Saturday, January 3, 2009

Can you prepare a simple dish of Peppered Steak? As I look at all the ingredients involved in making this seemingly simply "skillet" dish, I began to realize the endless amount of knowledge about both ingredients and technique needed to make it a reality. Then I got to thinkin about the basic make up of this dish and...

Slow food. I know there are those of a different generation who want to think that this concept is something new, but it’s not. According to slowfoodusa.org, slow food embodies “the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.”

I'll stop now and tell the truth, I was not thinking about that as I prepared to make my Peppered Steak.

What I was pondering however was that in many parts of the world, our nation, even my community, the idea of "Slow Food" has never changed, it’s just that we now acknowledge that if we are to exist and produce food, healthy food on a global level we must change the way we think about food, the community and the environment.

Okay, I haven’t really said anything profound or anything you haven’t heard; but what most people don’t realize is that it is not so much about the food, it’s about the people, people!

I am going to make a statement and it has nothing to do with anyone outside the United States. I'm talking about Americans in the U.S.

“People don’t cook.” There I said it. What American’s are learning to do is “dabble” or work at cooking in an “amateurish manner.” Good old down-home cooks have gone the way of the Dinosaur.

Why do we watch cooking programs? So we can dabble in the kitchen. Do we really want to know the cold hard facts about cookin and what it's really all about? No. We want to dabble and throw a steak on the grill like Bobby Flay or garnish a plate with seasoning salt like Emeril, and shout BAM!

Folks don’t want to really cook, that’s like work, and that’s hard. Cooking involves thought, analysis, decision making and possible failure. Why would we want to get involved in all that since we have deal with "life" on a daily basis? It’s easier to just pull out a George Foreman grill and lay marinated salmon fillets on it for the allotted time. Right? Right?

Then I started to think about all that is involved in cooking. The physical energy needed along with the complex layers of knowledge to make really good food; not to mention the tiny tidbits of information that's usually shared at the hip of a mother or grandmother, (not in any cookbook) no wonder folks don’t cook.

What really brought it home for me was when I watched my daughter’s boy friend who loves to bake carrot cake, fill the carrot cake batter to the rim of the cake pan; never realizing that it would run over and cause a horrible mess in the oven. It did.

It was at that point that I knew we must teach people to cook. No, not watch Food TV Network, but really cook. We need a little old down-home grandma in every household, staffed by Mama Lula, Mama Mazolla, and even men like my grandfather affectionately known as “Poppie.” The unsung heroes and sheroes who appreciated the knowledge needed to prepare a good meal; who wanted (from the heart) to prepare a good meal. We now have two generations that don’t have a clue, no really, they don’t have a clue and for me that is scary. I can just see myself in a senior center having cardboard like substances shoved down my throat, being pawned off as the redeemable by-product of the new “Slow Food” initiative of 2025.

Food TV Network stop creating celebrity chefs and let’s get folks back in the kitchen learning about the craft, the act, dare I say the art of cooking.

I personally don't want a 30 minute meal, I want the real deal, even if it takes more than 30 minutes!