Cooking

My characters spend a lot of time cooking. There is a reason for that. Food does not magically appear, just as clothes do not wash themselves. Too often we are conditioned to overlook the hard work that goes into running a household and it is devalued as unimportant. Writing about a world where everything is done by hand gives me a chance to show how important those tasks are and to highlight those skills. My mother, college educated and brilliant, was a home maker for a number of years, raising her children while my father went off to work. It was hard, thankless and often physically demanding work that she did. Not only did she take on the entirety of the house and all the work associated with that, but the children as well. She did it brilliantly and it was appreciated, but I know that in many cases it is not.