Years ago, I read M.F.K. Fisher’s seminal work The Art of Eating. Her prose about food and the crucial importance of social eating was hypnotic. It was one of my first exposures to sophisticated food writing, one that made me feel at once inspired to step up my cooking game, and guilty that I sometimes ate cereal over the sink for breakfast. (Fisher, I am sure, ate eggs from egg cups and always used cloth napkins while enjoying fresh flowers atop a well-lit breakfast table.) The Art of Eating celebrates the visual and tactile components of food, describing meals not just as nutrition but as works of gastronomic art necessary for the health of the human soul. It was M.F.K Fisher who once described an afternoon picnic with her parents in which they cut a whole pie into thirds (thirds!) and spooned it over with cream, as “one of the best meals we ever ate.”
I can’t imagine how fast and hard I would have to guilt-exercise to feel good about a meal like that.
My husband and I recently watched the documentary Food, Inc. (I know, we’re behind the times) and in my disgust over what can only be a 21st century version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, I started thinking again about M.F.K. Fisher. Fisher cooked with whole milk and lots of butter, used real sugar when baking cakes, ate pasture-raised meat, and, above all, felt that to share a good meal with loved ones was a form of social communion that transcended life’s mundane troubles. (These are the people who can eat a third of a pie with cream and remember it with pleasure forever.)
Mindful eating of whole, unprocessed ingredients is nothing new – it is a food philosophy that has been around as long as the American government has been regulating food and farms with the intent of establishing a tighter control over public health. The Jungle was one of the first published works to shed light on America’s meat packing facilities, their marginalization of certain ethnic groups, and their gut-churning, unsanitary conditions. The exposé, of a meat packing plant in Chicago, led to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, the first federal reform of consumer protection laws, which in turn led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. So public concern about what goes into our food has been alive and well throughout modern American history; it’s only been in the past couple of decades that such concern has taken a more pronounced and approachable direction, with a focus on local, fresh, and minimally-processed food production.
Our society is richer for its newfound focus on local food, I believe, and perhaps this new wave of public concern about food production will lead to some positive changes in the kinds of things that appear on our grocery shelves. In the past several weeks at my house, we have been using real ingredients, shunning low-fat creams, butters, and dairy products; roasting vegetables and drinking green smoothies; and using whole wheat flour and natural sweeteners as often as possible. But in the hectic and heady everyday, the reality is this: I do make a gorgeous pot of tomato bisque and quesadillas with homemade, whole-wheat tortillas, only to retreat to the upstairs family room to eat while watching Jeopardy. Crumbs in the family room are as much a part of life right now as cooking with local bacon. It is then that my thoughts return to M.F.K. Fisher – are we nourished by food alone, or is it sharing food with other people that nourishes us? Is this practice about the body or the soul? Can it be both?
Because, really, The Art of Eating describes eating and cooking under semi-ideal life conditions. So what about the art of eating when stressed? Sleep-deprived? Discouraged? Sick? After all, humans can’t function on an even keel all the time. We have complex days and complex feelings, and so often meals are a reflection of those feelings. I mean, God forbid, we sometimes have to order out. So for the time being, using real ingredients, even if we eat those wholesome meals in front of the television, is a major win. I feel like we have plenty of time in the future for those family-table meals with sophisticated children who eat pumpkin risotto and talk about art and music and sports, Jeopardy nowhere in sight (or at least recorded for later). That’s the hope, at least.
As Michael Pollan famously says in his In Defense of Real Food, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It is a resounding encouragement to those of us who want to eat whole and local. Unlike Fisher, Pollan doesn’t romanticize the act of social eating, but rather looks at food from a more practical standpoint. And really, we need both perspectives – an understanding that eating cereal over the sink doesn’t quite nourish to the fullest extent, and perhaps a resolution to eat oatmeal instead, with full knowledge of and better control over its ingredients.
The next step in this process is rediscovering Chapel Hill’s supermarket alternatives – sources for local meat, co-ops, and farmers’ markets. Good eating is a journey and a lifelong practice, but how lucky we are to live in a place with so many possibilities! So we’re getting there, and bringing our family with us. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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