Secret Ingredients

I have to agree with some of my classmates that most of the articles written before the 1990s in the “Dining Out” section of Secret Ingredients didn’t hold my attention for very long. I sensed a noticeable shift in writing style once I reached Adam Gopnik’s “Is there a crisis in French cooking?” The story and the vocabulary appeared less lavish and more relatable in Anthony Bourdain's and Jim Harrison’s pieces. Bourdain’s, “Don’t eat before reading this” was my favorite article in the section, mostly because of the content itself, but it was like a splash of color in a sea of gray. In class, we’ve talked a lot of about food justice, knowing where our food is coming from, but we haven’t touched as much on the ethics of restaurant kitchens (I don’t want to be punished for wanting a well-done piece of meat, nor do I want my hollandaise to consist of recycled butter. I’m slightly less comfortable eating in restaurants now knowing that my food’s probably been picked at over and over--which Bourdain claims is a sign of good cooking).

I admit that I read him differently than the other authors because I liked and knew him from A Cook’s Tour; I expected the same humor and wit, and wasn’t sidetracked by his comments on unfamiliar French cooking like other pieces. I could hear the voice I read in his novel, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have enjoyed the other authors as much had I been more familiar with their work. I also wondered if my lack of interest in the first 60 pages of “Dining Out” had anything to do with everything being about France and French cooking. I didn’t know what to expect from these pieces as a whole and was anxious to find a connecting thread, and I suppose it is the authors’ experiences with the French cuisine. As I was hoping for a break from this, I experienced a greater appreciation for the variety in Bourdain's novel, his different food and travel experiences across the world.

Like the last couple of articles in “Dining Out,” I could relate to the more personal descriptions from “Dining In.” M.F.K. Fisher’s descriptions of family and casseroles, although meant for mass feeding he says, were more intimate and relatable. Tomkins’ article on Julia Child was the most entertaining because I kept picturing Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci in the film Julie & Julia. In Tomkins’ descriptions of Julia Child and her path to success, I thought about the progress that female chefs have made in the cooking industry and if/how they are treated differently than male chefs today. Is the industry male-dominated? If we as an American society are still so inclined to perceive women primarily in a traditionally domestic setting, does that mean female chefs should be dominating the networks? I’m interested to hear what others think about this. The piece also got me thinking about television personalities; is Tomkins right when he says that cooking stars like Child just don’t exist anymore? I’ve never seen any of her episodes, but just the descriptions of her provoked a comparison with present-day TV stars. My knowledge of famous chefs is limited to the Food Network, where it’s not hard to find quirky chefs like Alton Brown, but I wonder if there’s anybody who exists today who can match up to what Julia Child meant to the world in the 1950s.

Reading film

“We have allowed ourselves to become so disconnected and ignorant about something that is as intimate as the food that we eat.” –Joel Salatin

Watching Salatin sitting in the grass with his pig, wearing a pair of mud-stained jean suspenders is quite a contrast to Carole Morison’s chicken house, which she admits is more like mass production than farming. We’ve already discussed in class the idea of knowing exactly where our food is coming from, and we’ve read powerful descriptions from Bourdain and Pollan about the impact of staring our food in the eye before it makes its way into our stomachs. There is, however, something different about seeing it on film and having live images of Polyface farms to supplement our understanding of it from The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Characters like Salatin seem more real when we have visuals.

It takes a great descriptive writer to use his or her words to compete with the image of a sobbing mother advocating for Kevin’s Law and condemning the USDA for being unable to exercise more power in the matter of her son’s death by meat contamination. We talk about unfair working conditions and how the industry’s laborers earn barely enough to sustain their families; the film gave us the opportunity to see an example of where a migrant worker lives, and to watch the police track down illegal immigrants, arrest them, and let the companies who hired them go free and continue making billions.

On Monday I attended the second annual Valentine’s Day Dinner in Hicks Banquet Hall. Like last year, a note card with a discussion question awaited guests at their seats. Unlike last year, Farms to K teamed up with MiRA (Migrant Rights Action), the Kalamazoo service-learning program that works closely with Farmworker Legal Services. Due to the collaboration, the dinner didn’t focus solely on the importance of eating locally, but also on the migrant worker experience. My note card, for example, asked if we as consumers worry about how pesticides in our food affect the workers; the answer read something like, “We worry about pesticides in our food…”—but what about the workers? Some interesting discussions emerged from the dinner that night.

On a different note: I tend to consider reading a book a more intimate experience than watching a film (because people almost always say the book is better than the movie), but “Food, Inc.” changed my perception of the intimacy of documentary films. This whole movie highlighted the helplessness of farmers, farm workers, and consumers. Until I watched the film, I never gave much thought to the illusion of diversity in a supermarket, or the marriage between science and technology and McDonald’s burgers. Or how farmers are so helplessly in debt that they would compromise their morals to keep their contracts. They have families to support, too.

