We all need to eat. As the news media tells us so often Americans eat far more than any other nation. On average every American consumes approximately 2673 for twenty year old men and 1785 for twenty year old women. A Chinese person consumes approximately 1200 calories a day. If you want a graphic depiction of far/protein/calories etc around the world the link is a good place to start:
http://chartsbin.com/view/1162
So we eat. We buy food, grow food, hunt for food, discuss what we are going to eat, prepare food, share food and start all over again. Of course some people spend far more time shopping for their food than others. The same is true of the dining experience itself. When I was a child it always seemed as if my father was about to leave the table and save the world because he ate so fast. I assumed that he had something terribly urgent that needed his attention as I watched him down his food in a storm trooper style of eating. If I was going somewhere with him I had to keep pace or risk being left behind. Indigestion was the common family complaint regardless of how mild the meal had been. Meeting my spouse was a shock to my system. The lad took half an hour, on average, to eat a meal. Believe me - I timed him. Unlike me the cram it down the gullet approach to food was not his style. He would thoughtfully select the items to go on his fork. Then he would chew, chew, chew, chew, chew .... oh dear gods how many times can a person chew a mouthful of food (I would lose track of the number as I dozed off), then drink some water, then pause, then repeat the process. It was like watching paint dry! He ate this but not that, he liked this cooked that way but not that, he had ideas about what a meal should be whereas I had -- well I ate what was prepared and offered thanks but really did not bother much about what was on my plate unless it looked like a giant insect or was offal.
My eldest daughter loves food. She can go into raptures about presentation, smell, taste, garnishing, and so on. I think she learned to cook out of self-defence. Her mother would present a plate of grayish mince meat, yellow carrots, yellow squash and yellow potatoes and announce that was dinner. She once told me that my food was ugly and when I looked at the plate before me I had to agree. Her eyes and heart, and taste buds craved style, flavour and more than one way of preparing everything. There were a few things I did well but then I would repeat them so often that my family would fake illnesses in order to avoid them for the fourteenth time in eighteen days. Steph loves to shop for food, prepare food, cook food and feed people. She delights in having made people happy with a good meal. I think they switched her at the hospital and somewhere in the eastern part of South Africa there is a grown woman who is preparing gray mince for her family with happy thoughts as she does so.
Living in the USA there are so many choices of most food items that the mind boggles and the eyes water. Americans will spend approximately seven years preparing and eating food in a life spanning seventy years. That is six hundred and thirteen thousand and two hundred hours of thinking about, preparing and chewing food. One tenth of a life time. Or more if you watch the current plethora of television programmes. From the iffy Rachel Ray to the ridiculous Martha Stewart to Top Chef, Top Chief Masters, The F*&^#@* Kitchen programmes of British origin, to the blogs, the websites, the Food Network, channels of good cooking advice and recipes there is food glorious, ordinary, bizarre and excessive available twenty four hours a day. My god if you can not find a recipe for everything under the sun that is edible then you can not have internet access.
(I tried this and found the following recipes:
MOPANE WORM RECIPE
Caterpillars are prepared for eating by squeezing out the gut contents before they are fried in their own body fat or boiled in a little water.
Most of the caterpillars are dried so that they can be stored for use throughout the year.
Dried caterpillars may be eaten dry as a snack or rehydrated and cooked in a little water before they are fried in oil with onion and tomato.
They may be served with pap (maize meal porridge), onion and tomato gravy and atchar (chili sauce).
Nutrition: Mopane worms are about 60% crude protein, 17% crude fat, and 11% minerals, on a dry matter basis.
| EARTHWORM CHOW | |
1 c. earthworms
1/2 lg. onion, chopped 1/2 c. water 1 bouillon cube 1 c. yogurt or sour cream 3 tbsp. butter 1/2 c. mushrooms Whole wheat flour
UTENSILS:
Saucepan
Wash
earthworms thoroughly and place in boiling water for three minutes.
Pour off water and repeat the boiling process twice. Bake on cookie
sheet at 350 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Roll the worms in flour, brown
in butter, add salt to taste. Add bouillon and simmer for 30 minutes.
Saute onions and mushrooms in butter. Add onions and mushrooms to the
worms. Stir in sour cream or yogurt. Serve over rice or noodles.Most
people shudder at the mention of earthworms for food, but they are 97
percent protein and one of the most available and healthful foods
outside your door.
| |
And: for lizard recipes:
Goanna Tail.
Scald and skin the tail of a goanna. Cut into three-inch slices. Dip in egg and bread crumbs, and fry quickly to a golden brown. Olive oil is the best to fry in, but some do not like the flavour of olives.
Goanna Tail with Parsley Sauce.
