BiblioAddict

I kept falling asleep on Michael Pollan’s OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA so we’ve decided to take a break from each other until we (or I) get our (or my) act together. I haven’t given up on it, but I’m in the mood for something I don’t necessarily have to work at reading. I’m still convinced that what Pollan has to say on the food industry and how it shapes not only what we eat, but how we eat is still worthy of my reading time. I’m just not all that interested in giving it at this very moment.

Instead, I’m going from tracing food as it travels from the industrial farm to family fridge to reading about what some of the more talented of us do with the food once it’s in our kitchen in Bill Buford’s HEAT, subtitled: An Amateur’s Adventure’s As Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany.

I’m sure I’ve probably said it before, but I don’t cook. If it requires more than reheating and boiling, and doesn’t come out of a box then you’re be better off asking someone – anyone - else to make whatever it is you’re seeking. Many lives and stomachs have been saved this way. To dive a little deeper into my personal tangent, my problem is, I think, that I have an impatient stomach. I don’t usually realize I’m hungry until my stomach starts growling “Feed me!” By then, I don’t want food an hour from now, I want it right now. Standing over a stove while cooking only prolongs and exacerbates the problem.

No, I don’t cook, but some part of me wishes I did – probably the part that likes to eat good food. Ask me to cook and I’ll stare at you cross-eyed and blank-faced. Ask me to read a book about cooking and I’ll be busy for hours devouring every word. I love books about cooking and the chef life so much I want to take them behind the middle school and get ‘em pregnant! (Sorry, too many “30 Rock” reruns on the brain). Anthony Bourdain’s KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL is probably the sole reason why I’m currently a die-hard, miss-no-episode fan of Bravo’s Top Chef.

I read somewhere that describing food – its tastes, its smells, and its textures – was one of the most difficult things for a writer to do. The best of them do it so well you can just about taste the food on your tongue. Or, as this passage shows, smell it in your nose:

I became captivated by the kitchen’s smells. By midmorning, when many things had been prepared, they were cooked in quick succession and the smells came, one after the other, waves of smell, like sounds in music. There was the smell of meat, and the kitchen was overwhelmed by the rich, sticky smell of wintry lamb. And then, in minutes, it would be chocolate melting in a metal bowl. Then a disturbing nonsequitur like tripe (a curious disjunction, having chocolate in your nose followed quickly by stewing cow innards). Then something ripe and fishy – octopus simmering in a hot tub – followed by what seemed like overextracted pineapple. And so they came, one after the other – huckleberries, chicken broth, the comforting chemistry of veal, pork, and milk as someone prepared a Bolognese ragu.

Hmmmm, just reading that gets me hungry (except for the part about cow innards). I don’t like to cook, but I love to eat.