Recommended Reading and Listening (With a Twist of Irony)

Because today's been ridiculously crazy thanks to a heavily booked schedule, I found myself listening to Fresh Air during the first half of the 3 pm hour while making supper. On the menu was a pot of easy spicy chicken and rice--which entails browning some onions and rice, throwing in a can of Rotel, cream of chicken soup, some chicken broth, some cubed chicken breast and some black beans, bringing the whole mess to a boil then simmering it until the rice is cooked--that I figured would keep for the three of humans here at Chez Boeckman-Walker to eat a warm, filling meal as our schedules permitted.

At the time I was doing this work, Fresh Air was in the middle of a segment about the theory that the discovery of cooking--not language or other shocking discoveries--was what allowed cave dwellers to prosper and survive and flourish and become we modern homo sapiens. Writer Michael Pollan, who was presenting this theory, provided some interesting evidence about how cooking changed our ancestors' stomachs and how today, our by and large abdication from the cooking process--and, really, from the whole food production process--is (he theorized, as have so many other folks, myself included) driving us into gluttony, ill health and early death. Yet at the same time, he argues, TV programs about cooking and food preparation are highly popular.

So what gives? Are all those eyesballs watching the TV food programming indulging in some sort of nostalgia for the days, which weren't that long ago, when someone "slaved" over the stove all day to prepare a nourishing meal? Or are we collectively being bonked on the head by caveman urges to participate in the preparation of the food we eat, to go back to that process that makes us wait for gratification--urges we're doing our damnedest to ignore as we pop open another bag of chips and stuff our faces.

Of course, I'm listening to Pollan talk about the loss of from-scratch cooking to the "convenience" of packaged, prepared foods and packaged, prepared meals that have flooded the market after WWII as I'm ::gulp:: opening up a can of cream of chicken soup. I'm guilty, Mr. Pollan: I'm thinking that I'm cooking from scratch, but in truth I'm not.

(There's your irony, Alanis.)

If you want to listen to the segment, it's available both as a podcast and as a stream. The segment serves to draw eyeballs and brains to his lengthy piece on the topic published in The New York Times recently. If you have the time, Gentle Reader, I encourage you to both listen to and read the piece--and think about what Pollan says.

Cooking as fundamental to our identity as human beings--that's pretty paradigm-shifting stuff potentially.