When I wrote the last entry, I assumed readers would know that my grandparents had poultry and livestock to feed and fatten for ultimate selling, not for their self-sustenance. Evelyn Bruegger's old joke about "assume": never assume; that makes an ass out of u and me. I'm from the last age of the family farms, more lamentation, as those have disappeared in corporate mergers. Case in point: the largest land owner internationally is supposedly Ted Turner, who has 1.8 million acres around the world, including 128,000 in Patagonia (Argentina). He is now Nebraska's biggest land owner with 357,719 acres by the most recent count--until he buys some more Sandhills ranches, which will again make state newspaper headlines. He's rather a special case, preferring to raise bison, the natural livestock of the Great Plains and far more ecologically sound than cattle.
I can still drive country roads and remember many of the names of the farms every mile or even half mile, reciting Bruegmans, Jiraceks, Hydes, Fitzgeralds, Kienows, Peters, for instance, within, say, three miles on the road to Bloomfield, places empty now or gone, like my grandparents' own farm. Agribusiness has taken over with huge, expensive machines, too costly for the young farmer, who heads to the city for work. Bad. That's why it was recently noted most of our population is now metropolitan.
So when Heat made a big deal out of the Italians clinging to ancient traditions, I don't see that as much different from simply turning back the clock here. I'm not sure how those Italian mountain dwellers are doing it, but foregoing electricity, plumbing, televisions and telephones sums up the sacrifice. Furthermore, when Buford tells me someone claims to be able to tell from tasting the eggs or the beef what and where the chickens or cattle were fed, my eyebrows go very high. I'm sure there's a difference in grass-fed as opposed to nutrient-fed cows or chickens, but to specify any further is specious. We had fresh farm eggs my whole childhood, and the only difference we noted was whether they were white or brown, brown being falsely considered inferior. (My problem is the same with cars. To obsess about food or cars is beyond my practicality: food is nourishment, helpful or harmful, first and foremost, as cars are to get from Point A to Point B, and to fall into ecstasy over either is sentimental claptrap.)
My tastebuds are probably too old, but, when I read that chili flakes and hot peppers are worked into a dish, I know that "nuances" of a hint of Spring are unlikely. I am a cook, not a chef. I have made decent pasta and croissants and much else and have to say that, for someone who likes spices of all kinds except curry, simple is better. The worst meal I ever made was an attempt at coq au vin with poor ingredients--hard to find around Center--for a visiting second cousin and his family from the Chicago area, who would've been and were far happier with Mom's basic menus. When someone makes a major deal out of presentation, I know that I'm dealing with that omnipresent Image factor in American culture: as long as it looks good-better-terrific, regardless of what's underneath or behind or wherever . . . . Aesthetics is important to food, surely, but not the point of the exercise. Except possibly in Japan, the country supreme for design in all things.
When someone describes two major crews, prep and kitchen, splitting the restaurant day, and the absolute necessity for stressful speed at all times involving many staff, certainly that explains much of the expense of fine restaurants and pampered consumers. And that has created, backhandedly, our fast-food fetishes. But good food takes time in the preparation and the doing, which Heat does make some points about, except for the service finale. But I should stop making my point. Educated by farm experience, I'm not likely to be that impressed by food writers. And I'm sad about what has happened to our rural areas, emptied into poverty and dying small towns dependent on all those people once filling the countrysides.
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