Bon Appétit

My friends are upset because I always want to go home for din­ner these days. My girl­friend is annoyed because lately I have been reluc­tant to eat at restau­rants. My taste buds are depressed because I do not eat candy any­more. What hap­pened to me? Where did I go wrong? Eat­ing food used to be a pas­time for me. Every­one likes food, but me, I liked food. I enjoyed eggs, devoured donuts, con­sumed car­rots, rav­aged ravi­oli, and inhaled ice cream. I ate every­thing I could fit my in my mouth. I would spend all kinds of money at din­ers, cafés, and other assorted eater­ies. I used to munch all the time: break­fast, brunch, lunch, snack, din­ner, bed­time repast, you name it, I ate it. Then I stopped eat­ing that way, lead­ing my friends to think I had sim­ply out­grown my con­stant hunger. Not a bad guess, but an incor­rect one. The truth is I have under­gone a meta­mor­pho­sis. Now I am health­ier, wealth­ier, and closer to my family.

I asked myself the ques­tion: what are the ben­e­fits of prepar­ing meals at home? I began to read lit­er­a­ture about food and study cook­ing meth­ods, but that was not all; I learned about the con­cept of food itself. I dis­cov­ered how to eat, why to eat, when to eat, what to eat, and with whom to eat. At the same time I learned to pre­pare my own meals, mak­ing use of my new found knowl­edge. This knowl­edge con­sists of the fol­low­ing key facts: proper nutri­tion is immensely impor­tant, the amount money saved by eat­ing at home is enor­mous, food prepa­ra­tion is a major facet of every cul­ture, sus­tain­ing one­self through cook­ing is quite sat­is­fy­ing, time at the table with fam­ily and friends is invalu­able to healthy rela­tion­ships, and con­trol­ling the sub­stances enter­ing one’s body makes meal­time feel secure and comfortable.

Whilst study­ing my craft my pals missed me, my girl­friend was peeved, and my taste buds missed the del­uge of sugar, but once adept I invited every­body over to eat the meal I pre­pared, all was for­given. Michael Pollan’s best­seller, In Defense of Food, begins with these seven words. “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants” (Pol­lan “DoF” 1). That is basi­cally all one needs to know about healthy eat­ing. How­ever, elab­o­ra­tion is needed due to all the con­fu­sion con­cern­ing eat­ing these days. A good diet is not hard to fig­ure out or even prac­tice if one makes all of his own food and wisely decides what is going to end up in his stom­ach. When one fixes a meal for him­self he never has to worry about its ingre­di­ents, he knows because he put them together him­self. He esti­mates how much fat, cho­les­terol, calo­ries, and sugar he con­sumes and because of this he does not fret about whether the meal will poten­tially shorten his life or ren­der his butt too large for his new pants. A chef also knows exactly what a meal is com­posed of; that means no hid­den vari­ables. Unless he chooses to add it, he can be pos­i­tive there will be no dye, arti­fi­cial fla­vor­ing, par­tially hydro­genated oils, sat­u­rated fats, or wait­ress hair. “When you cook at home you sel­dom find your­self reach­ing for the ethoxy­lated diglyc­erides or high fruc­tose corn syrup” (Pol­lan “DoF” 159). Not only does the cook know what is going into the meal, he can bet­ter judge how old the food is or from where it came. I do not buy my pro­duce at the Super­mar­ket; instead I patron­ize the Farm­ers’ Mar­ket, where I can speak with the peo­ple who actu­ally grew the food I will be ingest­ing. When I make a salad, I know the let­tuce came from Sali­nas Val­ley four days ago, the toma­toes from a farm north of Bak­ers­field, and the onions from one in Gilroy. Because of this, I have a much bet­ter idea how fresh my food is. Pher­ron Hillyer, one of the cooks I inter­viewed, sug­gested I obtain my pro­duce in this man­ner. He stated, “I like get­ting my food locally because I know it hasn’t been trav­el­ling across the coun­try with two tons of ice for the last month” (Hillyer). Mr. Hillyer works at our local “Applebee’s” and always wants con­trol over what he eats. Ear­lier I poked fun at the idea of wait­ress’ hair being in a meal. This would be fun­nier had I not once wit­nessed a woman’s soft, brown curls fall out of her bun, directly onto a customer’s spaghetti. She quickly apol­o­gized and brought the man a new plate of spaghetti (whether it was new or whether she sim­ply walked back into the kitchen, waited, then brought out the same plate I will never know).

