Chicken Soup

The recipe over at Meanwhile, Back at the Kitchen prompted MaryAlice to say:

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This is the way "real" soup is made not poured into a saucepan from a can & whisked around with some water! This is why "gourmet" restaurants charge so much for their food - it is tedious and takes time but most of it is not really "hard".

I thought of the old song, This is the way we wash our clothes, etc, this week, and looked it up. There is an order of housewifely duties set forth in it that women have been doing for centuries, that gave focus & so-called "meaning" to their days, and eventually added up to a life well lived taking good care of their families. Part of this taking care includes the preparation of food - very time consuming but overall, important. O, yes, we eat to live & not live to eat; this I have to remind myself of constantly.
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And for me to reply:

Yes, I agree. While William Blake asserted that architecture is the foundation of culture, the part that best survives barbarism, I think he is definitely wrong. Cuisine is the foundation of culture. Not the haute cuisine of restaurants and royalty but the kitchen cooking that sustains life and spices it with time consuming dishes, as you say. The cooking of simple dishes that have simmered centuries and which coordinate with community and season.