I’ve been a bonafide foodie for most of my adult life. I come by my foodie-dom honestly, having been raised in a household governed by the culinary mindset of the 1950s—eat it from packages, mixes, cans, frozen boxes. My mother was overall a pretty fair housekeeper, this being an era when that’s what women were expected to do, but she had never learned to cook properly, nor did she have much interest in the process.
As a result, she was always looking for shortcuts around the business of preparing meals. If it came in a mix or a package or a can and we didn’t holler too loudly about it, that became a staple. I loved some of it—the spaghetti sauce made with Lawry’s Spaghetti Sauce Mix, then simmered with poorly-drained ground beef so it was absolutely swimming in fat, the pot roast made with Lawry’s Brown Gravy Mix, the Betty Crocker Potatoes au Gratin.
Eventually I left home and began cooking on my own. At first my strategies were taken directly from my upbringing; my first year or so out of the house I almost lived on Hamburger Helper. But fate (and Julia Child) stepped in to change things.
I was a sophomore in college, enjoying my first-ever apartment of my own, and I began watching Julia regularly and cooking some of her recipes. I made a perfectly decent cheese soufflé first time out, although I had to substitute a mixing bowl for the soufflé dish. I did what she told us to do on TV, and it worked. I kept trying things out, and generally succeeded. Sometimes I failed. Friends became aware of my interest and so I received the occasional cookbook with a quip along the lines of: “now, I’m expecting some kickback from this!”
I’ve gone through various cooking binges. For a while there I was heavily into the deep classic French style, exemplified by Raymond Oliver. I’ve gone in and out of Julia Child periods—Mastering the Art of French Cooking will never lose its place on my cookbook shelf. Then I explored Deborah Madison’s wonderful styles and recipes, exploring vegetarian California cuisine with joy.
I’ve even gone into (briefly) an Indian cookery stage, and for a space of about two years I committed to veganism and became fairly adept at cooking without any animal products at all. I lost a lot of weight, to be sure. But at the same time I missed the goodies too much: ice cream, butter, fine New York steaks, boeuf bourgignon, pork loin with mushrooms, all that.
Of late my interests have veered not so much toward style of cooking but the source of the ingredients. More and more I’m concerned with absolute freshness, organic farming, local produce, all that. Here I enter a dangerously seductive territory, since such focus, much like entering the foodie world in the first place, is a one-way street. You really can’t go back to Safeway cardboard once you’ve become accustomed to honest-to-God fresh produce, real eggs, meats from animals not laced with antibiotics, and the like. You realize just too vividly what you’ve been missing.
I suppose some of it isn’t sustainable in the larger sense. Eggs, for example: a dozen really first-class eggs, produced by non-tortured hens roaming about freely and eating their natural diet rather than a commercial (even organic) feed, aren’t staples—they’re more or less luxury foodstuffs, costing more per pound than even fine beef. But they’re so much better! The yolks are full-bodied, standing up high in the white, the taste is vivid and notably varied from egg to egg, as it should be. You can poach them with confidence and they don’t need some idiotic thick sauce to cover them. The egg alone, with a touch of butter, a bit of salt, and a grind of pepper, is more than enough. OK, maybe a slight dusting of shredded Asiago. And used in recipes, even for something as homely as your basic pancakes, they add noticeable character.
The other day I made a batch of simple oatmeal cookies, avoiding all gimmicky additions. (I’m mostly a minimalist about food preparation.) But the ingredients were all top-notch: fresh organic sweet butter from Strauss, a farm-fresh egg from the farmer’s market, organic rolled oats, naturally evaporated Demarara cane sugar, organic stone-milled flour. I confess that the baking soda was standard Arm & Hammer, and the salt was your basic French “Balene” sea salt, good stuff but available in any decent supermarket. And those cookies were…well…glorious. I made an even dozen and there are only two left. Not good for the waistline, but great for the spirit. And I know precisely what was in them. Basically, they are like eating a bowl of oatmeal, albeit with slightly higher butter and sugar content. No preservatives, no high-sucrose corn syrup, no massive doses of salt.
Premium produce need not be more expensive when it’s in season: we’re at the height of the summer fruit season and so the peaches, plumcots, and strawberries wax abundant in glory. And they’re all very inexpensive. Summer veggies, like squash and all those beautiful greens, are almost giveaways. A simple dish made from sparkling-fresh kale, quickly sautéed in fine, extra-virgin unfiltered olive oil and sprinkled with the juice of a lemon from the tree in my backyard, is glorious. Add a chunk of freshly-baked Pugliese bread from a local artisan bakery (such as Brioche Bakery in North Beach) with a bit more of that same olive oil: heaven.
Nonetheless I can understand that commercialized farming may be the only way to ensure truly abundant food supplies for everybody, and not just to tickle the palates of urbanites such as myself. We need the WalMart groceries right along with the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market.
Fortunately, there’s room for all of us.