This brings me to my next point: while din­ing at a restau­rant one can never know for cer­tain what is going on in the kitchen. The eater’s lack of con­trol dis­con­certs me. What if the woman’s hair had fallen while she was still out of sight? Would she have done any­thing? What if the chef does not like hand soap or wash­ing knives after cut­ting raw meat? There are sim­ply too many ‘what ifs’ for me to feel com­fort­able at a restau­rant, espe­cially a fast food one. My men­tor, culi­nary acad­emy grad­u­ate Joline Sewell, specif­i­cally remem­bers work­ing in kitchens and wit­ness­ing cooks muti­late meals with their hands and phlegm. By din­ing at home, one elim­i­nates these pos­si­bil­i­ties and also con­trols the por­tions. While cook­ing, I have domain over how much I eat and, to a degree, how much every­one else eats. While din­ing at a restau­rant one may opt to quit eat­ing when full and save the rest for later. How­ever, stud­ies show that most Amer­i­cans pre­fer to fin­ish all of the food on their plate (Pol­lan “DoF” 64). Sur­vey­ors asked eaters in France when they stopped eat­ing, and most replied with the sim­plest answer, “When I am full.” But when Amer­i­cans were asked they responded with alarm­ingly dif­fer­ent answers, “When my plate is clean. When the food is gone. When the show is over. Etc.” (Pol­lan “DoF” 189). By prepar­ing their own meals, peo­ple can make the por­tions as large or small as they wish, set­ting a stan­dard of how much will be eaten.

Cul­ture is another impor­tant aspect of cook­ing and eat­ing that has been diluted by cer­tain restau­rants and alto­gether ruined by microwave­able alter­na­tives. Prepar­ing a cus­tom­ary meal with a cus­tom­ary method is one of the sim­plest and most effec­tive ways to feel, well, cus­tom­ary. In the ear­li­est of days, before the Amer­i­can Dream, before the vision of suc­cess, before sports, videogames, and the mil­lion and one forms of enter­tain­ment avail­able to us, there was food. Nowa­days, many peo­ple eat when they have time, when they are bored, or when they are absolutely starv­ing. They grab “Pop­tarts” and call it break­fast, they munch pop­corn dur­ing a movie and con­sider it lunch, and they deem post work­out pro­tein shakes wor­thy of the term “din­ner”. In this day and age one fifth of eat­ing is now done in the car on the way to or from des­ti­na­tions (Pol­lan “DoF” 189). In the days of old, hunt­ing, gath­er­ing, prepar­ing meals, and eat­ing them were not sim­ply a form of nour­ish­ment. They were not even just a way of life, they were life. Fast for­ward to a more rel­e­vant time period, say any­where from one thou­sand to fifty thou­sand years ago: people’s lives no longer revolve around food, but food cer­tainly still occu­pies a great deal of their time. How­ever, at this point they have become cre­ative; they have become unique, ulti­mately they have cre­ated their own intri­cate cul­ture. This cul­ture — for now I am speak­ing on specif­i­cally the food aspect — was passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, con­tin­u­ally being devel­oped and refined.

Think of your favorite meals: are you a pizza per­son? The heart of Italy beck­ons to you with its baked dough, tomato paste, and an assort­ment of top­pings. How about Japan’s delight­fully dip­pable dish, sushi? Or maybe India’s chicken curry? Ver­sa­tile and nutri­tious, a well rounded meal can spread to taste buds all over the world. But what hap­pens when peo­ple make food for the sake of con­ve­nience? When food is cre­ated to be sim­ple, cheap, and appeal­ing to all, it becomes appeal­ing to none. Corn­dogs are the result of mak­ing food with­out cul­ture. I pro­pose we avoid these microwav­able piles of unrec­og­niz­able sub­stance in favor of, to be blunt, just about any­thing. Tra­di­tional foods from all over the world still exist and are still pop­u­lar because they are health­ier, more fill­ing, and tastier than processed ones. I doubt “Hot Pock­ets” will still exist in even one hun­dred years while humans have been eat­ing forms of pasta since as early as 400 B.C. (Pol­lan “OD” 206). What are “Hot Pock­ets”, Corn­dogs, and “Pop­tarts” any­way? My taste buds do not even rec­og­nize these for­eign arti­fi­cial sub­stances. “The more you con­cen­trate on how it tastes, the less like any­thing it tastes. … And so it goes, bite after bite, until you feel not sat­is­fied exactly, but sim­ply, regret­tably, full” (Pol­lan “OD” 119). Learn from what has worked and not worked. Learn from what your ances­tors decided to pass down and what they chose to pass on. Eat foods that have with­stood the test of time. When peo­ple pre­pare meals of this sort, they are con­nect­ing to their roots and expe­ri­enc­ing a fun­da­men­tal aspect of their history.

