Meeting of Minds
(x-posted at Lilith)
Last week I had the good fortune of attending a completely packed lecture at the 92nd Street Y called, “Hedonistic, Healthy, and Green: Can We Have it All?” Featuring Michael Pollan (of The Omnivores Dilemma fame), Dan Barber (Head Chef of Blue Hill at Stone Barns), and moderated by Joan Dye Gussow (This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader), it was the kind of event that sustainable foodies like me drool over. These are our movie stars, the people we choose when asked, “which famous person would you most want to take to dinner?”
The event itself was pretty straightforward: glowing introductions, 10-15 minutes from both speakers (Pollan on his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
The real meat of the evening was not in the format of the event, but in the meeting of these amazing minds. For Pollan, Barber, and Gussow, this is life: travelling, speaking (often about the same thing), and answering questions. But for the audience, watching the exchange between these sustainable food “rebbes” felt like watching your grandmother make her favorite recipe. It looked so simple and obvious, and you left feeling full and nourished and inspired to try it yourself.
Many ideas were presented over the course of the evening, and I highly recommend purchasing In Defense of Food and making the trip to Blue Hill at Stone Barns (even if you can’t eat in the non-kosher restaurant, walking around the grounds - an old Rockefeller property - and seeing the working farm would be worth it.) But to give you a taste, I’d like to focus on three, somewhat disconnected (but of course also connected) points I heard either for the first time last night, or heard again in a new way.
B’tei Avon!
1. Food Tastes Better with a Story - Barber said that one of the reasons Boris’ sausage was so delicious, is that diners knew his back story. Not only could they match their food with a source, but they could follow along the heartbreaking decision-making process Barber went through in deciding ultimately to slaughter Boris.
So much of the food we eat in America comes frozen or processed or from far away. We don’t know who grew it, and - in many cases - human beings were replaced by machines in its processing. On the flip side, knowing where our food comes from, and the people and animals involved in bringing it to us, makes it all the more delicious and satisfying to eat. Barber said, “When you have a story to tell about food, people taste things they wouldn’t otherwise taste.”
2. Iowa and Food Politics - On the blog Serious Eats Ed Levine asked the question, “which presidential candidates have actually articulated a food policy?” With all of the press around the Farm Bill this year, and so much interest around food and eating, you’d think that food would be a contending topic in the debates.
The full answer to Levine’s question is very complex, but Pollan gave one part of it, which I found really fascinating. He said that the Iowa Caucus is actually a problem for farm policy. Politicians, he said, must bow down before the commodity crop subsidies and ethanol lobbies that rule the state. It could be very dangerous for them to propose progressive food policy, and risk losing support in the first state everyone looks to in the primaries. I would love for a reader with more understanding of political nuances than I to respond to this idea.
3. Making Time to Cook - Many people claim that they don’t cook for themselves because they simply don’t have the time. Indeed, one of the panelists quoted the statistic that the average American spends a mere hour and a half preparing their food every day.
That said, the same American spends 4 hours watching television and countless hours answering emails and surfing the internet. Where do those hours come from, the panelists asked, and wouldn’t they be better spent preparing delicious meals to enjoy with our families and friends?
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6 Responses to “Meeting of Minds”
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Shev Says:
January 14th, 2008 at 5:59 pmGreat article! I enjoyed hearing Michael Pollan in Philly last week, he’s a lot of fun, and is so interesting!
I’ve got to respond to that last point; we have four kids under the age of 10. We make nearly all the food from scratch, and watch pretty much no tv. The bottom line is, the more vege’s we eat, the more work it is. Making your own bread and challah really does take more time than buying it. It’s worth it, but it’s not easy.
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Rhea Says:
January 14th, 2008 at 7:55 pmLeah, I’m glad you brought up the time issue with food prep (and Shev, bravo to you for cooking from scratch!) When I heard Pollan point this out in a radio interview I wanted to hug him. I suddenly didn’t feel so freakish for preferring to come home and cook a nice dinner over watching Grey’s Anatomy.
I also appreciate his point about spending on better quality, sustainably-grown food. We somehow find the money for things we didn’t care about a few years ago like cell phones and Netflix, so maybe we CAN afford that log of local goat cheese. Yay!
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Shev Says:
January 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pmWell, I wasn’t writing to say “Yay me!”, but to respond to Pollan’s idea that finding a little extra time to cook from scratch should be easy! A pleasure! A no-brainer!
When in fact, it can be downright painful. Making food from scratch with kids underfoot is - how shall I say this? - a CHALLENGE. Making food from scratch for a family requires Energy and Time (planning, shopping, cooking, clearing, cleaning), and guess what, parents of school-age kids aren’t exactly overflowing with Excess Energy or Too Much Time On Our Hands. Besides, we have homework to see to…
Michael Pollan is certainly a Gadol HaDor :) but I wish he would acknowledge that eating real food is just one aspect of a life well lived.
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Leah Koenig Says:
January 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pmCorrection - either I misheard the panelist, or he misspoke, but Pollan writes in his book In Defense of Food that Americans actually spend a mere half hour preparing their food each day and an hour or less eating it.
I wrote an hour and 1/2 of cooking alone (which did seem a little high when I thought about the minute and a half it takes to microwave a can of soup).
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Phyllis Bieri Says:
January 15th, 2008 at 3:30 pmWith 3 children under the age of 8, I spend a huge amount of time shopping for food, picking up CSA vegetables, organizing the refrigerator, cooking, and planning menus. As Shev says, it is NOT easy, and in fact our family loses revenue because I do this work during normal working hours. I cut back on my paying job so that I could do this. Eating well, i.e. real food, together as a family, was more important to me than career advancement. Yes, I am very lucky.
Glad you corrected your statement about how much time the average American spends eating and preparing food, Leah (hour and a half, total time). Every Monday morning I go grocery shopping and have a rough idea of the dinners through Thursday night. It takes 30 minutes to an hour to cook dinner, on average. The slow cooker helps, as does the rice maker. That doesn’t include breakfast and lunch, which also takes some time. Our average weekday family dinner lasts from 30 minutes to an hour. The 3-year-old doesn’t sit at the table the whole time, of course, but she sees how much we enjoy our conversation. The older the kids get the longer they stay at the table.
Yes, absolutely as Shev says, this is just one aspect of a life well lived. For me it helps define our family life, and provides a reason to sit down and share, and be thankful together. Along with gettig enough sleep and exercise, it also avoids visits to the doctor.
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chanie Says:
January 21st, 2008 at 4:49 aminteresting about time - i’ve been cooking and preparing a lot too, and kind of took pollans original statement about money and priorities to extend to time and priorities, so i’m glad to see that being discussed.
my kids are 7 and 10, and another advantage to cooking from scratch for them is that it has turned into cooking with them. they both love to cook and help, and jump up and down about the ’surprise presents’ that come in our csa box. besides the healthy food, they are getting an education and appreciation of it all, so i see it as time well spent in that regard too.
