saltandfat:
Though he’s long been well known and well regarded amongst the sort of folks who’d read a blog about food and cooking, Michael Pollan’s quickly becoming a household name. So far, his year’s started off pretty well, first with the publication of his latest book and this week with Food, Inc., a documentary in which he was heavily featured, being nominated for an Oscar. If you haven’t yet seen Food, Inc., it’s certainly worth an hour and a half of your time.
The book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual is a surprisingly quick, compact read — I scrolled through the Kindle edition on my phone on a single morning bus ride (traffic was a bit more gnarly than usual that day, but you can read the whole thing cover to cover in an hour). It’s also a much different kind of book than Pollan’s other food books, In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Previously, Pollan has sought to explain why we eat the way we do, why the industrialized Western food system is the way it is and why that’s not necessarily the best thing for our health. Pollan has made such a reputation for himself as a food writer that it can be easy to forget that he’s a journalist — he teaches at UC Berkeley, in the school of journalism, after all. Explaining is what he does best.
Food Rules takes a different, much more prescriptive approach to the subject of the American diet, shying away from the question of why to answer the question of what we should eat. He starts with the premise that he rather academically explored in In Defense of Food, to “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” and then offers 64 ways to go about doing just that. There’s not a lot of scientific breakdown, not a lot of nutritional analysis, mostly time-tested, some would say common sense, advice on how to eat. Research involved talking to academics and scientists, but also cooks, anthropologists and other researchers who look at the history and the culture behind what we eat. The advice is casual, like something you might hear from your grandmother, instead of the rigid diatribes of whatever fad diet that’s currently sweeping the nation.
On balance, the book holds together very well. It’s short enough to be accessible, pithy enough to be memorable, specific enough to be helpful without being overbearing (one of the most important “rules” is that it’s ok to break the rules sometimes, as long as you let treats be treats). I would say that Pollan buries the lede a little bit, certainly from the perspective of this blog, as you have to get all the way to rule 63 for one of my favorites: cook.
I’ve told Jim how much I’m enjoying his and Neven’s new blog, “Salt & Fat,” but I think maybe I’ve neglected to sing its praises to the ever-so-slightly larger cross-section of humanity that reads my own blog. Well, this is for the other 19 of you.
My ladyfriend Julie, our pal Jay Fanelli, and my parents of all people have recently conspired to reignite my somewhat dormant love of cooking. We’ve pushed my kids to expand their palettes, and broadened our stagnant kitchen repertoire in the process. The table hasn’t seen macaroni and cheese for more than 3 years, and DelGrosso tomato sauces are finally an endangered species in our pantry. Foods like daal, artichoke, brussels sprouts, and calamari have found their way to our table, and - wonder of wonders - into the kids’ mouths.
So this major, muting influence on my culinary life is being dismantled, and we’ve started to have fun in the kitchen with more than just body parts. For the first time in maybe 10 years, I’m cooking by intuition again, and it’s a blast.
Now, by the power of Grayskull, you will understand my delight when Neven and Jim dropped “Salt & Fat” a few weeks ago:
I may have first decided I really, really liked Jim online when I discovered his food photos on Flickr. They not only made my mouth water, they made me want to paint. So, fuck yeah food photos. And Neven. You know he’s a designer extraordinaire, a freewheelin thespian, a thoughtful writer, and god knows how many other things, but have you seen his drawings? They’re sensitive. Sensitive in a way I first learned to see from my friend Josh in college, and - I’ll have you know - rarely saw again in my nearly four years of teaching painting and drawing to some damn talented students at SCAD.
So, here, at the very dawn of my rebirth into the arms of the culinary arts, these two luminaries embark on an endeavor so delicious, so serendipitously timed to coincide with my aforementioned rebirth, it’s like dessert for breakfast or some other half-baked metaphor that I could (but won’t, because maybe I actually can’t) include here.
So, yeah. I read “Salt & Fat,” and I think you should too. Because that’s how narcissism works- I assume you’ll like what I like. But more importanly because there’s not another blog out there that asks for so little of your time and attention in return for so, so much.