When choos­ing what I will do for sus­te­nance, I think about the entire expe­ri­ence. Dri­ving past a win­dow and being handed food in a bag is con­ve­nient and cheap — sounds decent. Pay­ing wait­ers to bring me food while I sit at a table sur­rounded by peo­ple I do not know is sim­ple and relax­ing – appeal­ing. Plant­ing seeds, car­ing for the plants, har­vest­ing their yield, and then con­vert­ing that into a pleas­ant and appe­tiz­ing meal – mag­i­cal. Obvi­ously not every­one can pre­pare their meals from the very begin­ning, but they can still take part in a fun­da­men­tal and reward­ing piece of the process. The more one works for some­thing the more one val­ues it; in this respect cook­ing is extremely sat­is­fy­ing. No longer is the eater seated and hav­ing a plate placed in front of him. Now he watches as his own hands trans­form an assort­ment of ingre­di­ents into a piece of edi­ble art­work. Not only will he appre­ci­ate his own meals, his friends and fam­ily will enjoy it as well. There is no fam­ily time like the time at the din­ner table. But when no one is eat­ing the same thing and every­one has sim­ply popped some­thing into the microwave for them­selves, the feel­ing of togeth­er­ness is lost. Imag­ine Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas din­ner: every­one is con­nected by the meal. At a restau­rant, this might not be present.

All year round, chil­dren look to their par­ents for teach­ings on nutri­tion. When I was really young I could not eat any­thing on my own. When I grew a lit­tle older I ate on my own but only what my mom fixed for me. In my early teenage years she stopped mak­ing all of my food and I began eat­ing what was con­ve­nient, junk food. Even­tu­ally she refused to buy me chips and soda and began actively encour­ag­ing me to eat healthy by show­ing me what to eat. It is not that kids do not want to be healthy, they just do not know how. Stud­ies have demon­strated that chil­dren who fre­quently eat din­ner at home with their fam­ily eat more fruits and veg­eta­bles and get bet­ter grades in school” (Martha). This learn­ing can­not pos­si­bly take place if the child is not eat­ing with his par­ents or the par­ents are not teach­ing him good eat­ing habits.

If noth­ing else can per­suade some­one to pre­pare their own meals, the cost effec­tive­ness might. One can save quite a bit of money by mak­ing din­ner with­out leav­ing the house. For exam­ple, a plate of spaghetti at a restau­rant can be “rea­son­ably” priced any­where from ten to twenty dol­lars. “A box of pasta costs around $1.30, a pound of sausage or ground meat $4.00, spaghetti sauce $5.00, you can add in some bread and gar­lic but­ter for around another 3 dol­lars. So for 17 dol­lars you can buy four serv­ings of spaghetti… Here alone you are sav­ing half of the cost of the meal” (Man­ley). When patron­iz­ing a restau­rant, a cus­tomer pays for the ser­vice, the atmos­phere, and any­thing else he does not have at home. How­ever, once tax, tip, and park­ing meter are accounted for, eat­ing out is even more expen­sive than one would think. Going out to din­ner also costs time. “You have to get into the car, drive there, park, wait in line to be seated, wait for your ser­vice, wait for your food, eat your meal, then you get to do all of this in reverse. So this could take an hour or longer, not to men­tion the cost of the fuel you spend on get­ting there. Often you can pre­pare a meal in 15 to 20 min­utes” (Man­ley). Some may argue that they can­not pos­si­bly cre­ate the exquis­ite feasts seen in restau­rants. I believe, for the most part, they are wrong in this assump­tion. In fact, there are sev­eral web­sites like copycat.com as well as cook­books devoted to show­ing peo­ple exactly how to make their favorite dishes from the com­fort of their homes. I have used some of these recipes and can attest their excel­lence. Oth­ers may argue that their cher­ished food is already avail­able to them at home; all they have to do is microwave it or, like my per­sonal ex-favorite meal, pour milk on it. Cereal: it is con­ve­nient and tasty right? It is also “…four cents’ worth of com­mod­ity corn trans­formed into four dol­lars worth of processed food” “Pol­lan “OD” 91). Cereal is not the only exam­ple of a food that is not really food at all. When I think about what I am actu­ally pay­ing for at the super­mar­ket; the dye, the fatty meat, and the corn, I become com­pletely dis­gusted. Most real foods, ones that depended on sun­light to cre­ate them as opposed to a machine, ones that are com­prised of pro­tein chains as opposed to chem­i­cally engi­neered glu­cose, ones that are chicken as opposed to ones that taste like chicken, can be pur­chased and pre­pared inexpensively.

