NYT Articles on Food, Drink, Cooking, and Culinary Culture (2002–2005)

[Pan]

[...]Perhaps instead of vilifying mass-produced food (as many foodies and New Yorkers in general surely do), we should be concentrating on the fact that mass-production would allow us to truly feed the entire world, should we ever break through the tangle of politics preventing it.[...]

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Perhaps in theory, but in practice, when mass-produced imports undercut local farmers, that doesn't necessarily help a country feed itself in the longer term. We can discuss that further elsewhere, though.

[Megan Blocker]

I think I agree with the author's points in general. However, perhaps for simplicity's sake, she left out those of us who do make an effort to incorporate fresh/seasonal/organic/gourmet-ish aspirations into a tight budget, as a bunch of us were discussing over on this topic. And while I can't possibly speak for everyone in that thread, for me such aspirations have nothing whatsoever to do with elitism and everything to do with wanting to eat healthily and pleasurably, express creativity through the medium of food, and explore world cultures through their food practices.

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I absolutely agree - I am a huge proponent of natural and even local ingredients in my own cooking, which is done on a very tight budget.

This discussion (and the Op-Ed) reminds me of one of the essays from Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything." He cooked for a month out of a guidebook designed for families living on food stamps. Almost everything was made of pre-packaged goods, even though those are often more expensive than their fresh (albeit non-organic) alternatives. His conclusion was that the guide was focused on helping people cook the way the vast majority of Americans are accustomed to, rather than on helping them eat in the most delicious and healthful way possible on the given budget.

[kpurvis]

This discussion (and the Op-Ed) reminds me of one of the essays from Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything."  He cooked for a month out of a guidebook designed for families living on food stamps.  Almost everything was made of pre-packaged goods, even though those are often more expensive than their fresh (albeit non-organic) alternatives.  His conclusion was that the guide was focused on helping people cook the way the vast majority of Americans are accustomed to, rather than on helping them eat in the most delicious and healthful way possible on the given budget.

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The problem also is transportation. I did a series for my newspaper several years ago on the lack of supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods. In America, the people with the most access to transportation (people with reliable cars and the money to put gas in them) have the shortest trips to supermarkets, which are usually over-represented in their neighborhoods. The people with the least access -- people who are dependent on public transportation -- tend to have the longest trip to a market. The markets in their neighborhoods usually stock food that is poor quality, high in fat and sugar, and far more expensive. That can be changed, but in every example I found of a successful supermarket that came into a lower-income area, it usually took about 10 years of community activism to make it happen.

When it does happen, it pays off -- customers are incredibly loyal. But it's a battle to convince stores there profits to be made from selling good-quality, fresh food to people with incomes below $50,000 a year.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off on a tangent. I know that doesn't have anything to do with Julie's piece. We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion . . .

[russ parsons]

there were a couple of things that bugged me about the column. first, once again someone conflates organic with eating seasonally. they aren't the same thing at all, though they are sometimes parallel. and then to assume that this necessarily dictates higher prices. even though organic produce should always be higher than standard (the yield is so much less; farmers gotta eat, too), they are not that much higher and they are still lower than most processed foods. you can double that or even square that if you're talking just about eating food that's in season.

i think what she was trying to point out was the elitism of folks who shop at whole foods/whatever and then say they're doing it out of "philosophical" reasons rather than as a normal consumer choice.

and this is very un-PC, but i also have to say, i live in a "transitional" neighborhood (or as much as anything in southern california is these days), and my neighborhood grocery store leans heavily toward WIC shoppers. as a natural snoop, i'm always looking in other people's grocery baskets to see what they're cooking. and when folks are buying already fried chicken, potato chips, count chocula, a case of coke and a pint of haagen-dasz, well, they probably could have afforded to pick up a free-range chicken.

[DRColby]

I want what I eat to come out of my garden (with the emphasis on MY), picked by my hands. I want my fish to be the fish that I caught (with the emphasis on "I") and I want my meat to be meat that I slaugtered. My wild mushrooms I want to pick, not from the Andes that will surely give me the shits. Then I know a little bit about the hows, whys, and wherefores of what I eat.

Lamb shanks, sweatbreads and other ofal I have alwayss done with a version of a classic French sauce; it makes something more than it is out of it. So I would give Julie credit on that point.

The only Whole Foods I have been in is the one in the NYC Times-Life (or is it AOL/Parsons?) Building. I was struck watching the scene that this is more social than about food. I beat a path to Chinatown to did my shopping.

