She is like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food from afar.
Proverbs 31-14
Proverbs 31-14
We see a metaphor for a Goodwife's cooking abilities in international trade. The point of the metaphor is not in the financial aspect of trade deficits or a declining dollar, but in the range and breadth of her food provision capabilities. Out of a net spread wide come rewards, passed through her selection and efforts, in what she puts on the table. While nobody wants nor expects that every day's menu must be replete with arcane food groups, the Goodwife's menu shall not be limited to a pedestrian “hamburger helper” and a rotation of the easiest, most accessible items. We must realize that nobody thinks (like the family in the commercial seems to), that the woman whose cookies came mixed, sliced, and on a ready-to-bake pan is going to any effort, past foisting on the unemancipated offspring her mundane self-absorption. “Let’s all pretend that I cook and please credit me with a reputation!” These are called "convenience foods" for a reason. If a box of Stouffer's Lasagna is pulled out of the freezer because you just returned from a vacation and you have no time to do anything else, God bless it for being convenient. If your life needs a stockpile of convenience foods because every moment of that life is playing "Real Housewives from Whatever God Forsaken Culdesac You Live In" or you can't be bothered to learn how to cook because you like reading romance novels, the convenience it provides has been demanded by your world-without-end inadequacy.
Is “world merchant” the metaphor for your kitchen? Or would it be, “Mom, you are as intriguing as, Oh, I dunno,... as tap water.”
2 comments:
We love convenience foods, why? because they are quicker, they taste fine, and we can get on to much more important things like playing swords with levi, or relaxing on the couch. You can spend an entire evening making the food, eating it, then cleaning the whole meal up. By that time its nearing your childs bed time and you have to get that whole process in motion. By the time hes in bed, you are too exhausted from the long day so you just crash in the bedroom and the day starts all over again. Rather, you just make some convenince food with paper plates that dont have to be washed, and you prep it at 6, its ready by 6:05, and are done by 620-625pm and still have an evening to enjoy.
And how do we know she wasnt buying hamburger helper in bulk from afar?
We agree, I imagine, that that which you choose to make important, you ought to give time and effort to. For you it may be "swords with Levi or relaxing on the couch". Our actual difference is in making that choice. I have already stated that convenience foods are a God-send in pressing times, but hinted that permanently pressing times has other explanations. You might even agree if you found Friend A playing swords or resting on couch without having accomplished "some other task which you value that is not cooking well". These distinctions are what we rulers of our respective fiefdoms pass as laws. I like, as King Lemuel's mother seemed to like, a woman who has reached out to achieve something special for her family in the dining arena. It may be very true that an aboriginal woman who traveled to the U.S.A. and brought back a semi truck load of "hamburger helper" for the tribe would be viewed legitimately as this "goodwife". An American woman doing the same might find her children and husband "rising up and calling her retarded".
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