I believe in the blue flame. I believe that cooking is a transformative act and that eating together is the metamorphosis. I believe that after 19-year-old Jahmari was handed the cool, gray-tinged flesh of a just-caught bluefish fillet to prep it for dinner, the transformative act beyond the heat of the blue flame actually happened around the dinner table, when we all stopped talking to eat and taste his dish.
The metamorphoses happened as Taija set the table, as Imani hulled ripe summer strawberries for dessert, as Deshawn grilled potatoes like a master, as salad was tossed with homemade dressing over Elijah’s farm-grown greens, and as we all sat down, gathered together for the evening meal. Metamorphosis happened as Ben, Zoli, and Alec did the dishes, cleaned the counters, swept the floor, and put the kitchen to bed. The blue flame, the instigator of it all, transformed raw resources into delicious sustenance. And how lucky any of us can be, for all hands to share in the process. That’s what I believe in: the transformative powers, wonders, and connections that are cooking. The blue flame.
Sometimes social movements — the local food movement included — can make us feel shackled and tied. As if whatever it is we’re doing, we’re not doing it well enough or enough of it. There’s plenty of judgment out there. The books about cooking and eating within some number of miles, like 50 or 100, from your home, make for interesting challenges and great reads, but they are unrealistic for the average anyone. Same with growing a significant amount of our own food: it is impractical for many. Aspirational can trump inspirational and scare people away. Choosing seasonal and regional foods is a wonderful thing, but you don’t have to feel shame about not doing it enough. What I’ve been saying throughout this book goes for cooking, too: start small.
Plan meals, gather food, and cook and eat together on a Sunday. Love your kitchen; start a community kitchen or a cooking club, or cook for someone with cancer. Host events (see Host a Dinner-and-a-movie Potluck and Host a Grow-Out). Then clean up and do it again. Amen.
Weaning anyone off processed food — a teenager, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a mom, a dad — to whole, fresh, healthy food and home cooking takes time. “A year,” my colleague Claire says, from experience. One of the evil geniuses of super-processed food is its damn consistency. No matter where or when you go, what country you’re in or what time of day it is, a fast-food burger is going to be the same everywhere, all the time. So if you’re trying to shift toward more whole, fresh foods — foods that deviate from the norm, that don’t come from the fast-food joint — that food is going to challenge a palate that’s come to expect the consistency of highly processed food.
Most important, what we eat when we’re young determines taste and sensory memories and compelling emotional pulls. We've lost generations of people to comfort foods from the dollar menu and not the home kitchen. Hey, I still crave a Tombstone frozen pizza or a can of Campbell’s chicken soup once in a while. But it’s not my regular fare. So when introducing new whole, fresh foods, start with small changes, and take the time to cook — for a full year, day by day. In the meantime, don’t knock the occasional Oreo.
“We need to realize that our taste buds are conditioned and can be re-conditioned. When we only eat for taste we become slaves to taste alone. And as we learn from seeing far too many of our relatives sick and miserable and overweight and diseased, eating for taste without regard to health leads to self-destruction. We can eat healthy on a hood budget. We deserve the best and we can start living like we understand our value by choosing to adopt healthier habits. When the hood is strong, we are truly unstoppable. Salute!
— 7 Ways to Eat Good While on a Hood Budget, by Stic of Dead Prez, founder of RBG Fit Club (rbgfitclub.com)
You will save money and time by planning the day’s or week’s meals. And you’ll probably waste less food as well. Whole Foods Market has an excellent “Healthy Eating Handbook,” downloadable for free off its website (wholefoodsmarket.com/healthy-eating/getting-started), and available to you whether you shop there or not. It includes a sample shopping list, how to start a cooking journal, a weekly meal plan, cooking guides for a wide range of beans and grains, and great tips for riffing on homemade dressings and marinades, all suitable for culturally diverse palates. Also check out your local Whole Foods Markets for their cooking classes. Schedules and topics vary from store to store.