Dave

[Susan G]

I've been thinking about this article all day, and here's my two cents: While I agree that the attitude among the privileged shoppers at Whole Foods can be estoteric and trying, I don't believe it follows that everyone there is looking down his or her nose at low-income families who shop at the (agribusiness-produced/pesiticide friendly/brutal-nasty-short-slaughtered meat) supermarkets.

Can't we all just get along?

There's no need to stir up class warfare over the perception the wealthy *might* have about the failure of the lower classes to support farmers markets. Piffle.

It's a task and a chore to prepare a meal for a family after a day of doing low-paying work. I'm not going to man the barricades over the issue of what that family is preparing to eat. I'm going to be happy they have enough to share with one another.

[kellycolorado]

Instead, look in their carts. Some shop at Western Beef for nothing more than diet cola and frozen bagels; some at Whole Foods for premade sushi and overdesigned bottles of green tea. These people have much in common. So, too, do the professorial types poring over the sweet corn and dewy blueberries at the greenmarket and the Honduran family at the discount grocery, piling their cart high with rice and dried beans and canned tomatoes and all the other stuff you need to make something out of nothing much.

I agree- I don't see the controversy here. <shrug> I certainly don't think I'm better than other people just because I shop at Whole Foods. There are all types there, cooks and noncooks (albeit with a bit more $$ to spend) just like at the Safeway down the street.

[cakewalk]

I've been thinking about this article all day, and here's my two cents:  While I agree that the attitude among the privileged shoppers at Whole Foods can be estoteric and trying, I don't believe it follows that everyone there is looking down his or her nose at low-income families who shop at the (agribusiness-produced/pesiticide friendly/brutal-nasty-short-slaughtered meat) supermarkets.

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I agree (mostly.) I was seriously annoyed by the article, and I very meanly felt that she wanted to see her name on the op-ed page of the Times more than she actually wanted to convey any serious ideas. (And the Times, of course, complied.) I also suspect that the author herself is the very snob that she discusses in the article. The produce at Union Square or Whole Foods might leave her "longing for the antiseptic but nonjudgemental aisles of low-end supermarkets like Key Food or Western Beef," but I note that she hasn't mentioned that she started shopping there and how much better it is.

The availability of nutritious, local, good food to working people who have to seriously budget their money has been discussed often on eGullet, as has the general idea of educating people how to eat heathfully, how to shop, etc. It is a serious, seemingly unresolvable problem, and goes well beyond the author's fretting over those rich bohemian Union Sqare shoppers. I don't see anything "insidious" about the organic movement -- except maybe its takeover by big business, which was inevitable -- and I do not agree for one minute that it equates privilege with good ethics. Puh-leeze! If she thinks eating organic or buying local "wed money to decency," then I have to wonder who she's been hanging out with.

Sorry for the rant (well, not really), but I thought this article was way out of kilter.

[Pan]

[...]  The only Whole Foods I have been in is the one in the NYC Times-Life (or is it AOL/Parsons?) Building.  I was struck watching the scene that this is more social than about food.  I beat a path to Chinatown to did  my  shopping.

Dave

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AOL Time Warner Center.

I'm sure you got much better values in Chinatown, albeit on produce that's not organic.

Would you like to elaborate about the social scene at that huge Whole Foods? Is it a pickup joint of sorts?

I'd ask whether shopping in Chinatown is also a social event, but I think the vendors are just too busy for there to really be much socializing, though I could be wrong.

[DRColby]

Would you like to elaborate about the social scene at that huge Whole Foods? Is it a pickup joint of sorts?

I guess what I saw was lots of cart-comparrisons going on: who's going to spend the most on a bottle of politically correct wine to entertain the boss, what deli item should we be eating according to the NY Times, etc.

Perhaps I sensed a continuation of the attitude the sleek model, upstairs at the Ford booth, had about the sleek Lincoln truck she was demoing when sked whether this was "the truck the priest lusted over?" She could care less about the priest (didn't even know who he was), or his Madison Avenue lust that never made it to the Super Bowl,

The whole thing seems very unreal - or maybe a better word is surreal - about food downstairs as luxury trucks upstairs.

In Chinatown know what you buy in terms of food.... which just might just be an amplification of Julie's article.

Dave

[cakewalk]

Never mind.

Edited July 23, 2005 by cakewalk (log)

[mizducky]

This discussion (and the Op-Ed) reminds me of one of the essays from Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything."  He cooked for a month out of a guidebook designed for families living on food stamps.  Almost everything was made of pre-packaged goods, even though those are often more expensive than their fresh (albeit non-organic) alternatives.  His conclusion was that the guide was focused on helping people cook the way the vast majority of Americans are accustomed to, rather than on helping them eat in the most delicious and healthful way possible on the given budget.

