"Sanitas Per Escam" means kitchen is for passionate sex?

I am not a food-maniac who eats a great variety of foods.  Nor am I a food snob.  It just happens that, within the limited range, I love tasty food.  Tasty and healthy food.

No, make that tasty and healthy home-cooked food.

Cooking at home seems to be getting to be an endangered activity as humanity joins the ranks of the middle and upper economic levels.  So endangered that:

Alas, the kitchen still might be the most expensive, yet least used, room in any house or flat. Lest we forget, the kitchen is the tiled room – the one with a stove, without a commode.

Indeed!  As Sally comically noted in When Harry Met Sally, there is the notion that young, hot, couples, have passionate sex rolling around on the kitchen floor.  But, apparently, neither sex nor cooking happens in many kitchens!

The author notes that:

The original Greek symposium was a meal at home where the host would provide food, conversation, and the occasional pole dancer. Romans had similar traditions. Even in the Dark Ages, communal societies such as monasteries took their meals together. Monks and nuns might take vows of silence, poverty, and chastity; but, at mealtime they clustered to eat. Silence, sexual tension, and a good multi-grain may be the secrets to introspection and celibacy.

It is not easy to imagine a scene where Socrates is holding a symposium at home (no, hemlock was not the drink of choice!) with a pole dancer moving rhythmically a few feet away.  Hmmm .... maybe that is what is missing in my classes!

I suppose I put my kitchen to a fair degree of use.  The range has gotten dirty over the years, despite my attempts to keep it clean.  Whether or not what I cook is tasty (yes, it is, dammit!) I am sure of one thing: I know I am in control of my own food and how (un)healthy it is.  If nutrition is 80 percent of good health, then it is a good feeling that I am in absolute control over that 80 percent.

Though, occasionally, I do venture into, ahem, unhealthy foods.  Like the banana bread/cake that I made, with marzipan.  I then wonder why my waistline has increased by an inch over the year!

But, that came after a lot healthier meal:

Happy cooking, folks!