Wolves
While I was on vacation in Vermont, I finally finished a book I've been reading for a while: "How to Cook a Wolf" by MFK Fisher. Fisher wrote it in 1942, right as the US was coming out of depression and into a world war; my edition includes annotations she wrote in 1951, when she revised the text for a new edition. In my edition, these annotations are in brackets, and many of them are notes on the recipes included: [I now use a full cup of cream], but some of them are longer discourses on the differences between in 1942 and 1951 [Why only sons? Since I wrote this I have acquired two daughters, and they too shape the pattern's pieces, and the texture of my belief!], or, and most interestingly to me, scathing commentary on "nutritionists" who offer advice on economizing on giving your family a balanced meal at every meal [Not today, you can't! Not if you follow the balanced-meal plan, you can't! Not if you buy it wholesale and cook it for fifteen people at a time, you can't! I know. I tried it. I went to auctions for unwanted potatoes, for dented cans ... All I got was more red in my budget book and more gray in my hair.]. Reading Fisher, you see the early cries against the food industry that will lead us down the road to obesity, bad food, and waste.
The wolf she talks about is the Wolf at the Door. How to eat on very little money, when food and fuel are rationed. How to eat the wolf, before the wolf eats you. Her chapter titles include such gems as "How to Be Sage Without Hemlock," "How to Distribute Your Virtue," "How to Rise Up Like New Bread," "How to Make a Pigeon Cry," "How to Comfort Sorrow," and "How Not to Be an Earthworm." This last is how to cook while under blackout conditions, or what to cook and put away for life in bomb shelters. Most of her recipes I probably would not cook; but some I may try. Notably in this time when we are concerned about a "carbon footprint," she makes a big deal about food that seems economical in terms of ingredients, but takes a long time to cook, and therefore uses too much fuel to be called truly economical. She points out that to be economical -- or green, in our day -- you should use your oven efficiently, cooking several things at once to not waste the fuel. She also notes "our gradual mediocrization, in the process of which we are forced to eat so many downright poor foods that we leap with sincere delight for the mediocre." Therein, I think, lies the fascination with processed food: the fallacy that food should be both cheap and easy, that saving time is more important than the quality of what we eat, that we need to finish the evening ritual of dining early -- cooking, eating, and cleaning up -- we need to finish all of this quickly so that we can do what the corporate world would like us to do: sit in front of the TV. We must not miss our programs! How else are we to be indoctrinated? Why does food need to be faster, easier, cheaper? Perhaps in the slowing down of food, in learning to enjoy food again, we will also discover more balance in our lives, more enjoyment of each other, and more health.
One of the books I read last spring was Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food," in which he takes on the "science" of nutrition, as well as big business agriculture, and he takes apart the way that nutritionists focus on small parts of food (this vitamin, this mineral, this small piece is essential!), instead of the concept that the whole food is essential. Sixty years earlier, MFK Fisher is saying the same thing: why are we eating processed food when real food tastes better? Eat Food: Why take out the germ to make white bread, pasty, tasteless, white bread, when eating whole grain breads is more nutritionally sound and tastes better? Her scorn for "enriched" white bread is a thing of beauty. She is appalled by the magazines that make suggestions to the "American Housewife" -- suggestions on economy, on feeding "balanced" meals to the family -- that completely leave out taste or imagination. Food as sustenance and not pleasure is anathema to her, unless under the most dire of circumstances (and she does give a recipe for something she calls "sludge" made from vegetables that she says will sustain you for a while when the wolf has blown the door down). Mostly Plants: she pours some scorn on the American need for meat at every meal, and worse, at the lack of variation in our concept of meat. If we are to eat meat, then we should eat the whole animal, and not be too fussy about eating organs or brains. A quote: "But for all of us, no matter what our tastes, life would be simpler and the wolf would howl a little less loudly if we could adjust our minds to admit, even if we never quite believed it, that a tender sizzling rare grilled tenderloin was a luxury instead of a necessity." Not too much: She lists the food that eating three "balanced" meals requires, then lists the food required for her concept of a balanced day of meals, and you understand why we are all fat. The three balanced meals plan requires a lot of food to get the necessary balance, and it becomes repetitive and monotonous. Her meal plan, on the other hand, has room for variation and enjoyment, and is infinitely lighter. She takes apart the emergency rations list that were being put out at the time, and added a comment in 1951 on the sample she provides: "I refer to this later as "nauseating," but no one word is strong enough to suggest my scorn of it, esthetically as well as biochemically. It is a shocking example of gastronomical panic, and if it were heeded would soon reduce us to malnourished as well as spiritually weakened creatures, past much harm from bursting atoms."
However, some wolves are to be invited in to dinner: some wolves come in human form, and are to be entertained for a while. She advises putting a mirror in the kitchen, a little one, so when the unexpected visitor arrives -- or the expected visitor arrives early -- one can check one's hair and shiny nose. Me, I would rather not know. If the wolf arrives early, the wolf will need to have a sense of humor. And a wolf without a sense of humor ... should probably not come by anyway.
