Michael Pollan on the Conspiracy to Keep Us Out of the Kitchen and On the Couch

Sigh. Another brilliant piece from Michael Pollan will come out just before the movie Julie & Julia opens. To quote, and sum, "Buying, not making, is what cooking shows are mostly now about." And what our food culture is mostly now about, to our detriment, physically, mentally, and culturally.

I almost don't know what to excerpt for your previewing pleasure -- the whole thing was so darn good. (And if you would like to read further about some of his arguments that, from an evolutionary biology perspective, cooking is an essential human activity, read The Hungry Soul by Leon Kass.)

Excerpts:

On Julia Child: "Julia’s voice was like nothing I ever heard before or would hear again until Monty Python came to America: vaguely European, breathy and singsongy, and weirdly suggestive of a man doing a falsetto impression of a woman. The BBC supposedly took 'The French Chef' off the air because viewers wrote in complaining that Julia Child seemed either drunk or demented."

On the Food Network's rise and home cooking's decline: "How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?"

On enjoying engaging your mind, senses, hands: "Cooking for [Julia Child] was so much more than a means to a meal. It was a gratifying, even ennobling sort of work, engaging both the mind and the muscles.... You did it to please yourself.... I suspect we’re drawn to the textures and rhythms of kitchen work, too, which seem so much more direct and satisfying than the more abstract and formless tasks most of us perform in our jobs nowadays." (This is one of the major reasons I love to cook. It makes me feel creative, sensually engaged, meditative when alone and fulfillingly social with other people.)

On competitive cooking television: "If you ask me, the key to victory on any of these shows comes down to one factor: bacon. Whichever contestant puts bacon in the dish invariably seems to win."

On why you might think we don't cook as much now: "For many years now, Americans have been putting in longer hours at work and enjoying less time at home. Since 1967, we’ve added 167 hours — the equivalent of a month’s full-time labor — to the total amount of time we spend at work each year, and in households where both parents work, the figure is more like 400 hours. Americans today spend more time working than people in any other industrialized nation — an extra two weeks or more a year."

On the real reason why we don't cook as much now: "[Americans] now allow corporations to cook for them when they can.... The shift toward industrial cookery began not in response to a demand from women entering the work force but as a supply-driven phenomenon.... It took years of clever, dedicated marketing to... persuade Americans that opening a can or cooking from a mix really was cooking."

On the state of the table now: "The corporate project of redefining what it means to cook and serve a meal has succeeded beyond the industry’s wildest expectations.... Today, 80 percent of the cost of food eaten in the home goes to someone other than a farmer, which is to say to industrial cooking and packaging and marketing."

On why cooking is fundamental to human culture: "Cooking made us who we are.... It was the discovery of cooking by our early ancestors... [that allowed] our brains to grow bigger.... Freed from the need to spend our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture. Cooking gave us not just the meal but also the occasion: the practice of eating together at an appointed time and place. This was something new under the sun, for the forager of raw food would likely have fed himself on the go and alone, like the animals. (Or, come to think of it, like the industrial eaters we’ve become, grazing at gas stations and skipping meals.) But sitting down to common meals, making eye contact, sharing food, all served to civilize us.”

On how we're suffering from the decline of home cooking: "A 2003 study by a group of Harvard economists led by David Cutler found that the rise of food preparation outside the home could explain most of the increase in obesity in America.... As the 'time cost' of food preparation has fallen, calorie consumption has gone up.... As the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed; since 1977, we’ve added approximately half a meal to our daily intake.... Obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation.... Cooking is [also] a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not."

Today's Food... Very Good

"Today's food... very good" was what we all said in unison before a meal at Gandhi Camp (where I was a camper and then a counselor for about five summers).  I think I officially stopped being a card-carrying Gandhian when I learned that at the Gandhi ashrams, they don't use onions, ginger, garlic, and green chilies (as another form of sacrifice devotion).

I digress.

