Week 4 of the Great 10-Week Paternity Leave Experiment was slower, food-wise anyway, than those weeks that came before it. I made a couple of now-standard meals (salmon, chicken parm) and focused on some new side dishes that I can add to the rotation. I wrote about some of these in this post; I also took advantage of some extra mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, and avocados and made bruschetta and a tomato/avocado salad on Friday night. So altogether it was kind of an off week...still eating well, but fewer forays into uncharted gastronomic areas than before.
Making fewer full meals meant that I had some more time for thinking about food, however. And since my reasons for cooking extend beyond a simple (or not so simple) desire to put food on the table, I think this was an important week for me.
So before going on, a bit of background, some of which may be repetitive (especially if you live with me). Over the past year or so I've become much more interested in food--what it is (not an easy question anymore), where it comes from, and why we eat what we eat. I don't profess to love food or be a foodie. My tastes are very bland, and in order to keep my body happy, I shy away from trying most new foods/cuisines.
I also have no sense of basic nutrition. I'm not kidding--aside from vaguely recalling a 10th-grade chem experiment where we identified what a "calorie" was (I believe a donut and bunsen burner were involved), the notion of calories is foreign to me. Same with saturated fat, protein, etc...I eat what I like, and since I have been given the gift of high metabolism, I never gain weight--which, I'm sure, has added to my ability to ignore basic nutritional guidelines. As I grow older though, and as I realize that my body is not, in fact, unbreakable, I am more convinced that my Day of Reckoning--the day that I wake up with a gut--is approaching, and that I should probably amend my poor eating habits sooner rather than later.
So my decision to spend a good amount of time in the kitchen is, in part, a deliberate attempt to learn more about food and nutrition. Pretty simple.
But another--and perhaps more important--factor is that I am worried about the future of eating. More specifically, I am worried about how the new culture of consumption (especially food consumption, which is easy and ubiquitous in the U.S.) will impact my two kids in their formative years. Two recent books, Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" and Paul Roberts' "The End of Food" have fed my paranoia a bit, as they both make a number of interesting (and troubling) points about eating. Pollan laments the fact that eating has become unduly complicated, citing our recent obsession with nutrients and the chemical structures that underlie basic staples like potatoes and fish, and posits that many people (especially in the West) find that knowing what to eat is difficult and confusing. Roberts' focus is more on food as a commodity than individual eaters. His analysis of how the global food economy has grown, as well as the reasons why supermarkets are stocked with so many more types of "food products" now as compared to 20 years ago, is fascinating.
(I also recommend watching "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on ABC...it puts a very human face on a lot of the issues explored in the books above.)
On a personal level, I don't find eating too complicated, and I'm not worried about an immediate collapse of the world food economy. But I am concerned that my kids may grow up in an era where eating (and "mealtime") is no longer seen as a communal, shared experience, but rather as purely a means to an end--you're hungry, you eat something, now you are not hungry and can continue on with your day. (Hypocrisy note: when at work, I eat 95% of my lunches at my desk.) It seems that mealtime is now seen as wasted productivity time--even in schools, for our youngest kids. I don't like this, because I think it feeds into our appetite for (or at least our willingness to consume) foods like this, or this, or this, which is supposedly supposed to take the burn away from eating products like this. It's all super convenient, it's all really quick to consume, and it's all crap.
So I'm not sure where this leaves me. From spending a lot of the past 4 weeks shopping and cooking, I know that making meals takes considerable effort, from planning to shopping to cooking to cleaning. It also takes a considerable amount of time. I find it hard to believe that I will be able to continue this rate of cooking when I return to work in mid-May...and while I would love to continue my leave indefinitely in order to stay in the kitchen, this is just not possible.
For now I am enjoying the challenge of learning to cook a more varied menu. I still think of trips to Russo's and Trader Joe's as a treat, not a chore, and creating a meal out of a bunch of raw ingredients does give me a sense of accomplishment. Small steps...but, hopefully, meaningful ones.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I'm not sure I would agree with your description of an off-week: you made some good meals, profited from things in your fridge, and ate well without having to make much effort in some cases. That's pretty critical to me given the whole job-children-whatever-other-commitments roundabout.
ReplyDeleteI also think that being able to throw together a few fresh ingredients serves a dual purpose: ease and greater likelihood that those ingredients are pretty fresh and unprocessed. My absolute favourite summer meal has to be fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil maybe with bread; obviously not everyone eats like that, and good mozzarella isn't cheap, but it's certainly not a difficult thing to do, and there are loads of similar meals. Or last night just a simple salad from things already in the fridge or the cupboard (throw on cranberries or nuts or apricots or olives or whatever else to make it more interesting; it took me a while to accept that dinner could be something simple like that, too).
I also love to expand my cooking repertoire, but I'm always on the look out for really easy ideas that taste good and that can be put together while recognizing that we have other commitments or demands on our time. It's those ideas that help to get away from the processed foods, I think.
As for the food economy, it's part of of our larger economy: we make cheap jeans in India and cheap tomatoes in California, but now we're sort of realizing the consequences of that: it's all cheaper and perhaps allows more consumers access to both jeans and tomatoes, but we've closed down all the local jean factories and half the small farms in the process. There are entire aisles in the supermarket that I don't even go down: the stuff in those aisles just makes no sense to me!
No processed foods for you? I'm surprised you don't fancy prawn cocktail flavored crisps!
ReplyDeleteGood point on the economy issue--I agree. It is increasingly harder to buy any commodities locally...though I suppose food could be the exception to that rule, as long as you are prepared to do more work (and probably spend more). I've been looking at purchasing my meat from local MA farms, but surprise surprise--it is much more expensive than just grabbing the Perdue pre-packaged breasts at Stop and Shop. I'm reasonably impressed with myself, though, as I've been shopping almost exclusively at TJ's and Russo's for the past few weeks...but I do wonder whether TJ's is that much better than the bigger chains. Could it just be the yuppie supermarket? :)
On last week's menu--I'm noticing that leftovers do not sit in the fridge for weeks on end anymore! I've taken the "salad as dinner" to heart; it's not a bad way to go, and it's been refreshing to see how far a few ingredients can take you.