There is something about MFK's writing that reminded me of my friend Poemless. Their thought processes seem similar, though Poemless does not write on anything so frivolous as food: she writes on film and politics and Russia and Europe (her blog can be found here: http://poemless.wordpress.com/ ). Poemless, I might add, writes more frequently than I do these days, so her blog is also infinitely more interesting than mine. I have been in Poemless' kitchen, however, and while I can imagine a small mirror there, I cannot imagine Poemless cooking for a dinner party there ... though if MFK cooked there, it would form the basis for a very amusing essay on cooking without space. She, I'm sure, cooked in smaller and less convenient spaces in France, Switzerland and other places ... but Poemless' kitchen is indeed very small.
More wolves: I came back for Vermont, having read this lovely book on food, which made me all the more interested in reading recipes and cooking and eating healthy and enjoyably ... and I came home to a stopped up toilet which took me the better part of a weekend to clear. I'll spare you the disgusting details (and they were truly disgusting), but one observation: when there is no place for the output, one's interest in eating and drinking goes significantly down. Primed with ideas ... and discouraged from acting on them.
And now I am sick, with fever: and really, all I want is comfort food, and not much of it. I don't want to cook, just to eat what is easily available. So all my plans to eat food, mostly plants, not too much, to eat more types of vegetables and grains, to use the vegetables I buy ... all made obsolete by the fact that I don't feel healthy enough to make myself oatmeal in the microwave.
When I am healthy, I cook for myself, but not for my kid, because he eats about five things -- mostly peanut butter (he claims he eats more than five things, but if you roll up things like chocolate, ice cream, cookies, and cake into one big pile entitled "sweets," and make another pile for "some uncooked fruit," its five). I don't know how to raise a kid with respect and enjoyment of food if he gags at anything with flavor. And he does: if something is not right with his food, if there is a taste of pickle on his grilled cheese sandwich, if the bread gets soggy, he gags and throws up. I think that the worse thing I could do is make him uptight about food: there is enough stress in both our lives without adding that to it. If he wants to be vegetarian, fine, but I would love to be able to cook real food for him and have him enjoy it. I'm assuming his taste will expand when he is a teenager and is hungry all the time: at the very least, he has to learn to eat cheese pizza so he can hang out with other kids. But there are no guarantees in life. He has agreed, however, that we will try to bake our own bread, in order to avoid the store-bought breads with unpronounceable ingredients (which Pollan warns against). We'll see if we can manage to turn that into a routine.
Still, the lesson from MFK Fisher is that the more we truly enjoy food, the more we treat it with the respect it deserves, the healthier it will be for both us and our surroundings. She quotes Edmund Burke: "Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection." Be respectful, choosy, mindful of portions, and eat for enjoyment -- which means paying attention to what you eat, no matter how little it is.
I think Fisher gets the last word: "I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war's fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves. Then Fate, even tangled as it is with cold wards as well as hot, cannot harm us."
The wolf she talks about is the Wolf at the Door. How to eat on very little money, when food and fuel are rationed. How to eat the wolf, before the wolf eats you. Her chapter titles include such gems as "How to Be Sage Without Hemlock," "How to Distribute Your Virtue," "How to Rise Up Like New Bread," "How to Make a Pigeon Cry," "How to Comfort Sorrow," and "How Not to Be an Earthworm." This last is how to cook while under blackout conditions, or what to cook and put away for life in bomb shelters. Most of her recipes I probably would not cook; but some I may try. Notably in this time when we are concerned about a "carbon footprint," she makes a big deal about food that seems economical in terms of ingredients, but takes a long time to cook, and therefore uses too much fuel to be called truly economical. She points out that to be economical -- or green, in our day -- you should use your oven efficiently, cooking several things at once to not waste the fuel. She also notes "our gradual mediocrization, in the process of which we are forced to eat so many downright poor foods that we leap with sincere delight for the mediocre." Therein, I think, lies the fascination with processed food: the fallacy that food should be both cheap and easy, that saving time is more important than the quality of what we eat, that we need to finish the evening ritual of dining early -- cooking, eating, and cleaning up -- we need to finish all of this quickly so that we can do what the corporate world would like us to do: sit in front of the TV. We must not miss our programs! How else are we to be indoctrinated? Why does food need to be faster, easier, cheaper? Perhaps in the slowing down of food, in learning to enjoy food again, we will also discover more balance in our lives, more enjoyment of each other, and more health.
