Confessions Of An Ex-Sort-Of-Foodie

This year, I turned 40 and, while I think I still look and feel pretty good for my age, I think I can't put off calling myself "middle-aged" anymore. (Though, for all I know I could die tomorrow, so there would be no "middle" about it; best not to dwell on that, I suppose.) Classically, this is the time of life where people take stock, let go of some dreams and start coming to terms with what really matters. Either that, or they buy a convertible and dump their spouse for someone half their age, but I'm not going to be doing either of those things. Instead, I'm blogging about food and how, why, and how much it matters to me.

Some background: I grew up in Seguin, Texas, a small town which, although not a bad place to grow up in a lot of ways, was and is not a beacon for foodies. When I was growing up, "salad" meant mostly iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and seedy, waxed cucumbers. Italian food was spaghetti with meat sauce or pizza, usually pepperoni. I was at least in my teens before I heard of a bagel.

Since my parents will be reading this, they'll no doubt want me to defend them, as indeed I should, by saying that they did have an interest in food and our meals were well-cooked, reasonably wholesome and, perhaps most importantly, usually shared together (a dying tradition). One of the exotic things I remember them making occasionally was paella, though that was an expensive treat. If they didn't cook dishes from around the world, it wasn't for lack of interest, it was for lack of ingredients. Good luck finding fresh mozzarella or smoked salmon or arugula in those days; it just didn't happen, not in Seguin, Texas. So you made do with what you had and often, it was in fact very good; it just wasn't exotic.

Eventually, as I went to college, got married, and then moved to Baton Rouge for law school, I became more and more exposed to what the food world had to offer. I had flings with vegetarianism and semi-vegitarianism along the way. I loved reading cookbooks and in Baton Rouge, a food town, I was able to find a lot of the ingredients that I had never seen before. I began to get a little (ok, a lot) snobbier about what was "acceptable," and to look down my nose at Wonder Bread and Velveeta. This, even though I am married to a man who thinks Velveeta is perfectly lovely, and who would buy Miracle Whip if I let him grocery shop. After we moved back to Texas in 1999, my location about 2 hours from San Antonio allowed me to shop sometimes at Central Market, a place that for me is better than Disneyland: I can get anything from Tomme d' Savoie cheese to garnet sweet potatoes to French wines to garlic-marinated olives to fancy prepared foods to Dr. Pepper, all under one roof.

But I noticed somewhere along the way, in my late 30s, that I was getting, in a way, a little tired of thinking so much about food and continually upgrading my limit on what was "acceptable." I started disliking myself for thinking that way when so many people worldwide don't have enough to eat and would love to have the variety of ingredients at my closest supermarket; what I find inadequate (why don't they have flank steak? why did they quit carrying White Lily flour?) would seem like paradise to many. I'm still fascinated by food, but now I'm more interested in where it comes from, how much is wasted, how healthy (or unhealthy) it is, and even how to grow (some) of it. It is not my intent to be judgmental or condescending about the foodie culture in this or future posts; I just want to think through some of the other issues surrounding food, and to remind myself to be grateful for what I do have.

Recommended reading: "The Silver Palate Cookbook," by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, a book that opened up a whole new world for me in the 1980s. I still flip through it from time to time.