Dinner tonight was light, summery, and kicky:

1. South Indian-style Brussels Sprouts (with mustard seeds, curry leaves, fresh roasted peanuts, ginger, lemon juice...)

2. Karela (bitter melon) with tomatoes, ginger, onions, and a touch of yogurt whey

3. Sprouted mung bean salad (with tamarind, lime, cilantro...)

4. Shrimp (glazed with tamarind soy sauce)

5. Lemongrass iced tea 

FOOD POEM FRIDAYS: Carolyn Miller's A WARM SUMMER IN SAN FRANCISCO

A Warm Summer in San Francisco by Carolyn Miller

Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness. It wasn't at the solstice; that was only
the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when
the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves
for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep, and the restaurants set half their tables
on the sidewalks; outside the city, down the coast,
the Milky Way floated overhead, and shooting stars
fell from the sky over the ocean. One day the garden
was almost overwhelmed with fruition:
My sweet peas struggled out of the raised bed onto the mulch
of laurel leaves and bark and pods, their brilliantly colored
sunbonnets of rose and stippled pink, magenta and deep purple
pouring out a perfume that was almost oriental. Black-eyed Susans
stared from the flower borders, the orange cherry tomatoes
were sweet as candy, the fruit fattened in its swaths of silk,
hummingbirds spiraled by in pairs, the bees gave up
and decided to live in the lavender. At the market,
surrounded by black plums and rosy plums and sugar prunes
and white-fleshed peaches and nectarines, perfumey melons
and mangos, purple figs in green plastic baskets,
clusters of tiny Champagne grapes and piles of red-black cherries
and apricots freckled and streaked with rose, I felt tears
come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew
that summer had peaked and was already passing
away. I felt very close then to understanding
the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew
what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled
to some high moment of response, as if I could
reach out and touch the season, as if I were inside
its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice,
shimmering veins and ripened skin.

Vanilla Bean Yogurt

This week, I made half the batch of homemade yogurt with a couple of split vanilla beans and a touch of turbinado sugar.  It has been a lovely treat - this batch is not even a taste bud's worth tangy, so it feels like having panna cotta, but with the extra cooling power of yogurt.  The vanilla is from Indonesia and tastes dark, velvety, and tropical - nothing like the flavor vanilla extract imparts.

Looks like most of the vanilla seeds settled on the bottom!

Oils

I love getting requests for posts!  Most recently I was asked what the differences are between different types of oils and what is best for cooking. 

To begin, you want most of the fats in your diet to come from polyunsaturated and monounsaturated sources, such as vegetable oils, avocadoes, nuts, seeds, and cold water fish. 

Monounsaturated fats lower total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) and increase the high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the good cholesterol). Polyunsaturated fats also lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol. 

(Omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in cold water fish, like salmon, as well as in flaxseed and walnuts, belong to this group. Omega-3s as well as unrefined olive oil are also anti-inflammatory and help to prevent chronic disease, such as diabetes and heart disease.)

Smoke point is the temperature to which an oil can be heated before it smokes and discolors, which are indications of decomposition. If you are using an oil with a low smoke point, you'll want to use it in cold preparations, like salads.

For salads, use cold-pressed, unrefined vegetable oils such as sesame, sunflower, safflower, flaxseed, almond, walnut, hazelnut, pumpkin seed, pistachio, avocado, grapeseed, cottonseed, and extra-virgin olive oil (unrefined olive oil has a smoke point of 320°F), among others.  Heat would destroy the delicate flavors of these oils.

Safflower oil also doesn't solidify when chilled, which can be useful if you'll be serving a chilled dressed dish.

For cooking, use extra-virgin olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, refined sesame oil, and refined grapeseed oil, among others. Peanut oil is great for hot woks and Asian stir-fries. Sesame oil comes in a light variety (made from untoasted sesame seeds) and a dark variety (made from toasted sesame seeds). Light sesame oil has a nutty taste and is great for sauteeing or shallow frying in a pan. Dark sesame oil has a very strong flavor and should be used in small quantities for its flavoring.  

In Indian food we also sometimes use as a flavoring agent the oil from mustard seeds, which is sharp and a bit spicy.

For frying, corn oil, refined safflower and sunflower oils, and canola oil will do, as they have higher smoke points. (It is best not to fry with olive oil, as its smoke point is only about 190C/375F.)

Fats to avoid (for health reasons -- some of these are quite tasty):
vegetable shortening
margarine
butter
palm oil
palm kernel oil
coconut oil
bacon grease and animal lard

Final notes: 

Personally, I hate the smell of soybean oil, so I avoid it.

And the jury is out on coconut oil. Some believe that when consumed raw, coconut oil is beneficial.  Choose your own adventure.

For more information, check out the FAQ and the food fats and oils reference on the website of the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils.