UPDATE: Just when you're ready to throw in the towel, Alice Waters comes along with some sage advice to restore the soul. A Delicious Revolution indeed!
Harriet Brown, a poet in Wisconsin, gets it. The New York Times printed her Op-Ed essay titled "Go With Your Gut" this week.
Her point, like Mireille Guiliano's in French Women Don't Get Fat, is that we should simply enjoy the food we eat.
Ironically, the Times itself, doesn't get it. An editorial yesterday argues that "Government" should regulate the advertising of junk food to youngsters on TV.
That's the same refrain we hear regularly from the Food-Is-Bad cranks.
Marketing drives the demand for junk food, sure. But the problem's not whiney kids, it's lazy or stressed-out parents battered by the media and the Pleasure Police. The bad guys aren't so much Kraft or the makers of Twinkie's (think of them as co-conspirators), they're the scolds at the so-called Center for Science in the Public Interest. Shame on the Times for listening.
What a discovery!
Pleasure...ou le plaisir de manger.
Ca, c'est tous les jours. (That's everyday).
That doesn't mean pricey goods, or fantastic dinners. It's just everyday "little pleasure" out of : fresh vegetables and fruits (I insist : vegetables and fruits), meat, dairy products, spices...and a lot of love.
Love? Yes. When you care about your children, or when you are preparing a special meal for guests, you care for them.
It takes some time? So, what?
The kitchen has been the center of home for centuries. That's where you touch, mix, broil, roast, bake...hum, and build family traditions.
Americans have given away the pleasure of preparing, sharing and enjoying food.
As a French, if you you prevented me from going to the market, selecting my goods (and just thinking : hmm, yes, I'm going to marry that with that with some spices, and that with that wine) I WOULD JUST DIE; And don't tell me I'm a snobbish. I was raised in my grandparents's farm, on over simple food. But what a taste!
I never forgot it, and I passed it my daughters....who only eat FRESH.
Maybe that's something you have forgotten as well.
If you only knew what you missed!
Last but not least. When eating simply, you not only enjoy food, but you don't get fat.
Mum (me, the hellish cook) dresses in GAP. So my size is : 0 for pants, XS for tops...and I had 3 kids, whose first sentence when they come back home is "hmm, smells good; what are we having today/or tonight"? Over dinner we may speak about democracy under Pericles.
When you are curious.
You are curious about everything.
I totally agree with you about who the bad guys really are re. junk food. Keep up the good work!