Small Good News: Cooking Up An Answer To Corporate Cuisine

When my almost 20-year-old daughter was little, someone suggested that I not teach her how to cook, for the same reason that some people thought girls should not learn to type. If you have the skill you'll end up having to use it, was how the thinking went, so the best way to avoid being a full-time homemaker or an underappreciated secretary was not to be proficient at either.

As a cook and a speed typist, I was taken aback -- and because I was cooking at the time, I was focused on ingredients, not response. A male friend who happens to be a very good cook stepped in to disagree. The ability to make a meal was not a guarantee of domestic subservience; quite the contrary. The home cook has all the power, because he or she can execute a menu. Home cooks eat what they feel like making, and their family members come along for the gustatory ride.

Any generous cook -- which in the best cases is a redundancy -- extends her reach to master her family's favorites, and as said daughter's week-long visit approaches, I have lined up ingredients for the dishes she looks forward to when she comes home. My friend is right: The ability to cook gives me options that non-cooks don't have, and what is autonomy about, if not having options?

Which brings me to Michael Pollan's excellent article in the New York Times Magazine, "No One Cooks Here Anymore." It may seem at first to be chockablock with bad news -- the slow death of home-cooking, the ascendance of take-out and convenience foods, and the altering of the national mindset to embrace frozen peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in a child's lunchbox, as though slathering a homemade PB and J is too tricky and time-consuming. The food-industrial complex is, it seems, as powerful in its sphere as the military-industrial complex is in the world of tanks and ammunition; a lot of effort has gone into convincing us that cooking at home is a 1950s collectible along with shirtwaist dresses and cars with bench seats and big fins. The post-millennial citizen, the modern individual, would no sooner cook than wear a girdle or sock garters.

And yet here is Michael Pollan, journalist, studier of how and what we eat, passionate guy, suggesting that home-cooked food can cure everything from the obesity epidemic to social alienation. If eating were simply a matter of fuel intake, we could be squeezing purees out of pouches like astronauts in early outer-space movies. But it isn't, as anyone who has a favorite childhood food memory can attest. The ebullient chef Art Smith says that cooking is love, and he makes that pronouncement with a genuine spirit that makes it impossible to be embarrassed by the sentiment. We don't even need the obvious economic argument here: The fiscal benefits of home-cooking aside, it's just hard to contemplate a future that does not involve the wafting of wonderful aromas when you open the front door.

Yes, we are overextended, overstressed, and uncertain about whether, or when, or from where respite is coming. And yes, it seems that Julia Child was displeased by Julie Powell's blog, which she found lacking in seriousness, a sad note in an otherwise delightful bi-generational tale. Because Powell discovered what Michael Pollan would like all of us to consider -- that hidden behind the large-screen, HD production that is corporate easy-food lurks the individual, small-scale joy of food on a plate.

Decades ago, my husband vowed to give up sports television because it struck him that those weekend hours might profitably be spent on something more immediate and more productive. Pollan's comparison of food programming and sports programming feels about as right as a berry cobbler in high summer: What if we cut back a show a week and learned to make a great roast chicken? Honest, it takes 10 minutes to prep and throw into the oven, and you can do other things while it's cooking. You don't have to do what Julie did and cook a cookbook's worth of stuff every night for a year, but you can put a toe in the water and see how good it feels.

Visit www.karenstabiner.com or write to [e-mail].

Comments

[GraceNotes]

I have recently changed my diet because of health issues, and I am learing a new way to cook. We are truly addicted to the added salt, sugar and fat in processed foods. This summer has been great because of the abundance of fresh produce. I eat a peach or some other fresh fruit for breakfast and after dinner most nights.
I have also had to learn to control portion sizes, so anything I make or buy seems to last longer because I divide up servings.
I too loved Pollan's NYT article.

[Clairvaux]

Wonderful article, Ms. Stabiner!

Chop wood, carry water. Embrace the ordinary.

Eternity in an hour and infinity in a grain of sand.