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Wow. That guide, plus the presumption that some of *my tax dollars* went into providing such less-that-healthy info, seriously bums me out. But I can't say I'm surprised. Every time I get a food guidesheet/diet/healthy eating plan from any of my doctors, I am astounded at the kind of food suggestions they contain. Substitutions of artificial pseudo-ingredients, processed products ... then these medicos wonder why people have so much trouble sticking to any of these eating plans! (oh, I dunno, perhaps the fact that they taste disgusting might have something to do with it?) This is drifting enough off-topic that I'll probably start a whole other topic on it, but I'll leave off with this: when even professionals presumed to be experts about health and nutrition seem to lack either knowledge or sensitivity about what actually makes food taste yummy, how in the hell is *anyone*, of any income bracket or level of health, supposed to figure out how to feed themselves healthily?

(Note to self: Steingarten's book's been invoked enough times around eGullet, it's probably high time for me to get my hands on a copy...)

[Fat Guy]

To expand upon Russ's point about organic not meaning local or seasonal, the last time I went to Whole Foods I didn't see much local, seasonal produce at all. What I saw was organic produce, but out of season and grown far away -- not necessarily even on this continent. At that point, the designation "organic" is more about marketing than about doing any good for personal well-being or the planet. Because in most every respect, you and the world are better off for eating a locally produced non-organic apple (that maybe was treated with some fungicide because you live in a wet climate where you can't reliably grow organic apples) than for eating an organic one grown 6,000 miles away in Argentina.

[russ parsons]

i didn't mean to rag on whole foods. they've been absolutely brilliant at what they've done, which is make grocery shopping an enjoyable experience with a real social component. and while all of their food is not always the very, very best, much of the stuff they carry is very good--certainly much better than most other stores. they're like the barnes and noble of food retailing. i visited a musician friend in austin this spring and the first place he took me was the new whole foods and he seemed to know everyone in the place; and this is NOT a foodie. I was referring to the question of at whom julie's snarkiness might be directed (is it economic or social?).

fat guy's point is right, though in fairness i've never seen material from whole foods claiming that they were trying to do the local seasonal thing. they are focusing on organic and in that i disagree. i know too many farmers who are extremely responsible about using chemicals and grow terrific produce and i've had too much mediocre produce grown by the more spiritually responsible to buy into the whole "pure organic" ethos.

edit: i think it's instructive to remember what julie's blog and her whole character in the blog were about: defiantly anti-foodie and proletariat. it was funny in the blog but in a think piece, perhaps not quite thoughtful enough.

Edited July 23, 2005 by russ parsons (log)

[Behemoth]

I was amused today to see purslane at the farmer's market going for $2.50 a bunch, and the same growing out of a crack in the sidewalk a block away for $0 a bunch. At what point did we get so inept at feeding ourselves?

Edited July 23, 2005 by Behemoth (log)

[Bux]

Nothing trumps elitism as much as reverse snobbism if you're playing to the crowd, but I'm sorry whatever the evils, perils or faults of the elitism she sees, may be, the solutions are not in just doing the opposite and becoming anti-elitist which is really nothing more than the mirror image with the same faults in a parallel universe. Then again I suspect she knows that and took several awkward turns, so that I'm not sure where she's headed most of the time.

She loves ugly tomatoes, which is how she describes an heirloom tomato I'd call delicious before I'd note it was perhaps ugly. Again she describes favored asparagus by its size, not taste. Finally she admits she's unimpressed by the taste of a perfect peach. She's not suspicious of the cult of freshness, she's suspicious of taste. No wonder I couldn't relate to her take on Julia Child's recipes. I also think it puts her in an odd position to talk about other people's reasons for buy or preferring what they do.

Sorry Julie, fresh local and seasonal ingredients are what classic French food has been all about and it's no surprise France has lost much of its reputation in terms of gastronomy as it's moved from an agricultural nation to an industrial nation and begun to import much of its food. Alice Waters, if anyone needs reminders, learned to love fresh season produce in France. It's true Waters and Child saw different things in French food and perhaps brought different aspects of what was great about French food home to America, but I believe they are not exactly the opposites others make them out to be.