Skin tail and cut into small pieces. Place in a saucepan, and just cover with water. Cook till tender. Make parsley sauce as follows:-Boil one pint of water, throw into it one tablespoon finely minced parsley and half a teaspoonful of salt. Then add two ounces flour, mixed to smooth paste in a gill of water. Stir over fire until it thickens. Break into it one or two ounces of butter. Put cooked tail into this, and serve hot.
And then there is:
| FIELD MOUSE PIE | |
1 c. macaroni
1 onion, thinly sliced Salt and pepper to taste Few field mice (or 1 lb. sausage) 1 med. can tomatoes Dabs of butter
Living
off the land. Did you ever see anything improve the appetite like
camping out? Did you ever wonder if the food box was going to last?
Here's a recipe to fill in and should appeal to everyone.Boil the
macaroni until tender (10 minutes). While this is cooking, fry a few
field mice long enough to fry out some excess fat. Grease a casserole
with some of this fat.
Put a 1/2 layer of macaroni in casserole; add a layer of onions and the tomatoes, juice and all. Salt and pepper to taste. Add dabs of butter and mice. Bake about 30 minutes, or until field mice are done. Serve hot or cold. If you find it difficult to find field mice, you can use sausage, but you won't be living off the land! | |
I admit that I would rather eat field mouse pie than my neighbour's horse or donkey.)
Now I am not going to deny that with the age I have learned some appreciation for the finer things in life. I do like a well presented meal. I enjoy good cheeses, I love an interesting salad with a dressing other than French, I find different breads interesting and I like trying new cuisines. For all that I wear the hat of the Low Cook with a degree of pride. My brother may chop, slice, saute, prep, sliver, dice, blanch, scrub, peel, and so on for hours in order to present his guests with a meal that delights but I ... well I like to browse the supermarket for boxes, packets and jars that have the word "Organic" on them. Preferably followed by extremely simple cooking instructions that require a glass dish, an oven and a serving spoon followed by thirty minutes of sipping something chilled before presenting the family with their meal. Give me a packet of chicken pieces and I will tip them into a dish, cover them with sauce, bake them and you better eat them! I don't like touching raw meat. I do not dice, slice, fillet or do anything with raw meat other than tip it into a container used for cooking. If it requires some sort of preparation you are not going to eat it at my table. I am certainly not going to offer you anything raw that is not from the vegetable or fruit and nut family. I am fascinated by how there are so many people who know what ceviche is and all the other terms that they use with such ease. I can not spell them let alone pronounce them! And I do not want to eat raw fish that has been 'cooked' by some acidic juice from a lime.
If there comes an apocalypse and I survive but have to catch and skin critters I have no doubt that I will do so. I would build a fire, gut the critter and roast it. I would eat it. I would suck the marrow out of its bones and I would be able to do so because beyond the glow of the fire there would be such darkness that sheer terror would force me to eat the chipmunk on the stick. Or the earthworms or lizards. For now I do not wish to try any of them. I do know that is hypercritical because I do eat meat bought in the supermarket but as I age I realise that vegetables and I have a relationship that does not concern me when I bite into a radish. Nuts and fruit are munched without concern. True on gray days I start fretting about fertilisers, insecticides, water wasted, distance from market, labour exploitation, my foot print ... oh my gods there are so many, many, many things to put on the very long list. I put my head under a pillow, count to fifty and back again, sit up and have some tea.
When I watch Top Chef I permit myself vicarious cooking experiences without the mess and effort. The competitors have fun with food. Yes the competitors stress. They bicker. They get kicked off the show but they have to cook. They have to use items with which we are often familiar. The environment is known to us. Kitchens are universal. A knife is a knife in any culture. Heat cooks. Ice freezes (and apparently also cooks), flavours get mixed up, someone loses and goes home but they will still continue to cook. They will experiment and taste, and wish they had not mixed cilantro into the chicken pie, but they will do what we all spend seven years of our life's doing: eating and cooking. I watch Top Chef proudly with my Low Cook Hat on. I will never aspire to being a chef. I will never present Tom and Padma a plate of anything. Hopefully I will never be asked to judge anything involving food because if it is cooked by someone else and half-way decent I would be hard pressed to criticise it. I cook out of necessity and sometimes because I am interested in the process and the result but the crock pot and I are best friends, the roasting pan and I are bosom pals and I would propose to salad greens that you just add cranberries and goat cheese to if I thought I had a chance! Top Chef is fun because, for me, it is like watching mountaineers. I am never going to do it but I can an appreciate those who do.
Now I need to get out the sliced bread, a jar of jam (organic) and make myself a banana and jam sandwich. Eat your hearts out Tom and Padma.
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