Food ponderings
Dec. 13th, 2011 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
commodorifiedSo I have been musing about food, the buying and the cooking and the eating thereof, and about my Cooking For People Who Don't tag.
I have a lot of strong opinions about food, of which probably the strongest is, Describe Much, Prescribe Little. Which makes talking about it tricky, but ultimately really rewarding.
And it occurred to me last night as I was adding a handful of vegetables and a hefty shake of spice to a canned soup that one of the things that I really want to do when I write about food is to help increase people's levels of food security.
It seems to me that one of the less-considered factors that goes into determining someone's food security or insecurity - subjective AND objective[1]- is, well, knowledge, and access to knowledge. You have to HAVE resources - money, accessible grocery stores with good food in them, transport, a kitchen, physical capacity, maybe some assistance, cooking utensils, time[2] - and you have to know what and where they are and how to use them.
I don't mean, by the way, that NOBODY ever talks about this stuff. Obviously, lots of people do.
But the large, mainstream discussions about food security, especially food security for people on low/fixed incomes seem to me to consistently miss or just plain ignore lack of time, and to be dismissive and minimising and generally privileged and clueless about lack of knowledge.
And the higher up the hierarchy of food needs the conversation gets, the more prescriptivist and privileged it seems to get.
And here's the thing. Everytime you want to take a step up that pyramid, you're accepting that food security just got harder to achieve and maintain, and you're going to need more resources.
My family is fortunate. We get to live at the top of the pyramid most of the time, if we choose to. We don't always choose to, because there are always going to be times when something else is more important to us. But mostly, we can choose to eat things that are tasty and nutritious, which were produced under conditions we find ethically acceptable, that we bought from suppliers whose practices and standards we mostly approve of.
And here's the thing: I honestly, seriously, absolutely don't think anyone needs to do things the way we do. I am not interested in telling people what they ought to do.
What I want to do, and try to find ways to do, is share what I know about getting, storing, and preparing food in the hopes that I can make it easier for someone else to get to where they want to be on that food pyramid.
And I have found over the years that with Food Education as with Sex Education the place where the biggest need is is between Zero and Two: I know a lot of people who are or have been in a position where the major factor in keeping their level of Food Security lower than it ought to be is that they don't know how to buy, store, prepare, and flavour their own food, so they have to depend on someone else - whether that's a family member or a diner or a food company - to do some or all of that for them. It's not just that they don't know how to cook, they don't know who to ask or how to ask or how to access the people who know. So they spend more than they can afford to on food that is less than acceptable to them.
Getting from Zero to Two is not easy. It's a LOT more complicated than disdainfully telling someone that a carrot is "better" than a Mars Bar[3]. And it's risky: when you're trying to get from Six to Eight you end up with some stuff that isn't quite what you wanted it to be. When you're trying to get from Zero to Two, you end up with some situations where what used to be food isn't anymore, because you burnt it or salted it to death, or it rotted. If your Food Security is already shaky... your ability to learn by experiment is kind of limited. Safer to stick with Ramen, or Freezer Pizza.
So when I write stuff for the "cooking for people who don't" tag, I want to be posting about making complex, effort-intensive food, totally from fresh ingredients, and about Doing Stuff Mostly From Cans And Packets and tweaking it a bit to make it tastier and more nutritious, and about things like What A Chest Freezer Can Do For Your Vitamin Situation, or How To Safely Store Twenty Kilos of Beans and Ten Of Flour and Which Things It's Worth Scrimping Elsewhere To Get In Bulk and What It Is Best To Just Get Weekly, and How To Build A Herb/Sauce/Spice Collection at One Jar Per Paycheque, or Living As Well As Possible In A Food Desert, and about Making A Pound Of Meat Feel Luxurious In A Dinner For Six, and about Good Stuff You Can Do With Leftovers. [4]
And I hope it's useful. I want to start doing more of it, and linking to other people who say Smart Stuff About Food.
So that's my Food Philosophy, sort of. Or at least my Talking About Food philosophy.