Before you have that dinner, you’re going grocery shopping somewhere. Here are some tips to start eating better by shopping better.
Named the James Beard Foundation Publication of the Year in 2013, ChopChop magazine is one of the finest examples of inclusion, tested recipes, and accessibility of information. ChopChop’s recipes tend to start off with this basic step: Wash your hands well with soap and water. Its focus is teaching kids how to cook healthy foods, and it takes caregivers along for the ride. Available in English and Spanish, thanks to its supporters, such as the New Balance Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics, ChopChop can found for free in pediatricians’ offices, after-school programs, health centers, Indian reservations, and community centers around the country. It is also available by subscription, and its website (chopchopmag.org) is host to all its content for free. At ChopChop, they believe that “cooking and eating together as a family is a vital step in resolving the obesity and hunger epidemics.” Wouldn’t it be great to offer this valuable resource in more languages?
“Getting kids to cook is essential in every way. It bonds kids with their adults, and encourages responsibility. It increases understanding of other cultures, and fosters reading, math and science. We believe this is what will help resolve the obesity crisis. But we need your help. Families need role models they can relate to across all media. They need stories . . . images . . . and conversations that celebrate simple, healthy, accessible approaches to cooking. They need to see that it is possible to feed themselves well and with joy.”
— Sally Sampson, founder of ChopChop magazine
“I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural act.”
— Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating”
I have memories of my oma making apfelkuchen, and my mom still bakes the cake when I come home. The names of apples — Pink Pearl, Hidden Rose, Spitzenburg — read like little verses. I love walking in my favorite orchard, especially when the bees and blossoms are out. And I go cross-country skiing through those craggy hilltop rows of resilient trees in the winter. It’s the same orchard where my youngest son and his friend Zoli played one October, eating along the way, not knowing as little boys that you couldn’t just pick apples without paying but feeling free enough to do just that. It’s where the Honeycrisps grow. My oldest was happy to be able to bite into a fresh one after his braces finally came off.
These autumn days I like apple slices with smudges of almond butter for a snack and make applesauce flavored with nutmeg and sweetened with maple syrup to serve with potato pancakes.
“Do you like apples?” I asked the tall quiet young man who’d come to our dinner table and stayed.
“No. I hate apples. Nasty,” he said, shaking his head.
“Really. Why?”
“I don’t know why. I just do,” he said, closed.
And all went quiet. Still.
“Did you say we can go and pick them?” he asked.
“Yes. We can go.”
“Okay.”
“But soon. Now’s the season,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
Community kitchens mean different things to different people and different communities. Are you interested in creating a space where people can come to can their extra zucchinis or make jams, jellies, or sauerkraut together? Is it a teaching kitchen and, if so, for whom? Children, adults, people with disabilities? Is it a commercial space — meaning, is the food coming out of it legally salable? Is it an incubator kitchen for burgeoning food entrepreneurs? These are all very different things.
— Contributed by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
These days, you can find out how to do pretty much anything online. For example, if you Google “How to start a cooking club,” you will immediately find a terrific wikiHow entry that’ll get you going. Check it out. It breaks down the process (summarized here) and offers a lot of great advice.
— wikiHow
“The production of meat, especially beef (and dairy as well), has a large environmental impact. According to the U.N., animal agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and climate change. It also wastes resources. It takes 7,000 kg of grain to make 1,000 kg of beef. In addition, beef production requires a lot of water, fertilizer, fossil fuels, and pesticides.”
— USDA “Greening Headquarters Update,” July 23, 2012 (Author note: This is the reference to industrially raised beef, not sustainable meat production)
When a recipe fails in your opinion, try to figure out why and make adjustments. Write in the margins what happened and where. Failures are part of the learning curve and what makes cooking fun and creative anyway.