So who is more protected: the industry or the consumer? Would farmers like Moe Parr win their cases in seed saving if they aren’t forced to settle with powerful companies because they can’t pay the legal fees? Why does the government subsidize fast food and not healthy food? What about looking at this issue from the standpoint of our health? And is obesity truly a crisis of personal responsibility? I wonder how much we should really allow the government and the food industry to step in and control the way we eat.

Old Habits Die Hard

It’s not that my family and I are savages because we never make it to the dinner table before we’ve picked at every food cooking on the stove. We’re all guilty of standing up while we eat because we love food too much to sit down and wait for it to reach our plates. We make it to the dinner table eventually, but not before our fingers get a little dirty. My mom usually asks my sister or me to set the dinner table, and we only half set it before we’re back to dipping our fingers in the pots and pans. We don’t always care about what’s for dinner as long as we’re with each other. I knew this was true the time my sister made mashed cauliflower in high school as a substitute for mashed potatoes. I supported her adventurous side until I remembered how much she bullied me throughout my life and I said, “This sucks.” I got in trouble for using that phrase, but at least Lauren never made cauliflower again.

My perfect meal doesn’t take place at the dining room table of my house where the crystal chandelier hangs above the vanilla-scented-candle display and the silk red tablecloth. It’s in the kitchenette, where I’m surrounded by lime green walls with white trimming and framed, sepia-toned pictures of foods like hard eggs and onions. It’s the closest to abstract artwork that we own, and it looks out of place against the walls that haven’t been repainted since we moved to the south side of Chicago in 1991.

We’ve had the same kitchen since I was two years old. It’s the one room in the house that my mom never considers remodeling. My mom, dad, sister and I sat for dinner here every night of the week before my sister went to college two years before me. My sister and I fought each other for the brown bench against the wall because we didn’t like sitting in the black chairs that made us feel like grown ups. I can trace the start of our rocky relationship back to the nights we fought over that uncomfortable bench that neither of us enjoys anymore.

The dining room table was reserved for family barbecues, birthdays and other holidays. Or whenever my mom entertained guests like our parish priest Father Raftery, who I informed at dinner one night that my mom was making us strawberry daiquiris for dessert. I forgot to tell him they were virgin and my mother reprimanded me for that later. She also loved to entertain my grade school friends; our idea of a good time rarely coincides even today, but we both agreed that whenever my girlfriends came to the house for sleepovers, we would make homemade pizza. I was proud of her when she made it. It’s one of the few foods that has the power to make me angry once it fills my belly to the point where I can’t consume any more. I always regret eating more than I can stomach the next morning, but it’s worth it in the moment.

My idea of a perfect meal starts with who I spend my time with in the kitchen; my mom did most of the cooking when I was younger, a role my dad has assumed since the success of his breakfast taco experiments gave him the confidence he needs to cook more ambitious foods. I wanted to cook this meal with my mom because I didn’t spend much time with her in the kitchen as a kid; I was curious to know how to make her flan, her Mexican rice, her rice pudding, but she was a working mom who didn’t always have the patience to teach me the recipes when she got back from work. But pizza was one of the simplest recipes she had, so I almost always had a role in preparing it.

I traveled back home to Chicago this weekend to create my perfect meal with my parents. My mom and I shopped at Trader Joe’s—a quirky grocery store that serves a good selection of organic food where the cashiers wear Hawaiian shirts to work and say things like “Cowabunga dude!” They’re all about cutting costs and keeping it cool, according to my mom. We bought a box of organic spinach greens, a yellow onion, mushrooms, red bell peppers, tomatoes on the vine, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and BelGioioso fresh mozzarella cheese. We already had the dough ingredients, salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil at home.

I prepared the dough in the food processor before cooking the pizza toppings so it had time to rise (When I was younger, my mom would let the dough rise for several hours and sometimes we made it by hand.). I added warm water, yeast, and flour before we pulsed it and let it mix together and form a sticky white ball. I placed it in a glass bowl sprayed with non-stick spray, covered it with plastic wrap, and waited an hour or so until it was ready.

Next was the reason I loved pizza as a kid: the fumes that filled the kitchen from cooking the onion, spinach, peppers, and mushrooms, even though I didn’t allow them on my pizza at the time. Red bell pepper is one of those underappreciated foods that I misunderstood in grade school, but that I make all kinds of excuses to incorporate into my meals now. We placed the peppers on all four burners and let the flesh of the peppers grow a dark black jacket that we later stripped away along with the seeds inside. After those were finished, we cooked down the spinach, mushrooms, and onions.

