Ah, if only it were that easy. But let’s face it: we’re recovering addicts. Processed food is deliberately loaded with brain-pleasing salt [...]]]> Ok, so you’ve read your Michael Pollan, bought The Art of Simple Food, and now you’re dedicated to the proposition that home-cooking is where it’s at. No more processed food for you. No, sir.

Ah, if only it were that easy. But let’s face it: we’re recovering addicts. Processed food is deliberately loaded with brain-pleasing salt and sugar. It comes in pretty packages and needs only to be emptied into a pot or warmed in the oven. Instant gratification never felt so good.

Hi, my name is Paul and I’m a junk-foodaholic. I fondly remember childhood buckets of KFC. Half the stuff I ate as a kid came from a can. In university the heady aroma of an Egg McMuffin seduced me on many a hungover morning. Junk food still tempts me, as does any sort of processed, packaged, preserved, bottled, instant food that is going to save me precious time in the kitchen.

So what are some possible coping strategies for recovering junk-foodaholics like me?

1. Be nice to yourself. If you made one fabulous, home-cooked dinner this week and ate crap the other six days, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, try saying: “Well done, me. I could have eaten crap all week long, but I didn’t. I made that one great meal.” Prepackaged, processed foods have been such a marketing success in recent decades because people are busy. It’s really, really hard sometimes to make the time to cook. So pat yourself on the back when you do. Emphasize the positive and don’t be rigid about those resolutions.
2. Keep it fun. I don’t love cooking all the time. Which is why I usually try to emphasize meals that are dead simple and easy. By not boring or exhausting myself on a daily basis, I find I’m much more likely to go for that genuinely entertaining feast once and a while. You know, the kind where you try something new (occasionally requiring exotic ingredients or a new kitchen toy) and impress whomever you’re sharing it with. Those memorable occasions are the ones that keep me coming back for more. Last summer, for example, I made cherry pie from fresh, whole organic cherries. Pitting the cherries by hand made it an epic five-hour undertaking, which I’m not likely to repeat, but I can still taste that pie, and it still makes me happy to think about it.
3. Stick to it and gradually learn. Everybody can follow a recipe, so it’s sometimes easy for me to forget what a complex skill cooking is. In the early days of my effort to do more home cooking I had the added stress of not knowing anything about anything. Didn’t know what ingredients or spices to use. Didn’t know what any of the kitchen gear was for. Total ignorance. My only hope was to follow a recipe the way a contractor follows a blueprint. I know now what a drag that was. I couldn’t do anything quickly, and I couldn’t improvise. The point is that it gets a lot—a lot—easier to make good food from scratch over time. Eventually, you’ll be doing everything unconsciously and it’ll be almost as fast and easy as dumping the canned soup in the pot. So stick with it.
4. Get inspired. Inevitably, there will be times when enthusiasm wanes. Watching hilarious old Julia Child clips on YouTube or picking up an entertaining food book are great ways to rekindle interest. Here are three titles (we’ll take Michael P. as read) I can suggest off the top of my head: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Swindled by Bee Wilson, and Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis. If you’re a twitterer, following the @Jambutter/ProFood list will provide you with interesting food and food politics links. Feed your mind and the stomach will follow.

It’s become an axiom of food politics that progress in a free marketplace is going to require a resurgence in home cooking. The dollar-votes of people who know how to cook are what we’re all counting on to help reform our entire food system from the laboratories of Monsanto to the farmer’s field to restaurants, to distributors and grocery stores. Good food has always been a pleasure. Now it’s a cause as well.

It’d be nice if cooking became something we all encouraged each other to do. It’s good for our health, good for our relationships, and good for the planet. How many pleasurable activities are there that you can so readily say that about? I don’t know about you, but I like the chances of a political movement that’s solidly based on hedonism.

Now…what am I going to make for dinner tonight?

…So cooking matters — a lot. Which when you think about it, should come as no surprise. When we let corporations do the cooking, they’re bound to go heavy on sugar, [...]]]> The need for more home cooking has been a basic ingredient of The Food Movement for a while now. Here’s Michael Pollan on the subject:

…So cooking matters — a lot. Which when you think about it, should come as no surprise. When we let corporations do the cooking, they’re bound to go heavy on sugar, fat and salt; these are three tastes we’re hard-wired to like, which happen to be dirt cheap to add and do a good job masking the shortcomings of processed food. [NYT July 29, 2009]

Many discussions on the subject of the great North American food problem—what you might call crappiness in the midst of plenty—have ended with the observation that what is most wrong with food on this continent is food culture. Food isn’t loved, respected, honored or enjoyed the way it is in many other cultures. Americans are notable for their eat-to-live outlook on life: zipping past drive-throughs in microseconds, stuffing the gob with the left hand while the right hand feverishly works the mouse button, and just generally dosing up on cheap calories as quickly as possible before getting back to their real love: work and money. The person who invents the intravenous cheeseburger might just have a hit.

So it hasn’t escaped the notice of the food-politics set that fundamental change must be accompanied by a change in personal habits, specifically, by a resurgence in home cooking. As my interest in all things food related has increased over the years, I’ve changed many habits. I definitely cook more. I’m a much more informed shopper, and I know I get better value for my grocery dollar as a result. I haven’t bought Coke in years. The Egg McMuffin holds no real temptation for me anymore, not even when I’m hungover. Food politics has made me a happier, healthier person.

Having said all that, I had a very busy week last week, and I noticed myself returning to the grazing, insta-meal behavior of old. I was doing work that required a lot of concentration and I just didn’t feel as though I could afford to step away for an hour in the middle of the day to make myself some “real food.” This got me thinking about fundamentals. If it’s become a foundation of food reform that we need to start by doing more home cooking, than the bedrock under it must be less busyness.

We must love work less. We must not allow business culture to trump food culture.

Corporate types should set the example. The next time somebody in your office suggests a working lunch, or a short lunch, or, God forbid, skipping lunch altogether, consider it your moral duty to look at them with horror and disgust, as if they had just let out a really loud fart. Politely inform them that you would never under any circumstances be distracted from the leisurely consumption of your home-prepared meal in a nearby green space. Arch a brow, snort derisively, and just walk away.

It will take a generation of small acts and subtle shifts in personal priorities, but with patience we will get there.