[1] By objective I mean, how many days worth of good, healthy food you actually have, or can definitely get and by subjective I mean how close that puts you to your own internal sense of "enough".
[2] Time may actually be one of the LEAST talked about resources that goes into a person or family's level of food security.
[3] Also, you tell me that at the half-way point of a 20 km winter hike and I will EAT YOUR HEAD.
[4] Topic requests welcome. Anyone want to listen to me talk about freezers?
I have a lot of strong opinions about food, of which probably the strongest is, Describe Much, Prescribe Little. Which makes talking about it tricky, but ultimately really rewarding.
And it occurred to me last night as I was adding a handful of vegetables and a hefty shake of spice to a canned soup that one of the things that I really want to do when I write about food is to help increase people's levels of food security.
It seems to me that one of the less-considered factors that goes into determining someone's food security or insecurity - subjective AND objective[1]- is, well, knowledge, and access to knowledge. You have to HAVE resources - money, accessible grocery stores with good food in them, transport, a kitchen, physical capacity, maybe some assistance, cooking utensils, time[2] - and you have to know what and where they are and how to use them.
I don't mean, by the way, that NOBODY ever talks about this stuff. Obviously, lots of people do.
But the large, mainstream discussions about food security, especially food security for people on low/fixed incomes seem to me to consistently miss or just plain ignore lack of time, and to be dismissive and minimising and generally privileged and clueless about lack of knowledge.
And the higher up the hierarchy of food needs the conversation gets, the more prescriptivist and privileged it seems to get.
And here's the thing. Everytime you want to take a step up that pyramid, you're accepting that food security just got harder to achieve and maintain, and you're going to need more resources.
My family is fortunate. We get to live at the top of the pyramid most of the time, if we choose to. We don't always choose to, because there are always going to be times when something else is more important to us. But mostly, we can choose to eat things that are tasty and nutritious, which were produced under conditions we find ethically acceptable, that we bought from suppliers whose practices and standards we mostly approve of.
And here's the thing: I honestly, seriously, absolutely don't think anyone needs to do things the way we do. I am not interested in telling people what they ought to do.
What I want to do, and try to find ways to do, is share what I know about getting, storing, and preparing food in the hopes that I can make it easier for someone else to get to where they want to be on that food pyramid.
And I have found over the years that with Food Education as with Sex Education the place where the biggest need is is between Zero and Two: I know a lot of people who are or have been in a position where the major factor in keeping their level of Food Security lower than it ought to be is that they don't know how to buy, store, prepare, and flavour their own food, so they have to depend on someone else - whether that's a family member or a diner or a food company - to do some or all of that for them. It's not just that they don't know how to cook, they don't know who to ask or how to ask or how to access the people who know. So they spend more than they can afford to on food that is less than acceptable to them.
Getting from Zero to Two is not easy. It's a LOT more complicated than disdainfully telling someone that a carrot is "better" than a Mars Bar[3]. And it's risky: when you're trying to get from Six to Eight you end up with some stuff that isn't quite what you wanted it to be. When you're trying to get from Zero to Two, you end up with some situations where what used to be food isn't anymore, because you burnt it or salted it to death, or it rotted. If your Food Security is already shaky... your ability to learn by experiment is kind of limited. Safer to stick with Ramen, or Freezer Pizza.
So when I write stuff for the "cooking for people who don't" tag, I want to be posting about making complex, effort-intensive food, totally from fresh ingredients, and about Doing Stuff Mostly From Cans And Packets and tweaking it a bit to make it tastier and more nutritious, and about things like What A Chest Freezer Can Do For Your Vitamin Situation, or How To Safely Store Twenty Kilos of Beans and Ten Of Flour and Which Things It's Worth Scrimping Elsewhere To Get In Bulk and What It Is Best To Just Get Weekly, and How To Build A Herb/Sauce/Spice Collection at One Jar Per Paycheque, or Living As Well As Possible In A Food Desert, and about Making A Pound Of Meat Feel Luxurious In A Dinner For Six, and about Good Stuff You Can Do With Leftovers. [4]
And I hope it's useful. I want to start doing more of it, and linking to other people who say Smart Stuff About Food.
