The Joy of Food

I have two cookbooks in my bookcase that get me by-- Rombauer's Joy of Cooking and Goldbeck's American Wholefoods Cuisine. I thank my sister for gifting me the latter, now some twelve or thirteen years ago. A gem.

Sure, I have other cookbooks, but if deserted these are the two I'd keep. Going through Irma's book the other day while making muffins I was struck by a passage: "everyone who runs a kitchen can, in the choice and preparation of food, decisively influence family health and happiness."

This is as powerful a statement as there can be for dealing with our 'tough economic times." The bottom line, we can live simply, we can live happily with less. Food is essential, and around it we build all the things that bring us happiness. We almost don't need anything else.

One reason I subscribe to a Community Supported Agriculture program. Farmers who are re-establishing our connections to the earth, and eaters who recognize the value of doing so. This is depression-proof. We have to coax food out of the ground regardless of how Wall Street is doing. Very few of us recognize how and where our food comes from; yet those of us who do, I believe, are much wealthier.

When visiting my dad, a fair degree of our interaction for the short time we have revolves around what to eat, the preparation of it, and the eating of it. This is substantially different from how we've [collectively] approached food in the last few decades. Nowadays we're told that canning, salting, smoking, brewing, or cooking should be subordinate to finding a job that earns a better wage than producing food that could be bought cheaply at the WalMart Supercenter. We focus on other things instead...

Well. There's no reason that in a depression recession we can't fall back on such simple things.