[Schneb]

I heard Pollan on NPR (Talk of the Nation? Saturday Morning Edition? --not sure) and he said something I hadn't yet heard elsewhere along the lines of this:

So much of what we buy is somehow processed for us that--with prepared foods--we're getting closer and closer to eating the components of foods: fats, carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, etc., without the accompanying components that the fresh, raw sources of such components. For example, with fruit juice, we get a very sugary substance but not the healthy fiber component that eating the raw fruit would involve.

And that 'dose' of sugar quickly hits and departs our system, leading to a 'crash' and the craving for another such 'dose'.

Not a good scenario.

Maybe Pollan's said that in the article or elsewhere, but it was new to me.

[mlaiuppa]

I'd love to cook more. I used to cook a lot. I used to bake bread. I used to can summer garden overabundance.

But I'm tired. I work full time. And when I get home I'm too tired to cook. I'm too tired to clean. I take a nap, then wake up and eat whatever is fast and available. Then I go to sleep and do it again the next day. On weekends, I try to clean.

Maybe I can cook again when I retire. But I live alone and no one takes care of me except for me. And I'm just too tired to make full, home cooked from scratch meals anymore.

[Schneb]

I can relate (other scheduling demands/etc.)--and there's a big social component to eating, to the enjoyment of eating.

I don't know your schedule, but a thought--take or leave: if you map out what other ways you use your time, is there any that you could give up in place of cooking 1 meal? If that meal were an occasion for getting together with someone (neighbor, coworker, etc.) would that make the meal more appealing?

I'll bet there's someone near you with a similar set of interests--whatever those might be--that you could connect with on-line or otherwise, who could bring a salad and a loaf of good bread, etc. etc.

Pretty soon, that weekly meal would be a highlight of the week.

I don't mean to preach, or get into your business--just a thought.

[JScott]

I can too. But after having a stroke and taking a nutrition class, then reading labels of prepared food, GASP all that sodium, sorry don't wanna go on dialysis or have another stroke. Now I consciously make the effort to make meals that will last for 2 or 3 days, I don't cook that great but I'm not too picky and at least the food is edible and palatable and I read labels and am pickier about the fresh veg and fruits (shout out to Whole Foods), if you want to make the effort you can do it, as a relative said to me if you can read you can cook.

[jaundicedview]

Thank you for the post, and for pointing out that being able to cook is a liberating experience, not the slavery is has been depicted as. My wife and I both cook, she does about 3/5 of the cooking and I do the remaining 2/5. We've discovered the slow cooker this year, and also the solar cooker. We decided to try and take some advantage of the hellish Texas heat, and not heat up the house in the bargain. We've had successes and failures, the lasagna was overdone and pulpy. but my wife made the most amazing pot roast I had ever tasted! A cheap shoulder roast, some onions, carrots, potatoes and herbs, and heaven!

[Karen Stabiner - Huffpost Blogger]

Not a jaundiced view at all, seems to me: Slow cooking took a hit when everybody got a microwave, but it seems to be staging a comeback, and it may be the perfect approach for the moment; you can take an inexpensive cut, cook and neglect it for hours, and have a wonderful meal when you're done. Make a big batch of whatever it is and you have leftovers.

[LarryD]

When my wife travels, often for a week at a time, 6 of the 7 dinners I eat are food I've prepared. Never an entire roast chicken, as Ms. Stabiner recommends, even if it only takes 10 minutes prep -- the leftovers would be daunting. My considerable financial savings aside, eating dinner I've made, solo at home with a book, beats reading that book at a table in a restaurant. And while I see supermarkets from mass market chains to Whole Foods now devoting huge floor space to already prepared items, that kind of corporate cookery does little for my palate and less for my wallet.

[BluBuffalo]

I've been slowly learning those recipes that are both fast and easy to prepare so I can save time and money. Tossing a chicken or pork butt into the slow cooker first thing in the morning takes no longer than 15 minutes, but the house smells fantastic all day long and I usually end up with enough to food to feed my family for multiple meals.

There's also a lot to say for the home-cooked lunch even if it is just leftovers or the coffee in the thermos in the morning. Trying to eat two meals a day from home (even on the go) allows you to not feel so guilty if the evening gets away from you and you end up ordering a pizza.