The idea of Meatless Mondays has roots back in World Wars I and II, when people needed to cut back on all various and sundry consumptions. The Meatless Monday project (meatlessmonday.com) was reintroduced in 2003 to address the fact that Americans eat copious amounts of industrially raised meat, which has a huge environmental impact, as well as a detrimental effect on our overall health. Giving up that burger, chicken, or pork cutlet just one day a week has been embraced now by everyone from Oprah to the organizers of Mardi Gras celebrations (with the exception of the meat industry and its politicians, not surprisingly).
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggested in July 2012, in its internal e-newsletter “Greening Headquarters Update,” that going meatless for one meal, one day a week, at their cafeterias may have positive benefits, vocal proponents of the meat industry cried foul.
“One simple way to reduce your environmental impact while dining at our cafeterias is to participate in the ‘Meatless Monday’ initiative,” it read, pointing out that Meatless Mondays is an international effort, in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Tucked in on page three, it was sandwiched in between stories of the barber shop’s new cost-saving energy-efficient lightbulbs and how local honey would now be available for tea, toast, and coffee at the cafeterias. It read like an innocent, healthy meal suggestion with a side of environmental consciousness. But it riled up the Cattlemen’s Beef Association (a lobby group) and Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, who tweeted: “USDA HQ meatless Mondays!! At the Dept. of Agriculture? Heresy! I’m not grazing there. I will have the double rib-eye Mondays instead.”
The immediate pressure and outcry was so loud that the USDA folded and even removed the supposedly damning suggestion from its newsletter. But because whatever goes on the Internet stays on the Internet, it’s out there still, though now as a sad vestige piece of incriminating evidence as to who really controls our USDA.
Try Meatless Monday as a way both to diversify your diet and to save money.
Small and portable, the George Foreman Grill comes in all kinds of colors. It doesn’t take much up space. It has the same wattage as a lamp. Its clamshell design, with hot plates that cook simultaneously on top and bottom, are connected by a hinge that, like the jaw of snake, adjusts to varying thicknesses of food, from thick grilled cheeses, to burgers, to broccoli, to slices of pineapple. It’s easy to clean, with its patented tilts-away-grease design. Sold for about $40, the George Forman Grill is one of the preferred items of the homeless and people living in shelters — people who have no kitchens. The grill launched in 1994 and sold over 100 million units in its first 15 years.
“In 1977 when I left boxing, I realized I didn’t have any friends. People weren’t pouring into my home anymore. And I noticed that if I barbequed something, they would come over. Even the guys would go fishing, I wanted them to stay and come back so much, I would always clean the fish, do all the cooking, I found that more satisfying than even winning boxing matches when people would lick their fingers, and say my food was good. That grill, I’m just happy that it’s helped so many people. And it helped me of course.”
— George Foreman, Houston, Texas
“You make a kitchen for yourself so that you can survive.”
— Shelter resident in “An Unexpected Kitchen: The George Foreman Grill” by the Kitchen Sisters, Hidden Kitchen series
Eat mostly seasonal ripe and tasty fruits and vegetables from your region. Don’t make yourself go crazy with judgments. But try to eat less meat, and better meat when you do, like organic or from local/regional farmers and ranchers.
I remember seeing Maynard Silva in the grocery store, wearing his signature red high-top Chuck Taylors and prowling, as was his wont, sick with cancer or not, the frozen food aisle. “Italian lemon ice,” he growled. Maynard was a blues guitarist who lost his gritty voice and then his life to throat cancer after beating it once, twice, but not three times. The cruel irony was not lost on him. Lemon ice was all that he could eat, all that tasted good to him, he told me. I miss that man. He was gravity. Though he had shied away from any musical benefit to be held in his honor, later he said in a local paper, “When people help you it’s actually a joyous thing for both of you. I always thought asking for help was shameful, a weakness. I learned that to be connected to people that way was a joy, and that they liked it as much as I liked it. That made the way I relate to everybody different, including other musicians I play with and the people I play for.” Had I known what or how to cook for him, it would’ve been a gift to do so. So here’s to you, Maynard!
