"Let them eat cake"

I believe it was Marie Antoinette who said, "Let them eat cake."

I say let them BAKE cake. And roast meats, throw together sumptuous salads, pasta entrees, and create all manner of awesome food. Let THEM be trendy with classic dishes and be daringly inventive with that which is already unfamiliar.

Who is "them"? Anyone but me.

I've been there and done that. I like to think I gave as good as I got in the arena of chic little eateries, and as with any worthwhile venture its peaks and valleys ran their course. For me, there is no turning back.

But looking back is another matter, because the way all people sustain themselves intrigues me. It's not my business (literally, anymore) but it still intrigues.

Flavor, beauty, and wholesomeness should all be part and parcel of the eating experience. I understand there are people out there who eat for nourishment only, and any hoopla in partaking of anything is a mystery to them. Eating is out of necessity only for these sorts, and THAT viewpoint is mystifying to me.

Enjoyment of eating isn't the only pleasure in life, and it certainly isn't the most important "thing,"  as is love of family, general health and welfare, justice and equity for all. 


But nature runs its course when these all-important things cannot be fully enjoyed without the certainty of physical nourishment. All are intertwined; a great lack or abuse in any one of these areas compromises life and diminishes quality within, for sure.


We know that "the body is the temple" and "we are are what we eat." Food does matter, it is crucial to our overall well-being, so why wouldn't a modicum of hoopla about it be just fine?


What I love lately about good food is not wasting it. As a matter of routine in my cafe, I nurtured quality ingredients into creative fare, always in sufficient amounts to serve the number of guests I hoped to have.


This guesstimation always proved to be a crap-shoot. Some days our customers were lucky to be offered the one chicken salad "fold-over" we had left; other days we could not scare up a single taker for food I was fit to burst with pride over. (Maybe that was the problem--PRIDE.)


It may be in the cost of doing business that some product has to be thrown out, but it's a hard thing to do. You consider the beauty of it, the cost and all the other expenses you've incurred to put food out there that isn't same-old, same-old, and in the end you kind of suspect same-old is really what people want, despite choruses to the otherwise.


I always found good homes for good leftovers, and that took some of the sting out of things. It's more than fine to share surplus, but most business advisers do tell us we need to sell at least a little more than we give away.


I love that at home this angst is gone. I don't know that it was so much a "wide audience" I needed about my cooking (so much as a way to earn while enjoying a loved pastime), but I do puzzle at the lengths I went to over food.


Maybe (as a new line of groceries is named) it is because "food should taste good."  I wanted to share that belief, one I mightily hold. But the business of food opened my eyes to many struggles regarding sustenance in the world, and I come away enlightened.


Far and away from those trying to sustain themselves with the business of selling food, there are many others more concerned with simply and essentially just having enough food in the cupboards at home. Their mindset hardly dwells on costly meals out.


I have a new understanding and admiration for the timeless piece of art ("Grace" by Enstrom, I believe) where an old man prays intently over his bowl of soup and loaf of humble bread. It is evident that the fellow sincerely appreciates his daily bread, but more than that I can picture that image going into motion with relish and gusto after his prayer is done. I can see the man dipping that hearty bread into his broth to sop up every bit of flavor, until it is "all gone." I can't speak for that man and don't know if he ever yearned or enjoyed much more, but I am convinced there are many people even now very happy, fully contented with simple food.  


Can a person trying to sell food (especially away from hugely populated metropolises) really get frustrated with that? And what about people who can eat out with no big hardship but choose not to, at least very often?


That's me for some time now: meals out are too often a disappointment at any price, and no place is as comfortable (or comforting) as home. I have found that after years of trying to keep up with food inventiveness, I truly exalt in a less (choices in food) being plenty for me thinking. Diversity in food is all well and good, but I am blessed with a cultural foods background that in its own vein is extremely rich and almost completely enough for me. Add in an occasional cheeseburger or a wonderful salad, I'm good.


It's a luxury not to be excessive with food, because more, as we know, does not mean better. In a conversation recently with my 86-year-old mother, I was held a willing captive to her discussion of  chile verde, something she has prepared spectacularly for our family for many decades. Really good chile verde doesn't require very many different ingredients, but it is exciting and delicious every time you taste it.


One always makes a generous amount of it, because the base goodness of it stretches into many meals, none of which are same-old, same-old. A first night of chile verde is usually the stewed meat with traditional beans, rice and tortillas. Nights after can emerge with tostadas, tacos, burritos, tacquitos, posole, quesadillas and the list goes on. Each does not feel like a variation on the same theme because accompaniments and garnishes do a good job of changing things up.


"Use it up" is easier and much more delightful at home. In the business of food-service, I was a hostage to the pressure of performance, which always involved excess and thereby waste. From the beginning of time excess and waste have come hand-in-hand, so I don't know why it took a smart person (me?!?) so long to figure this out.


Or to realize how much it would bother me, as well it should. I see the light now: luxury is in the eye of the beholder, and where food is concerned "less is plenty" will serve as a beacon for me. 

"Like What You Like"

In relation to food, if you like what you like, what's wrong with that?

Outside of foods and practices that harm you or your family, why can't we like what we like?

If "food snobbery" has its way with all of us, we will all be consuming only that which others say is really good, or good for us, or even socially acceptable.