I have no trouble seeing the person who can appreciate a fowl stuffed round as a ball with truffles and fine forcemeat and a plate of excellent sauerkraut, as having superior taste to the person who is perfectly satisfied with just either one, but Julie Powell, ever not the snob herself, sees it necessary to pit the one against the other. To which I need to react as I began this post. I wonder even if it's a good translation of Brillat-Savarin, let alone a valid point

She presents her interpretations and prejudices as facts. Almost all of the people I know who shop at Whole Foods, appreciate fine classic French haute cuisine and nuevo cocina as well as ethnic cuisines, organic produce and local produce. Some of them, like myself, also shop in Chinatown, but she can't distinguish between Whole Foods and the Union Square Greenmarket across the street from one of the Whole Foods shops and Russ and Fat Guy have observed. As far as I know, Whole Foods takes food stamps as may some of the Greenmarket vendors.

The most objectionable statement in this article may be "Shopping is the province of the privileged; fine cooking is not," although the sentence that follows should stick in the craw of any culinary scholar. "Indeed, great cuisine arose from privation." Bullshit. Fine cooking is indeed the province of those with the time to make it or the money to hire someone else to do it. Fine cooking occurs in private homes on every economic level whether it's done by impoverished housewives or professional chefs employed by the rich. Necessity is more nurturing than poverty. Preservation was never a factor until someone had an excess of food. It's not the need of the impoverished any more than outfitting a sailing ship to find new routes for the spice trade. "Classic French sauces were conceived to ennoble less-than-prime beef. A burrito is nothing more than a delicious disguise for inelegant leftovers." At least I can be sure she read HL Menken and PT Barnum.

Oddly enough, if she was off track for the whole ride. she arrives at a station I can support better than her own arguments seem to support. "Brillat-Savarin sought to find others like himself, . . . who truly enjoyed food." Yes, you can't justifiably label a shopper by the market he choses at any given moment. Why didn't she say that earlier?

[Pan]

[...]Preservation was never a factor until someone had an excess of food.[...]

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I'd have to disagree at least somewhat. Preservation was a factor whenever people started keeping food to guard against times of scarcity, whether merely seasonal (winter, drought season, monsoon season) or periodic (severe droughts that would otherwise lead to severe famines, locust plagues, etc.). If you save enough for a rainy day (so to speak), does that really mean you have an "excess"?

[Bux]

[...]Preservation was never a factor until someone had an excess of food.[...]

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I'd have to disagree at least somewhat. Preservation was a factor whenever people started keeping food to guard against times of scarcity, whether merely seasonal (winter, drought season, monsoon season) or periodic (severe droughts that would otherwise lead to severe famines, locust plagues, etc.). If you save enough for a rainy day (so to speak), does that really mean you have an "excess"?

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If you have enough to save, it means you aren't impoverished. The need to save is determined not by poverty but by climate, growing seasons and stuff not necessarily related to poverty or excess although there's obviously the need for seasonal excess. That's necessity, not poverty, being the nurturing mother of invention. Invention in this case being the means of preserving food. If you have nothing to preserve, you're not likely to work at ways to preserve what you haven't got.

[Pan]

Bux, I think we're looking at the same thing and seeing it from different angles. In a time and place without supermarkets and refrigeration, if you absolutely can't stock up on food during times of good weather, no matter how much effort you put into it (or do the equivalent by borrowing money against your harvest, with all the danger that's fraught with), I don't think that makes you merely poor; it probably means you're already suffering from hunger, exhaustion, or illness and may starve during the drought season (or whatever). Putting enough effort into gathering and preserving some food during the lush part of the year doesn't mean you're not poor, but it does mean you're not starving and have enough energy to do whatever is necessary to search out additional supplies to preserve and put aside for later.

[richards1052]

I'm rather surprised that so many members in this thread thought well of Powell's column. I thought she was way off base in so many ways. It's certainly a provocative & deliberately in-your-face attack on the Alice Waters of the food world & the organics movement, but it just doesn't hold water.

Since when are farmer's markets the preserve of the privileged? And why does someone who shops at Whole Foods become an emblem of all that is bad or snooty with food lovers in this country?

I certainly don't dispute that there is a certain preciousness, classism and elitism that creeps into some who profess a great love for food. Taking on Alice Waters as an exemplar of this is wrong, wrong, wrong. Waters' Edible Schoolyard is an attempt to have schoolchildren in public schools learn to grow their own food, prepare it & eat it. The pubic schools in Berkeley, where she started this project are economically & ethnically diverse. And what's wrong with teaching a child from a poor background (or a middle-class or upper-class for that matter) to grow & eat greens, asparagus, kale, etc.? Why is that elitist?

Also, Powell seems to champion the poor person who shops at Key Foods & Western Beef and attacks the rich folk who look down their noses at such a shopper & such a food venue. Is there anything wrong in trying to persuade that shopper that she can buy healthier & cheaper produce at her local farmer's market? In fact, at the farmer's markets in many places I've lived (Berkeley, Westchester, Irvine, Seattle) have a customer base that is ethnically & economically diverse. Poor people shop at farmer's markets. So why does Powell consider them a bastion of privilege?