Cancer can kill taste buds, the sense of smell, and appetite along its cruel path. It can manifest itself in food aversions, temperature sensitivities, cravings, digestion and swallowing problems, dry and/or sore mouth, and weight fluctuations before, during, and after treatments. If and when patients don’t eat well, or get enough good fats and calories, battling the disease is even harder. Food is love. Cook with the intention of healing both of you, the patient and the caregiver. And never stop the music.
— Tips adapted from the American Cancer Society
Ask some friends to cook dishes from a movie of your choosing. Gather, then watch and eat together. Here are some movies to cook by.
The Chefs Collaborative (chefscollaborative.org) is a national nonprofit network of chefs that works to change the sustainable food landscape. It’s a great concept, connecting chefs, the frontliners of the culinary scene, to best practices, educational resources, and a national network of growers, distributors, and chefs across the country. One of the collaborative’s most innovative programs is in line with seafood. The Trash Fish Dinners, held from Sarasota, Florida, to Denver, Colorado, challenges chefs to cook with lesser-known fish in order to help diversify our collective fish palates.
Tomatoes all seem to come ripe at the same time and flood the markets. But what if chefs and farmers got together to grow a wide variety of just as delicious heirloom varieties that taste and look and feel different? A “grow-out,” as outlined below by the generosity of the Chefs Collaborative (see above), is one way to diversify crops; delve into local culinary histories and places; strengthen relationships between farmers, chefs, and community; and appeal to new markets, new customers. Check out these tips.
At its core, it’s simple: Farmers grow selected varieties of rare, regionally significant, unusual, and heirloom vegetables, and chefs buy the locally grown produce and celebrate the unusual varieties by featuring them on their menus. In doing so, the grow-out revives endangered varieties of vegetables and boosts local food systems as chefs and farmers form partnerships.
While a grow-out can be simple or involved, depending on your resources and your community, it will likely involve the following steps:
Start by contacting a few chefs who are well known for working directly with local farmers and using lots of fresh, local vegetables in their kitchens. Ask them for recommendations of other chefs and restaurants who might be interested in joining the grow-out. The grow-out has room for restaurants of any size, type, and price point to participate, but it is important that participating chefs have an interest in the mission. When talking with chefs, make sure they are clear on what the benefits and responsibilities are.
Benefits include:
Responsibilities include:
Similarly, start with a few farmers who are already growing diversified vegetables, preferably at least a few farmers who are already selling to restaurants. Ask them to recommend others who might be interested. If there is a buy-local organization, farmers’ market, or other food and farm network in your area, send out an invitation through their mailing list as well. Again, it is great to involve farms of various sizes. Let them know about the benefits and responsibilities of participating.
Benefits include:
Responsibilities include:
Just as important as having a strong group of committed participants is having partners who can help plan events, spread the word about grow-out activities, get media attention for participants, recruit volunteers when needed, and generally contribute to the success of the project.
“I think it is a wonderful community-building project. It involves a lot of partners — landowners, farmers, chefs — and a lot of young people who could be motivated by this kind of thing. It was really a wonderful community-building activity.”
— Grow-Out Farmer
Here are the 11 varieties that Chefs Collaborative included in the 2010 New England Grow-Out.
— Excerpted with permission from Chefs Collaborative (chefscollaborative.org)
When you cook, you’re going to be cleaning. Or someone is. As my husband will attest, I am not the most orderly person in our home. He is. I can leave a house with dishes in the sink, but I hate coming home to them. The solution in our household, for everyone’s peace of mind, is to clean up after every cup of coffee, every bowl of cereal, after every meal. It’s aspirational. Not that we get it right all the time. We don’t. But it’s hard to be motivated to cook when you come home to a messy kitchen. So keeping it clean means you’re more likely to cook it up. Here are some tips:
Make your kitchen comfortable to be in and work in. Put your pots and pans, spices, workspace, and trash/compost within reach. Follow your intuition.