Prep Time

The recipe for my Minnesota Wild Rice Soup said that prep time would take ten minutes—though that measure would not include the 30 minutes preparing the wild rice which is actually a semi-aquatic type of grass and not rice at all. Preparing the wild rice should have been considered prep work because when it was cooked it would be added to the soup and not cooked as the soup. I could even prepare the rice ahead of time, test for its chewiness and add it at the appropriate time. I did so.

Why exactly should prep time be distinguished from say, cook time?  Prep is the necessary gathering, peeling and chopping of the vegetable and fleshly ingredients that will constitute the meal when cooked, though to be sure, as a vegetarian I do not prep any meat or fish product. The distinct designation of prep time seems another example of the establishment of time standards by which activities can be measured and life organized. In the novel Measuring the World, Daniel Kehlmann attributes to Alexander von Humboldt the idea that measurement creates reality. Numbers become a means of controlling chaos. The notice of prep and cook times places boundaries on the process of meal preparation and makes chaos containable. But Thoreau writes “We are compelled to live so thoroughly and sincerely reflecting on our steps, reverencing our life, that we never make allowance for the possible changes.” For Thoreau it was the wild he sought, perhaps the wild another name for chaos. He opens the essay “Walking,” with an advocacy of wildness: “I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil.” I do not think Thoreau would adhere much to the establishment of requisite prep times. Me? I am a somewhat careless cook and experience the kitchen chaos as my usual modus operandi. Sometimes it seems a bit wild in there. And yes, I understand that defining a time for prep time and cook time does seem to control the chaos of running between cabinets and shelves pulling down and drawing out and preparing ingredients immediately required to the recipe. But the establishment of prep time and cook time are irrelevant to me: I prefer to prepare the meal in some leisure listening to music to accompany the rhythmic chopping, peeling and shredding. I sometimes wear ear buds to leave my partner in her silence and her reading in the next room. Also, during what is referred to as prep time I place at some safe distance an alcoholic beverage to accompany my engagement in gathering and preparing the ingredients for the dish. I am careful to to keep any of the worked-over pieces of vegetables as they are being gathered, chopped, ground and shredded from flying into the shimmering liquid in the crystal tumbler. I am a careless cook and I never do meet the standard set by the prep time established in the recipe. I turn the volume of the music up. I take another sip.

Prep time. The readying of materials that when done are to be transformed into the meal. But I wonder now why prep time is separate from cook time. Is it really a distinct and separate activity? Ecclesiastes says that there is a season set for everything, though Kohelet does not designate an order or time dimension for the occurrences of anything; he says only that there is a time for everything. “There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to plant and a time to reap, a time to rend and a time to sew.” And so to follow Kohelet there must be a time to prepare and a time to cook! A time to consume and a time to wash the dishes. But one thing is also very clear to me from Ecclesiastes: everything will occur in a life though there is no set time or even order for when or for how long anything might occur. Except, of course, for the times of being born and dying. Nor is there much direction as to what is to be done while waiting for each happening. The recipe sheet says that prep time is 10 minutes, but that is not consistent to my movements. I am not so ordered. In fact, I am not prepping, I am cooking dinner. And it all began at the market! Thus, it might be that our lives can be understood as always prep work and simultaneously always cooking. I do not need to be cautioned about prep time because in fact I couldn’t cook anything without first preparing; why then is prep time kept separate from cook time on the recipe sheet. What chaos is being controlled? Having read through the recipe and setting my priorities I think that I can decide how much time I want to spend setting a dinner on the table, when to begin the process and how quickly or leisurely I want to work. Thoreau welcomes the chaos—wildness—as a way to be alive in the world. In the film “The Taste of Things, cooking is life. We are always cooking. As I chop my vegetables I wear my cut gloves to forestall the time to rend. But as Hamlet says, if it be not now, yet it will come. I don’t know why I care to distinguish prep time from cook time. It is all one continuous activity.