I would never call myself a “Foodie”. I’m not sure if that’s because “Foodie” has become a term that seems terribly poncey and I just don’t want to associate my ice-cool image with that of someone who eats predatorially off of other people’s plates, or if it’s because in my soul I acknowledge that I know very little about food and instantly forget all of the interesting and fancy things I ever learn about it. That is surely a talent one needs if one calls one’s own self a “Foodie”.
To be fair, I love the look of a mortar and pestle as much as the next person, and I adore those dainty little quails’ eggs nestled together in a bowl, but I don’t think I love or adore them ENOUGH. I don’t make it my business to guess at what ingredients went into making the sauce that is served in a restaurant and poured lovingly over my seemingly ordinary slice of cheesecake. To the complete disgust of my best friend, I buy my spices in bulk once a year at the bulk food store and pour them into those tiny little jars to stare at in wonder until I can scare up some recipe that calls for their use. Her head blows off whenever I bring up the bulk store thing, so we quickly turn most of our food conversations to dissing the people we know instead.
I don’t know where my pork is raised, or my potatoes grown. I’ve never even considered making my own chimichurri sauce from scratch – truth be told, I don’t even know what’s IN chimichurri sauce. The benefits of wild rice over long-grained white, completely escape me and all I can see is that I’d have to rinse it first and then cook it for between 45 and 60 minutes. What? I can have dinner made, on the table and eaten in 45 minutes! I do make and can my own salsa and relish from farm fresh ingredients – that I have no idea whose farm they come from and refuse to do the legwork to find out – and I am regularly making and freezing a marinara sauce that we love. Mind you, for that one, I wait until the big cans of crushed tomatoes go on a sale so fine that it makes you gasp, grab an armful of cans, and run up to the checkout before you can say “Start The Car!!!!!!”.
You can now tell where I fall on the chef-y scale, can’t you?
It’s not that I’m a bad cook or that I don’t LIKE to cook, I’m not and I do, but as one of my very dearest and most beloved friends (who actually IS a trained chef) once described me, I am a great cook of peasant food. Peasant food! I would LOVE to have become outraged at that description – made to my face and in fact over a meal that I had just prepared for him – but my husband and I exchanged looks that said, ‘Yep. That’s pretty much it.’ My friend ATE my food and enjoyed it but only because he was hungry, and nothing struck him as dodgy about the meal. I doubt that it ended up in his food journal where he writes glowing, almost sexual, descriptions about the food he enjoys on his many travels. Let’s just say that he and I connect over music. I’m always eager and willing to eat the food HE prepares, but he doesn’t cross the line of asking me to help him. One time when I was at his place, I made an apple pie that I happen to be fairly famous for in some circles, and instead of turning his oven down after the first 15 minutes to protect the crust from getting too brown, I succeeded in turning the oven OFF leaving us to serve an almost completely raw-bottomed pie to his poo-poo friends that night at dinner. Nice.
That oven was complicated! Who buys those anyway???
Now that I think about it, I have SEVERAL friends who are “Foodies” and proud of it. I was, for a time, friends with a chef who also was the anonymous food critic for the local newspaper and although that proved to be a TERRIFIC way to get into restaurants that I could in no way afford, it also started me on the path to being disgruntled when people help themselves to my plate of food. My thought process is that if you WANTED to taste this meal, you should have ORDERED it instead of whatever THAT is! Don’t go ordering something else and then proceed to eat off of my plate too! And if you absolutely must, must, MUST eat off my plate, do NOT take the choicest pieces! What are you thinking??? MINE!!!!!! He told me at one point that I eat like I’m in prison – that I’m a very ‘guarded’ eater. Again, that’s pretty on-point.
When he was visiting our place one time, he was ‘helping’ to make supper and whined for several minutes straight about how dull my knives were! I know – what nerve! I explained as patiently as I could that I never cut myself on dull knives because they won’t go through the skin, whereas a sharp knife would take off your finger as soon as look at it!!! This, he did not buy. My husband succumbed to his berating soon after and bought us a knife sharpener. I never use the damn thing. I make my husband sharpen our knives. I don’t even know where we keep it. Since that purchase, we have both lost vast amounts of blood from cutting our own selves while under the pressure of making a salad by the time the pork chops are ready to come off the barbeque, but I will admit to you that our tomatoes now come out in lovely slices rather than interpretative and aggressive art pieces.
My own brother is an amazing cook! I stand in complete awe of his abilities and am eager to insinuate myself onto one of the bar stools that tuck up to the enormous island in his kitchen, around mealtimes. Sometimes I’ll sit there for hours, making up excuses and just waiting for the magic to begin. He can braise a salmon wrapped in tinfoil on the barbeque using nothing but a handful of grass clippings from the edge of the garden and it will be the BEST piece of salmon your tastebuds will have ever eaten. He actually has a line on the floor in his kitchen that I am not allowed to cross. I don’t. I’m afraid that if I defy him in that small demand, he won’t make me a crepe for lunch that will reduce me to tears. He cooks by feel – a little of this and a little of that. He knows what all of his spices actually taste like. Dried AND fresh. Like I said, in awe!
He has always wanted my baking talents however and at one point I tried to show him the ropes of baking. We were young and didn’t realize that we actually had limitations. He sucks at baking, and he sucks because baking needs a loyally scientific approach. He doesn’t have that. One cannot guess at baking measurements and expect to toss off fluffy breads or pull out cakes that don’t fall the moment they come out of the oven – unless they are people who go by the name of Grandma and are in their 70s. He is still periodically trying to get that same recipe to work for him 25 years after our learn-to-bake stage. Bless his little heart – he’s a fighter!
But me, I’m not in this to excel. I cook because I am crazy about eating. I cook because I usually find it entertaining to make something tasty out of something that came into the house in various pieces and forms. I get satisfaction out of succeeding at plopping down colourful meals from identifiable ingredients within a timeframe that guarantees that my feet won’t hurt or provoke me to buy one of those squishy mats for the kitchen that people who stand on cement for hours, buy. For me, feeding my fellow peasants good and hearty meals in the least amount of time possible, is enough!
And that’s definitely NOT the calling card of a “Foodie”.