The Productive Home vs. The Average Person: Biscuits on Saturday, Canned Beans on Monday

Blog Image 1 The food industry has come to a consensus: Everyone is cooking less and eating worse. Nutritionists, chefs, farmers, gourmands, productive home enthusiasts, hipsters in the granola aisle of Whole Foods–everyone agrees that there is an epic food fight being waged in our homes. Unfortunately, the rhetoric used to combat this trend is often laced with blame and judgement. “Cook all three meals.” “I hope those eggs are cage free.” “Don’t waste money on organic avocados.” You bought non-organic strawberries? Here’s a shovel. You’ll need it to dig the grave all those pesticides are going to put you in. Think fast: there’s a Chinese takeout container full of shame and guilt flying right at your head.

Within this milieu of confusion, good intentions, and more than a pinch of guilt, it is tempting to side-step the minefield that cooking can become and outsource the decision of what’s for dinner to restaurants and corporations. Erica Strauss addresses this temptation, and why she resists it, in a post entitled “Zombies vs. The Joy of Canning: Motivation in the Productive Home.” She hits upon a refreshingly simple and unpretentious reason for fighting against the cultural norm of take-out and microwave dinners, as she admits, for making life harder: It makes her happy. As frightening as the threat of a zombie apocalypse or satisfying as taking down big business one organic cantaloupe at a time may be, she comes to the conclusion that, “At the end of a long, long, long day of canning, or weeding, or sowing, something greater than fear and anger has to carry you along.” I think she’s right. If you’re going to spend a full weekend canning tomatoes as she does, I hope to God it’s because you find enjoyment in it. And if you do, then congratulations, because being happy and healthy is an excellent by-product of that hobby.

It’s important to note though, that the way of life Strauss has chosen is a hobby. Some people love taking pictures, or playing music, or cooking tiny, ant-sized versions of popular foods (miniature cooking is a thing, and it is weirdly satisfying). Erica Strauss loves making her own deodorant, and harvesting honey straight from the hive.

That’s great for her, but for most of us it’s impractical at best and utter drudgery at worst. Continue reading

Boorish Bread

“He’s the best at what he does, after all. The finest bread I’ve ever had. And the most expensive: in human cost, aggravation, and worry. Hiring Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown was always a trade-off—with God or Satan, I don’t know—but it was usually worth it. Bread is the staff of life. And Adam, the unlikely source” (242).

Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

Boorish Bread

If you could eat one food for the rest of your life and nothing else, what would it be? Your grandmother’s roast beef and gravy? Your mother’s meatloaf? Greasy pepperoni pizza from that pizza joint down the street that stays open until 2 a.m.?

If I had to choose, I would choose bread. But not just any bread. The heavenly, doughy goodness that is Texas Roadhouse rolls. Continue reading

3 loaves of bread.

A Product of the Home

I woke up early every morning to read my science textbook and cook breakfast burritos before my dad left for work. I wrote essays in front of the fireplace after I had finished shoveling snow off our driveway. I discussed Dostoevsky’s novels with my mom and sister while we prepared spaghetti for dinner, growing so absorbed in the conversation that I accidentally burnt the tomatoes. From kindergarten through senior year of high school, my education took place completely within my own house, and I am a proud graduate of the Lisko Home School. Continue reading

Kitchen Confidential: The Humble Beginnings

“But God protects fools and drunks, and we were certainly both foolish and drunk much of the time.”

—Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

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Homemade macaroni and cheese topped with crumbles of bread.

In the “First Course” of Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain serves up a tale of his early culinary life. From the first taste of cold soup just after fourth grade to his graduation (and early successes) from culinary school, Bourdain’s image of the chef and life in the professional kitchen is, in a word, sensational. Bourdain’s descriptions of cooks strike me as something akin to describing all journalists as Hunter S. Thompsons (who, coincidentally, was an early idol of Bourdain’s, to absolutely no one’s surprise), but the idea that life in the kitchen could be so exciting certainly wooed this reader. Continue reading