We assembled everything that we wanted on the pizza in bowls before I rolled the dough, often a source of anxiety in grade school because I felt incompetent when my mom was forced to reroll what I thought was a good circle. An even greater challenge was transferring the dough onto the pizza paddle. Then we added the toppings; first the spinach, then the onions, mushrooms, sun-dried and vine tomatoes.

I still feel like a kid when I make pizza with my mom because I ask for her approval on the thickness of the dough, the amount of olive oil I should spread on it before I lay the toppings on, and if the amount of mozzarella cheese I crumble on top is excessive. Even if she tells me the crust is too thin, the way I like it, or if there’s too much cheese, I follow my own instincts.

I’m reminded of the beauty of cooking with color and the artistic value of food when I make pizza; it’s a painter’s palette of crimson, forest green, golden yellow, sepia, ivory. It proves that an ordinary dish can be beautiful. Even though my mother’s pizza is more sophisticated than it was in the years I did the five-minute walk to school from my front steps, old habits die hard. We still picked at the vegetables while they were cooking in the pan. We turned on the oven light every few minutes to watch the mozzarella cheese melt and blanket the vegetables. We ate standing up and made loud noises as we licked our fingers. We skipped the salad so we had room for the maximum amount of pizza. We ate strawberries for dessert because my mom never bought ice cream and cookies when I was a kid. We talked at the dinner table about my life in college that sometimes feels so removed from my life back home. We watched the last colors of the palette disappear before we submitted to the couch, holding our stomachs with both hands.

Memoir revision--In my grandma's kitchen

I was five years old the first time my grandma made gorditas for my sister and me. We stood on our tiptoes to reach the level of my grandma’s hands on the kitchen counter where she molded the thick, circular tortillas made of masa harina in her wrinkled palms. Our eyes paced back and forth with her hand movements as we struggled to maintain our grip on the counter’s edge. We watched her place the masa cakes in a pan full of bubbling-hot oil situated on her outdated stovetop. I fought my sister for the protection of my grandma’s leg when drops of oil escaped from the pan above our heads. The masa-colored surfaces transformed into a light golden brown as they fried. She made sure to cook them long enough for the insides to remain moist and chewy, and so an abundance of steam flowed from within when she seized them with her fork.

It was a simple food, not even a dish, but the experience was so gratifying because it was something my mom never made at home. I longed to taste the gorditas in the setting of my own kitchen, but my sister and I knew it was a rare food experience that we needed to savor while my mom wasn’t around. My grandma, on the other hand, was indifferent to our taking two extra spoonfuls of margarine and smothering it into the crevices of the gordita. We felt like fugitives trying to escape the health-conscious ways of our one-time marathon-running mother and past Miss Panamerican titleholder—memories she dwells on often.

My mom isn’t my grandma Carolina’s daughter, but she treats her like one. When my mom was around to witness the event of my and my sister’s overindulgences, she gave us the smile of a mother who knew she couldn’t compete with Grandma. My mom had authority, but my grandma had just a little bit more. When we returned home, it was apple slices and turkey sandwiches on four-grain bread, but the gorditas were so satisfying that we felt full for a week. It was a sweet victory over Mom.

To anyone who doesn’t know my grandma, a smashed gordita soaked in butter sounds like the average junk most Mexican children crave. It’s a cheap food that she made for the six kids she had to raise by herself on the east side of Chicago after she left an abusive husband in Guadalajara. I had the chance to visit my estranged grandfather on his cattle farm big enough for a family of 15 during a trip to Mexico with my immediate family when I was nine years old. He lived alone with two dogs whose visible rib cages said it all: he was a selfish man. He had the leathery and tired face of someone who worked in the sun all day and cared little for contact with family or friends. His closest relationships were with a bottle of tequila and a rusty pick-up truck. He didn’t know my name.

My grandma never went on these trips with us to Mexico. The kid in me thought it was because she was still in love with my grandpa and wasn’t prepared to dig up old emotions. My sister was the mature one who realized she just hated him.

I have learned more about my grandma through her cooking than in the conversations we have. She lets her two-foot-tall steel pot do the talking—the one that is dented and scratched all over the silver surface from years of cooking caldos for the big family she created. Her servings of caldo de albóniga, caldo de camarón, pozole and menudo always reached the rim of the bowl, especially with the frequent and welcome addition of her Mexican rice—the envy of every Guzman who tries to replicate the recipe. Generous portions of food awaited my sister and me on her thick wooden table tainted with the aesthetically displeasing floral patterns on her cups and placemats. Florals have since become engrained in my head as an indication of old age.