Were you raised with any food "oddities," foods that elicit the most winsome of memories for you, but others visibly cringe at? Often dishes like this are related to our ethnicity; they are connective to our cultures and families--they represent the best of what we knew as children.

In the midst of trying to relate the beauty of a revered food tradition, little is more dismaying than having it trounced upon and denigrated by someone who just doesn't "get it." Ten to one, this person has a precious food tradition, too. What makes his or her recipe fabulous, and yours just plain weird?

Much has to do with what we were raised with, and much has to do with how open we are to trying other people's ideas of what good eating is.

I'm willing as a baby is to taste new offerings. A bit hesitant, but mostly game to begin with. Unlike a baby, too much information might influence my taste buds. If I know that certain body parts (sometimes referred to as offal) account for a certain flavor in a meat dish, I'm affected. Why a chunk of beef roast has more "social acceptability" to me than a pile of beef brains or a pig snout seems obvious to me. But really? After all, that beef roast very well came from the cow's behind, so how classy is that?

I'd like all people to understand the appeal of "menudo," and not insult me with derision of it. In a Mexican household, this main-dish soup is practically sacred. "Menudo por los crudos" essentially translates  to "Menudo for the hungover" but you don't have to be a drinker to love it. "Crudos" is pronounced, with a rolled r,"crew-dose," not crud-os which is ironically probably more accurate; it helps rid the body of that cruddy hangover feeling.

People make big pots of menudo on Saturday evening, and dive into it after mass on Sunday morning. One (who has indulged) drags one's self out of bed to attend church for the cleansing effect of religion, then to home for the cleansing effect of this cultural mainstay. Good menudo is bold and bolstering, spicy and richly flecked with fresh garnishes like chopped crunchy onion, cilantro leaves, and a dried herb blend of oregano and crushed red pepper. It is always laced heavily with squeezed lemon for tang, and all of this put together gets the pores flowing. All is right with a bowl of menudo when it makes you sweat--and sweat as we know, does detoxify.

Menudo may be touted as a toxin releaser and a good cure for a hangover, but most everyone who enjoys it enjoys it for the flavor.

What makes for the flavor? Admittedly, it's offal--kind of awful offal: tripe, if you must know. The same word used synonymously with garbage, trash, refuse.  To thicken the plot further (oh, I mean the soup) a soup "bone" is added.

This doesn't sound as bad as a pig snout, does it? Alas, the truth is it's a pig's hoof, or foot, and that sadly DOES sound as bad.

But a pig's foot it must be. Not too long ago I trekked to an authentic Mexican market for menudo fixings, something I hadn't made in many years. In Wisconsin, I have become far removed from the idea of pig's feet in my soup, so I asked the friendly butcher if good old beef soup bones wouldn't do as well.

You'd have thought I asked him if I could made a burrito out of Wonder bread. No, Lady, he smiled. It's always been a pig's foot and always will be a pig's foot, if you want true menudo.

So menudo as I've always known it is comfortable for me, but I sense your skepticism. I get it. I decline many "foreign" dishes myself, especially when too much information is given. But I like what I like, and you should with ease like what YOU like.

"Foraged foods" are not foreign to any of us because they are a part of our collective ancestry. It's how the earliest life cycles were sustained and it's a history that belongs to all of us. Time and the ages have removed us from the constancy of need to forage, but many people are doing it now more from enjoyment than real need.

Foraging doesn't honestly appeal to me, but those who love it should love it openly. A friend of mine so successfully owns the tradition that he's become an expert at it. He has been sought out by a publishing house and of late has been making the rounds to lend publicity to his wonderful book, "Trout Caviar." He is innovative with his ways of preparing wild foods, and fearless even about his "accidents." Some of his finest moments come from things he didn't intend.

I once enjoyed a foraging jaunt with a friend who has always used the wild to complement her cooking. She explained that a creek-bank near her home harbored fresh watercress, and we were going to have a salad from that. I remember my mother adding watercress to our salads, and&n;the thought of experiencing that picquant freshness again just had me excited no end.

She plucked a bunch of the found greens, and we went home to assemble the meal. As we talked and worked, she mentioned her process of ridding the greens of "critters." The plates we were eventually presented with were beautiful, and her grilled salmon divine. Still,  with every approach of my fork to the salad, I was pretty sure what should have been cracked peppercorns was not--too much squirming going on there.

I suspect "critters" are part and parcel of foraging. Anyone who practices it  might only suffer amusement at those who would be bothered by these little natural "details."

"Live and let Live," should be practiced when we think about the foods we enjoy the most. I have a feeling my friend, Brett Laidlaw (who wrote "Trout Caviar") would not condemn my menudo, would even relish it, but the both of us (I am sure?) frown upon macaroni and cheese that requires orange powder for its finished state.

But isn't orange-powdered mac 'n cheese considered an American mainstay in many homes? Is my food snobbery about this as wrong as someone's else's ripping on my menudo or his foraged delicacies?

Live and let live....and if we want to LIVE well, enjoy it all in moderation.

Final comment on this: Just saw a Food Network episode where Guy Fieri was tasting someone's enchiladas topped with barbeque sauce. Some things are just WRONG and this would be one.

Pictured: Classic red sauce enchiladas....haven't made menudo lately.