Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies (23 page)

I wondered if our host
had dealt with many ‘stressed-out’ callers in the midst of a culinary crisis.
She offered this story about a newly married woman who called her special
Thanksgiving advice show:

“Early
on
,
when doing ‘Turkey Confidential
,
’
we
had a young woman call in whose husband announced to his family that she was
going to do Thanksgiving dinner all by herself,
that she didn’t need any help.

He
was inviting his whole family over, and
she had never
cooked.
My first thought was, ditch the
guy. This poor woman called close
to
tears!

 I
really was thinking,
I wish there were some way
I could send this woman the name of a divorce lawyer.
”

You would think that,
out of thousands of callers, Lynne might have dealt a few who were so clueless
that they shouldn’t even be
in
a kitchen.

So, what’s LRK’s
attitude toward those wannabes? Should they simply resign themselves to a life
of ordering delivery?

“
Nowhere
is it written that
everybody is supposed to
cook.
I can roast something and know
,
by
instinct, whether it’s done, but can I figure out my computer?
It’s
n
ot my
skill set!”

A
s
we wrapped up the interview, Lynne offered some great insights about cooking as
therapy, and about what matters most in the kitchen:

“When
we’re preoccupied with stress, or exhausted from work, to do something that
occupies you physically
.
. .

C
ooking
involves
all
your senses, and if you can give yourself up to the
pleasure
of
cooking
,
the
goal doesn’t have to be ‘Did I get it right
?’
or ‘Does it taste fabulous?’

That’s
very nice, but the real delight in this is that, for wha
tever
amount
of time you have, 
you
can give yourself up to the taste, and the smell, and the touch
.

T
o
trust in your senses, and trust in your common sense. It’s allowing yourself to
become
totally
engaged in
something that is
tactile
.”

Which might be the best
I’ve ever heard of what cooking really
means
. Of course, she already
had me at ‘big bowl of love.’

As a footnote, when I
hung up the phone with Lynne, I made a donation to public radio. It wasn’t a
lot – every month I’ll give about what you’d pay for an onion, a potato, a carrot,
and a can of tomatoes. But now I can enjoy my Tibetan throat singing
guilt-free.

Lately, I’ve started to
read
more about food than I have been, you know, eating it. I’m also discovering
parts of the foodie ‘scene’ about which I had no clue. Like ‘trending’ foods.

I don’t remember Mom
ever serving dinner and saying, “Here you go, this is the latest food trend.” I
can’t picture asking my neighborhood butcher which meats are ‘trending’ this
year.

Frankly, I don’t even
like the word ‘trending,’ because usually I’m opposed to verbing nouns.

Apparently though,
every year, a secret cabal of foodistas decide, for the uneducated communal
palate, what foods will be hot in the next year.

Looking at lists from
the past couple years, there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind what foods
are ‘trending.’

I looked at several
lists from the past year, and then I got a little sad when I realized how many
food trends I had missed.

Bean Soup

Having
been poor during much of my life, I had always thought of bean soup as ‘poor
folks’ food, but I guess
being poor
is trendier these days, so it makes
sense. Of course, this means that next year we’ll have to listen to hipsters
whining about bean soup being
too
trendy.

Organic Chocolate

We’re
hip enough here in the hinterlands to be familiar with ‘organic’ chocolate, but
I try to go one step further. I only eat free-range chocolate—I don’t want to
imagine thousands of chocolate bunnies crowded into some windowless shed.

Canadian Cheeses

Why
are Canadian cheeses on this list? Maybe they’re not as pushy as your typical,
swaggering American cheese? “Try this goat cheese from Ottawa. It’s so
well-mannered, not like those boorish American cheeses.”

Organ Meats

I’m
not denying that there are people who love their animal innards, but I’m not
gonna buy that they’re ‘trending’ until I see an ‘offal aisle’ at Trader Joe’s.
‘Organ meat’ doesn’t belong in the same sentence as ‘trendy.’ I’m still not
sure it belongs in the same sentence as ‘food.’

Bacon-Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix

There
is a difference between ‘trending’ and ‘a good idea I would try once.’ The only
demographic group for whom this could be ‘trending’ would be potheads.

Whoopie Pies

All
I know about whoopee pies is that they’re Southern. Even Wikipedia is confused,
calling them “an American baked good that may be considered either a cookie,
pie, or cake.” Also, I know that they aren’t exactly ‘trending’ where
I
go
to eat.

Sometimes I think the
foodie fraternity is just messing with us normal eaters. I imagine they hold a
meeting, then decide on some bizarre animal to tout as the next hip thing in
food.

Then they stand around
the granite islands in their high-tech kitchens laughing at us for eating . . .
otter tails. While they chow down on mac and Velveeta.

If foodies
aren’t
messing with us, explain the
appeal of blowfish. I don’t mean the inoffensive late-nineties pop group Hootie
AND the Blowfish, although I am confused by their popularity, as well.

I’m talking about the
actual fish that, when prepared properly, “has the consistency of white tuna,
but with a more delicate taste.” Oh—but when NOT prepared correctly, it will
kill you.

Call me boring, but I
think there are enough food items that definitively will
not
kill me, even
if
I screw up when I’m cooking them, that I don’t feel a need to try something
that
might
kill me if my technique is a little off.

Another trendy food
(apparently) is ‘black garlic,’ and when I first heard about it, I needed to
learn more, because I use garlic in almost everything—clove upon clove of
clovey goodness.

I went to a website for
a company that sells the stuff, and there was a description of how ‘black
garlic’ comes into being:

“Black
Garlic, Inc. uses the finest garlic. Our direct relationship with farmers
enables us to select the raw garlic that will produce the best black garlic.

.

Most
of the magic happens behind the closed doors of our patented machine.”

Whoa, back up there!
That first paragraph seems all ‘connected to nature,’ and then you throw us a
curve. “Our patented machine?” Why “behind the closed doors?” Mind telling us
what
exactly happens to the garlic
inside
the machine?