But the grandma from my childhood never seemed to age. She was a short, plump and proud Mexican woman with all the confidence I could hope to attain by her age. She was always in the kitchen, always wearing the same cotton thermal underwear tops and bottoms. Year after year, when I visited her small home, I was expected to march straight to that wooden dinner table upon arrival where I was greeted with the foods she knew I loved. I didn’t know much about my grandma other than she loved me enough to feed me my weight in foods with a chicken bouillon aftertaste. And I felt safe whenever I sat down to eat in her home. Everything she cooked tasted better because I ate it in her kitchen, a modest space with warm carpeted floors, outdated brown tile and kitchenware she kept from her previous life in Mexico.

Her kitchen had all the reminders of family: family pictures from the early 90s taped onto her enamel icebox, their white edges visible from the rips and tears created by all the hands they have passed through.

Her home reflected the most important values I grew up with. There was always something cooking in her house because she knew the way into her family’s hearts was through their stomachs. Once I was old enough to understand the vulgarity of swear words, she yelled in my direction, “Pinche cabrón! You better stop fighting with your sister or I’ll kick your ass!” I let out a childish giggle because I found her obscenities endearing. Later on, I realized that what she meant to say was, “Without family, you have nothing.” And she was the best example of this. When she was up for the task, she would invite the family to her house to make tamales for Christmas. She made it easy for my six cousins and me to assemble the cornhusks and the masa—my favorite part of the tamal. Every year we formed an assembly line that stayed intact for just a few minutes because we got the bright idea of sneaking upstairs to steal animal crackers, artificial fruit cups and Welch’s grape juice from her pantry. We were gluttons, but my grandma wouldn’t have it any other way. Food brought the family together, so the more the better.

I remember the first time I went to my grandma’s house and wasn’t greeted with food. It was an afternoon last November after she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. When she didn’t let me approach her for a kiss on the cheek, I turned the corner to see what was cooking. I realized that day that I had finally grown up and my grandma won’t always be there to remind me that I am nothing without my family.

Local Foods Debated: Is Changing Our Eating a Pressing Social Justice Issue?

Check out the article from the Index last week on local food in the cafeteria, and what Dean Westfall had to say about Farms to K's purchasing policy. Check out some of the comments that people made on the article as well!

The cow that was never meant to eat corn

Michael Pollan says that in the Mexican tradition, to allow corn to lay on the ground is considered sacrilegious--talk about having respect for the food you eat. Mexico is just one example of a country deeply rooted in traditions surrounding food and eating. He argues that in a country like the U.S. with such an unstable food culture, we’re susceptible to believing what we read in diet books instead of making the effort to visit the gym, and we treat on-the-go foods like protein bars as meal substitutes. How much do we respect the food we eat? Better yet, how much we respect our bodies? I fall victim to the temptation of fast food chicken nuggets and Burger King whoppers every now and then, but I have enough respect for my body that I wouldn’t eat like that all the time.

This notion of stability is important; if we had a more stable food culture, would we still feed our children fast food or obsessively count calories? I agree with Pollan that the answer is no, we would be a much healthier population if we had this stability in our daily routine. There are many things missing from the American Dining Experience, as Bourdain argues in A Cook's Tour, like the element of family and of community. While I looked forward the rare occasions in grade school when my mom decided to take me to White Castle instead of making me a turkey sandwich and sliced apples for lunch, now that I’m older, I appreciate the process of cooking (or rather, watching my mom cooking) a healthy meal and sitting down to eat it with the family.

This whole idea of stability for me is more about assessing our values as it is about having one food or one set of foods to define our country by. Part of the appeal of traveling to cities within the U.S. with large, diverse populations is visiting a number of neighborhoods and having different food experiences within that one city. In Chicago, you’ll find neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little Italy, Ukranian Village, Greektown, Lithuanian Plaza, and the Polish Village, each food tradition hoping to claim the prize for Chicago’s soul food. Pilsen, with its beloved restaurants like El Milagro, is no exception. With so much food, it’s hard to single out just one as representing Chicago’s dining scene. In the United States, we call ourselves the Melting Pot because we all come from different cultures and customs around the world. With this much diversity comes the difficult task of unifying our nation in terms of food. Is it possible? Maybe not in the near future, but is it even necessary? Most of me says no.

I often got lost in Pollan’s complex and technical descriptions of food’s journey from the cow that was never meant to eat corn to our processed-food-happy bodies. But he’s introduced me to a number of concepts that I’ve heard others speak passionately about but have never been proactive enough to research on my own. This seems to be at least one of the audiences he’s writing for. Like he says, this book isn’t for people who prefer to eat in ignorance.