So that's my Food Philosophy, sort of. Or at least my Talking About Food philosophy.
[1] By objective I mean, how many days worth of good, healthy food you actually have, or can definitely get and by subjective I mean how close that puts you to your own internal sense of "enough".
[2] Time may actually be one of the LEAST talked about resources that goes into a person or family's level of food security.
[3] Also, you tell me that at the half-way point of a 20 km winter hike and I will EAT YOUR HEAD.
[4] Topic requests welcome. Anyone want to listen to me talk about freezers?
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 06:21 am (UTC)Topic suggestion: cooking for one without wasting food.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 10:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 08:51 am (UTC)I think it sort of helps that (good intentions to the contrary) I very rarely eat as a Thing One Does; I'm almost always multitasking in some way. So if the food's the same thing I've had six times in a row, I just throw in some cayenne pepper and add a very shiny distraction to my multitasking rota. :D
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 07:29 am (UTC)Topic suggestion: cooking for one without wasting food.
Ooh one of my favourites. You shall have it.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 07:57 am (UTC)I'm not going to buy a huge container of something, such as some condiments, if I only need to use a tiny bit of it on very sporadic intervals. I absolutely cannot stand seeing food go to waste.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 08:01 am (UTC)Bulk bins are also the solo cook's friend, because they let you buy tiny little amounts of stuff at the same per-unit price as the person getting five pounds.
Herb and Spice in Ottawa sells bulk spices from little drawers and omg is it ever great for that.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 10:59 am (UTC)Also, the other trouble with bulk spices is where do I get them? The food co-op in the next town over has a good bulk selection, but few of the stores within easy access of here have bulk anything.
But when I can find bulk goods, I am very happy.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 11:10 am (UTC)Craft stores often sell tiny jars, though. You could go to the bulk food place once a year and then have a little box - to keep them organised and the light away - full of tiny perfectly labelled spice jars!
Or that might be ridiculously difficult. This stuff gets tricky!
Hmmm... *looks at your journal just cause* you are going to be in SF over Christmas. Penzeys' has small jars ...
Also my wife has family in your small town!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 04:24 pm (UTC)http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/category.php?bid=16&PHPSESSID=20111214081201556878026
I love these because I can see what's in them, the lid hinges up one-handed and doesn't get lost, they're a good size to tap on the side of the bowl and shake out a little of the spice, etc.
http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/product.php?pid=427&
I like the 3"x1" because it's very easy to handle, it's big enough to get a grip on one-handed. If that's too much spice, you could fill some of the space with a glass marble or something.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 11:55 am (UTC)- Harimad
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 03:34 pm (UTC)i'm not sure why i happened, but at some point in the last 10 years, i accidentally started to think mixes weren't cool/proper/good enough/low quality
i then found penzey's and got happily turned right around!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 03:54 pm (UTC)I love the Penzey's Mural of Flavor, too.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-16 09:12 am (UTC)Have you tried it on buttered popcorn?
Freaking AMAZING, let me tell you what.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-16 05:26 pm (UTC)My OMG from Penzey's is Brady St. Cheese Sprinkle. My faves if I still hiked the hard way are dehydrated chopped garlic (that stuff is *strong*), dehydrated chopped onion, and more Brady St. Cheese Sprinkle.
- Harimad
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 05:32 am (UTC)A jar that has held five years' worth of sesame seeds with never a wash with soap... is making your new seeds taste like your old ones, probably, not in a good way. :-/
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 02:33 pm (UTC)http://penzeys.com
They also have a few things like minced dried onion and minced dried garlic that are amazing time/energy savers when I'm just cooking for me.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 08:54 am (UTC)If I could have only five spices in my entire pantry, at least two of Penzey's mixes would be there holding first and second place. (Life without Turkish and Northwoods seasoning: a sadly flavourless life!)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 11:34 pm (UTC)Oh yea, this is what keeps me from buying condiments like mustard.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 08:56 am (UTC)