Finally, if a person truly loves food then they take no account of the class or ethnic origin of the food. A dish that comes out of a poor person's oven is just as delicious (& prob. often more so) as one that comes off a Viking range. Looking down one's nose at a person or the food they eat because of their economic or class status is just plain stupid.

You'll find an expanded version of this post on my food blog.

[richards1052]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/opinion/22powell_cm.html

Very funny, very good.

While I didn't find it either funny or very good--after July 29th the above link will go dead & the way to access this article will be via this one

[Pan]

I guess there are some farmers' markets with inexpensive items for sale somewhere, but that hasn't been my experience at the ones in New York City. Nor do I see why farmers shouldn't charge whatever they can get.

[Fat Guy]

Assume you need to eat 365 days a year, and that you live somewhere with a production season of 200 days a year. That means you will not eat for 165 days (in a row) unless you preserve food. Now let's say that during those 200 days of production you produce enough food for 330 days of consumption, assuming you preserve judiciously. Great, now you will only starve for 35 days a year. Excess indeed.

[Jonathan Day]

It's easy enough to take shots at a piece like this, especially with its howlers like

The techniques of smoking, drying, salting and roasting were all developed to preserve foods past the "perfect peach" stage.

Roasting as a preservation method? Or the silly claim, discussed earlier in this topic, that French sauces are all about disguising inferior meats.

Given Powell's recent immersion in Julia Child, and especially her trip through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it's possible to see how she reached the conclusion that cuisine was primarily about technique. The first volume of Mastering appeared in 1961. There were some farmers markets back then, but I'd guess that the "wonderful fresh ingredients" movement was not nearly as strong as it is today. Certainly -- unless we drove to a local farm or to the farmers market -- the ingredients we found in Krogers, the National or the A&P were pretty bad. And so Julia Child begins her first book:

This is a book for the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules, children's meals, the parent-chauffeur-den-mother syndrome, or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat ... some of the recipes are quite long indeed.  No out-of-the-ordinary ingredients are called for.  In fact the book could well be titled, "French Cooking from the American Supermarket," for the excellence of French cooking, and of cood cooking in general, is due more to cooking techniques than to anything else.  And these techniques can be applied wherever good basic materials are available.

This apparent disregard for superb ingredients earned Child the scorn of John and Karen Hess, who lambasted her throughout their book, The Taste of America. Some of this may have been deserved -- Julia Child cheerfully explained how to use frozen chicken and frozen vegetables. But these were what was available in many American supermarkets. And she did occasionally write things like

The most important aspect of chicken cooking is that you procure a good and flavorsome bird ... when you buy chicken, make every attempt to find a market which takes special pride in the quality and flavor of its poultry.

There's another aspect of Julia Child that connects with Powell's essay: the availability of time for cooking. Back in 1961 gadgets like food processors and microwave ovens didn't appear in home kitchens. The electric blender had just come onto the scene. So a lot of Mastering volume 1 is about using whisk, mortar and pestle. Some machines are mentioned, but they don't really come into Julia Child until volume 2 appeared in 1970. Hence it's not hard to see why Julie Powell writes

it's not only the ingredients - be they delicate heirloom tomatoes or the stalwart hothouse kind - that we share when we eat well together. There is also the love and creativity and work we combine them with - those human qualities that transform food into cuisine, and eating into a pleasure.

What's paradoxical is that lack of time, nowadays, is a problem both for the poor and the rich -- the former often having to hold down more than one job to subsist, and the latter so caught up in the nightmarish Noughties version of the "parent-chauffeur-den-mother syndrome" that the kind of care and attention that classical French cuisine requires is hard to come by.

[FabulousFoodBabe]

I'm rather surprised that so many members in this thread thought well of Powell's column. 

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Me, too. Me, three. I found myself shaking my head at her attitude (who said "reverse snobbery?"), and misinformation, as much as -- once again -- the fact that publishers will give food-related book contracts or columns to anyone out there who themselves is not a cook. Perhaps she'll also get the next Food Network show -- along with Sandra Lee.

What's paradoxical is that lack of time, nowadays, is a problem both for the poor and the rich

Exactly. And at the Whole Foods I go to, the meat is the same price, or just slightly more, than the stuff they shrink-wrap at the local Food Emporium. The Farmers Markets and Whole Food stores I go to are in more economically diverse areas than the A&P, accessible by bus or by foot.