Before this under­tak­ing, I would have had to con­sult my mom mul­ti­ple times while mak­ing mac­a­roni and cheese from a box. Now my mom asks how she and I can pos­si­bly be cook­ing with the same eggs when mine taste so much bet­ter. As I hoped I would be, I am now a skilled chef. Along with learn­ing how to pre­pare my own meals, I also learned why. I make din­ner at home to save money. I start my day off health­ily by fix­ing a ham omelet or oat­meal with fruit instead of munch­ing “Pop­tarts”. I take some time out of my week­ends to be a chef for my fam­ily so we can be together and still keep our busy sched­ules under con­trol. I cook with my men­tor so that, as she says, “I can have what I want, when I want it” (Sewell). She taught me how to use knives more effec­tively than I had ever seen them used. She explained the impor­tance of hygiene and the value of eye appeal. Joline Sewell edu­cated me on every­thing I had hoped to learn. What I did not count on learn­ing were the intri­ca­cies of food. My project was about cook­ing but part of me wishes it was about food in gen­eral. If that were the case, I could have talked about this whole new dimen­sion and greater under­stand­ing of food that I gained from all of my read­ing. When I opened my first book, I could not imag­ine how I would choke down two hun­dred pages of text about the stuff we eat. When I closed the last book, the word ‘food’ had a whole new def­i­n­i­tion in my mind. It is not just sus­te­nance, it is an expres­sion of cul­ture. It is not just a meal, it is a work of art. I strive to eat real food now, plants that grew from the soil, berries that devel­oped on a tree, mam­mals, birds, and fish of all shapes and sizes, while avoid­ing fake foods cre­ated in fac­to­ries, pack­aged in sil­i­con, and jam-packed with ingre­di­ents I can­not pronounce.

The kitchen has become a home within a home for me. The dou­ble door refrig­er­a­tor that houses the com­po­nents of my meal, the stove that never ceases to make the rest of the room look bad, the west­ward fac­ing win­dow pro­vid­ing my light at the sink. They have always been there, but now they feel as if they are really here. My legs float across the hard­wood floor, hands milling about on their own. Pick up knife: chop, chop, chop. Shake han­dle on stir fry­ing wok. Con­sult recipe. Yell at dad for not get­ting enough mush­rooms. Check timer on the oven. Clean up spilled Worces­ter­shire sauce. Taste dough. The aro­mas of ground sausage waft through the house as I wipe my onion induced tears on my sleeve. I am care­ful to avoid touch­ing my hands so I do not have to wash them again. I get this feel­ing of inner peace. I am in my own lit­tle world. For that short time I spend in the kitchen I am like an ant serv­ing its one and only pur­pose. I set the stove top to sim­mer and remove the tray from the oven. How did I go my entire life with­out this? My men­tor sets the table as I put the final touches on the entrée. Wow. Every­body enters the kitchen. No way he made this. How long did that take? Cam­era flashes. With all my willpower I resist the urge to let out a tri­umphant yell. I smile, “bon appétit.”

Works Cited

• Hillyer, Pher­ron. “Cook­ing and Me.” Per­sonal Inter­view. 5 Apr. 2010
• Man­ley, Stephanie. “Why Cook at Home?” Copy­Kat Recipes. 12 July 2009. Web. 21 Mar. 2010.
• Martha. “The Ben­e­fits of Home Cook­ing.” Simple-nourished-living Nour­ish Your Body. Ener­gize Your Life. 27 July 2009. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.
• Pol­lan, Michael. In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Man­i­festo. New York: Pen­guin, 2008. Print.
• Pol­lan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma a Nat­ural His­tory of Four Meals. New York: Pen­guin, 2006. Print.
• Sewell, Joline. “Culi­nary Prowess.” Per­sonal inter­view. 21 Mar. 2010.

Works Con­sulted

• Steen­dahl, Chris­tine. “The Ben­e­fits Of Prepar­ing Home-cooked Meals.” SG & Sin­ga­pore Map — Sin­ga­pura, Sin­ga­pur, Sin­ga­pore Infor­ma­tion. 2010. Web. 13 Mar. 2010.
• “Ben­e­fits of Fam­ily Cook­ing.” The Global Gourmet. Fork­me­dia, 2007. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.
• “Cook­ing at Home Has More Ben­e­fits.” The Chron­i­cle. Hof­s­tra Chron­i­cle, 30 May 2009. Web. 23 Mar. 2010.

• Photo by Pablo Vene­gas / Used with Per­mis­sion