For women in the West many would admit their relationship with food is a complicated one. We shop, we cook, and binge and diet. It's often a love hate thing.
But what of the room where it's prepared? It wasn't that long ago that some women might have associated the space of a kitchen as a trap.
But lately it seems many of us are shamelessly aspiring to being the domestic goddesses.
Anna McNamee went to investigate what the kitchen means to women (and men) today.
She started by talking to Nora Seton the author of the novel The Kitchen Congregation and the actress Pauline Flanagan who's revival of Frank McGuinness's play Dolly West's Kitchen started in the West End last night. The Kitchen Congregation - A Memoir by Nora Seton (Phoenix Press, ISBN: 075381076X, £6.99).