OK, I think I despise Alice Waters. When asked about the price of organic foods, she said, "Well, we all make choices. Some people buy two pairs of Nikes at once, some people buy organic grapes."
Yeah, well what about the people who can't do either, you snobbish bitch?
She's on 60 Minutes with Diane Sawyer, and Sawyer admits the food is incredible, but as she said, "Alice lives in a different world." She's cooking the eggs one at a time in a spoon over an open fire! And this is breakfast. Sawyer commented that she didn't think that would go over well in a typical American morning kitchen.
I'll accept that she can cook and has a flawless taste for food, but I don't think she has any real concept of how 90% of the country lives.
but I don't think she has any real concept of how 90% of the country lives.
Rather more she's in complete disagreement with how the rest of the country lives. She's positing a very different cultural relationship to food, which is not hurried and inconsequential.
Her way of cooking is an ethos, a way of life. It isn't about the kitchen but about a way to live.
She is directly critiquing the American relationship to food and how it's produced and how it's cooked and how it's consumed and the life you get from that.
Speaking of the American relationship to food, I'm eating New! GIANT Cheetos. They're too big for chopsticks. I guess you could spear them and eat them like roasted marshmallows.
That O Henry story was pretty great. I forgot how much I love his stuff. I wonder if that's where I got my taste for snark.
Rather more she's in complete disagreement with how the rest of the country lives. She's positing a very different cultural relationship to food, which is not hurried and inconsequential.
While I don't think that all (or even most) of America can live the way Alive Waters idealizes, I honestly admire the hell out of her.
We live on processed foods chock full of high-fructose corn syrup* and that is not the healthiest for our bodies or anything else.
Tilting, even a little, towards her ideals would be better for both us and the world, I think.
[* Edit - not that HFCS is the be-all and end-all of evils in our diet. But it's a hell of a reference point.]
She is directly critiquing the American relationship to food and how it's produced and how it's cooked and how it's consumed and the life you get from that.
Our relationship with food in this country (the offshoring of a lot of our food production, the way that prices for processed goods are kept artificially low, the dependency on short-term fix w/ cheap labor methods for growing) is toxic as hell. And not sustainable. It's a microcosm of the issues facing whole the country, really.
So toxic.
It's a microcosm of the issues facing whole the country, really.
It totally is.
I can explain a LOT of what is wrong with our country (by Cass) by talking about our relationship with food.
Totally.
In my Utopian fantasies, we save the world with victory gardens.
In my Utopian fantasies, we save the world with victory gardens.
I love this. I wish I wasn't so crappy at keeping plants alive! I'll have to be assigned to some other function. Like making awesome salads.
I actually like Alice Waters food philosophy. Just because it isn't practical for all , doesn't mean there isn't a lot to what she says. Our current ways of producing food is toxic. We eat things that derive from natural things, but we've twisted them so our bodies don't recognizes them as food. We've add things to food that have taken advantage of our instincts/ natural leanings that make us want/crave more.
Even a slightly more thoughtful attitude towards food could improve the health of both the people and the planet.
