal for us. (While I do mostly cook from scratch, this week we did have a boxed lasagna from Costco-the turkey, ricotta, spinach one is delicious. Oh and a bagged salad on the side 🙂 Also, I am aware that we are childless and cooking is thus infinitely more do-able, ha.)

Dan even has a sourdough starter going and made pain de campagne bread (using this book for the recipe)!! He’s gone down one of his curiosity holes, where he completely absorbs himself in a topic or skill. They are pretty fun 🙂 And now I get fresh baked bread, which is tough to beat. There’s actually a whole wheat loaf sitting on the counter right this second!

So if you are looking for something to watch while staying inside and avoiding the heat (dang, it’s gotten WARM), try out Cooked!