For dinner last night, I made bread out of Jacques Pépin's pizza dough recipe, which I let rise 3 times instead of just 2 and I baked alongside a casserole dish full of water so I could keep the oven moist. I also made beef stew out of an arm-roast I got on discount last time I went to the store. At the end of the procedure, as I was shredding the meat to stir back into the stew, I realised that humans on every continent have been making some variation on this dish ever since the culinary sciences were discovered. Meat stew and a bread-like food have been eaten together for literal millennia. At first, I didn't even use a spoon; I just grabbed up whatever I could get with the bread; and I thought about the Cottagecore trend that's popular right now. I can understand wanting to "return" to a more simplistic existence, but what I don't understand is why this trend needs to be served with a side of white supremacy and garnished with traditional gender roles.
You'll notice I said "more simplistic existence", rather than "a simpler existence". "Simpler" implies that it's easier, less complicated; which is the idea that every cottagecore coquette in a $100.000 kitchen tends to espouse. I'm reminded of a rebuke of cottagecore that I heard on Tumblr once: "The 1800s were always easier for the master in the plantation house." In other words, it was always easier for rich white men. What exactly do these traditionalist shiksas' husbands do all day, exactly? For the most part, they tend to be tech startup CEOs; first cryptocurrency, then NFTs, now AI. They aren't interested in a "simpler" existence— they wouldn't have the money to afford all this "traditional" shite if they didn't have modern technology. As far as I can tell, "cottagecore" is just a marketable word meaning "regression back to the 1940s". He wants to return home at the end of the day to a fawning, servile wife who has spent the entire day cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their children. He wants to dominate her insofar as her needs and desires are not merely secondary to his, they are wholly irrelevant; and she is expected to "spread the gospel" online through TikTok, so that other rich white men might reap the benefits of a "RETVRN to tradition".
Also, where are the Black people in this new traditionalist society? As far as the "cottagecore" aesthetic is concerned, it doesn't apply to Black people. After all, "the 1800s were always easier for the master in the plantation house." That's where the Black people are supposed to be in this so-called "RETVRN"; enslaved in the fields. To a certain degree, this is already happening. The United States Constitution still allows enslavement as punishment for a crime, and that's where your mandatory minimum sentences come from. Cops plant a dime bag on a Black man at a traffic stop, claim his car reeked of cannabis in the official report, the judge hands down a compulsory ruling, and hey-presto, Ten Years a Slave. If you ever see a "Made Proudly in the USA" label on a piece of consumable goods, you can be pretty well-assured it was made by a chain-gang in a prison sweatshop.
As I say, I can understand wanting to return to a more simplistic existence. "More simplistic" implying a state of lesser refinement, where one can drop the pretenses of station and title and just be human for a change. We can't stay there forever, but we can visit it every so often.
Anyway, the best part about having this bread left over is the fact I can make a high-fantasy inn meal for lunch the next day: hunk of bread, hunk of cheese, some pickles, and half a capsicum. Do I have stew left over? You know it. It ended up making enough for 5 people.