One of the books I read last spring was Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food," in which he takes on the "science" of nutrition, as well as big business agriculture, and he takes apart the way that nutritionists focus on small parts of food (this vitamin, this mineral, this small piece is essential!), instead of the concept that the whole food is essential. Sixty years earlier, MFK Fisher is saying the same thing: why are we eating processed food when real food tastes better? Eat Food: Why take out the germ to make white bread, pasty, tasteless, white bread, when eating whole grain breads is more nutritionally sound and tastes better? Her scorn for "enriched" white bread is a thing of beauty. She is appalled by the magazines that make suggestions to the "American Housewife" -- suggestions on economy, on feeding "balanced" meals to the family -- that completely leave out taste or imagination. Food as sustenance and not pleasure is anathema to her, unless under the most dire of circumstances (and she does give a recipe for something she calls "sludge" made from vegetables that she says will sustain you for a while when the wolf has blown the door down). Mostly Plants: she pours some scorn on the American need for meat at every meal, and worse, at the lack of variation in our concept of meat. If we are to eat meat, then we should eat the whole animal, and not be too fussy about eating organs or brains. A quote: "But for all of us, no matter what our tastes, life would be simpler and the wolf would howl a little less loudly if we could adjust our minds to admit, even if we never quite believed it, that a tender sizzling rare grilled tenderloin was a luxury instead of a necessity." Not too much: She lists the food that eating three "balanced" meals requires, then lists the food required for her concept of a balanced day of meals, and you understand why we are all fat. The three balanced meals plan requires a lot of food to get the necessary balance, and it becomes repetitive and monotonous. Her meal plan, on the other hand, has room for variation and enjoyment, and is infinitely lighter. She takes apart the emergency rations list that were being put out at the time, and added a comment in 1951 on the sample she provides: "I refer to this later as "nauseating," but no one word is strong enough to suggest my scorn of it, esthetically as well as biochemically. It is a shocking example of gastronomical panic, and if it were heeded would soon reduce us to malnourished as well as spiritually weakened creatures, past much harm from bursting atoms."
However, some wolves are to be invited in to dinner: some wolves come in human form, and are to be entertained for a while. She advises putting a mirror in the kitchen, a little one, so when the unexpected visitor arrives -- or the expected visitor arrives early -- one can check one's hair and shiny nose. Me, I would rather not know. If the wolf arrives early, the wolf will need to have a sense of humor. And a wolf without a sense of humor ... should probably not come by anyway.
There is something about MFK's writing that reminded me of my friend Poemless. Their thought processes seem similar, though Poemless does not write on anything so frivolous as food: she writes on film and politics and Russia and Europe (her blog can be found here: http://poemless.wordpress.com/ ). Poemless, I might add, writes more frequently than I do these days, so her blog is also infinitely more interesting than mine. I have been in Poemless' kitchen, however, and while I can imagine a small mirror there, I cannot imagine Poemless cooking for a dinner party there ... though if MFK cooked there, it would form the basis for a very amusing essay on cooking without space. She, I'm sure, cooked in smaller and less convenient spaces in France, Switzerland and other places ... but Poemless' kitchen is indeed very small.
More wolves: I came back for Vermont, having read this lovely book on food, which made me all the more interested in reading recipes and cooking and eating healthy and enjoyably ... and I came home to a stopped up toilet which took me the better part of a weekend to clear. I'll spare you the disgusting details (and they were truly disgusting), but one observation: when there is no place for the output, one's interest in eating and drinking goes significantly down. Primed with ideas ... and discouraged from acting on them.
And now I am sick, with fever: and really, all I want is comfort food, and not much of it. I don't want to cook, just to eat what is easily available. So all my plans to eat food, mostly plants, not too much, to eat more types of vegetables and grains, to use the vegetables I buy ... all made obsolete by the fact that I don't feel healthy enough to make myself oatmeal in the microwave.
When I am healthy, I cook for myself, but not for my kid, because he eats about five things -- mostly peanut butter (he claims he eats more than five things, but if you roll up things like chocolate, ice cream, cookies, and cake into one big pile entitled "sweets," and make another pile for "some uncooked fruit," its five). I don't know how to raise a kid with respect and enjoyment of food if he gags at anything with flavor. And he does: if something is not right with his food, if there is a taste of pickle on his grilled cheese sandwich, if the bread gets soggy, he gags and throws up. I think that the worse thing I could do is make him uptight about food: there is enough stress in both our lives without adding that to it. If he wants to be vegetarian, fine, but I would love to be able to cook real food for him and have him enjoy it. I'm assuming his taste will expand when he is a teenager and is hungry all the time: at the very least, he has to learn to eat cheese pizza so he can hang out with other kids. But there are no guarantees in life. He has agreed, however, that we will try to bake our own bread, in order to avoid the store-bought breads with unpronounceable ingredients (which Pollan warns against). We'll see if we can manage to turn that into a routine.
Still, the lesson from MFK Fisher is that the more we truly enjoy food, the more we treat it with the respect it deserves, the healthier it will be for both us and our surroundings. She quotes Edmund Burke: "Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection." Be respectful, choosy, mindful of portions, and eat for enjoyment -- which means paying attention to what you eat, no matter how little it is.
I think Fisher gets the last word: "I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war's fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy, and ever-increasing enjoyment. And with our gastronomical growth will come, inevitably, knowledge and perception of a hundred other things, but mainly of ourselves. Then Fate, even tangled as it is with cold wards as well as hot, cannot harm us."