Author photo: Angela Decenzo
Michael Pollan bakes a badass loaf of bread. Also: It’s never too late to learn to cook.
As Pollan sees it, a return to cooking in our culture is about much more than the pleasures of the table. “At a certain point the national movement toward a more sustainable, alternative food system will falter if people don’t cook and keep insisting corporations cook their meals,” he says. “There is no hope of maintaining the farmers’ market movement and building an alternative agriculture if cooking continues to decline. Cooking is the key towards reforming the food system.”
The author of the recent Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation shares his kitchen wisdom in my interview with him for Diablo magazine.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Big fan of Pollan’s ideas–too lazy to read through much more than the chapter headings…which is enough to get the drift…maybe.
I’m a big fan of cooking at home for a variety of reasons–first and foremost, I enjoy it! For additional reasons, one can cite the following advantages:
1) control of dietary intake
2) save money
3) save money
4) better for the environment…I’m sure (less travel to restaurants, carbon footprint, etc.)
5) I can cook as well as some of these fancy shmancy restaurants
6) puts me more in tune with the seasons, nature etc.
On a slightly unrelated note, grocery shopping and eating out are less simple pursuits these days, complicated by the restaurant industry’s gradual advancement in choosing to provide living wages to their staff, health benefits, not to mention a choice to pursue local produce and vendors (seasonally notwithstanding)…all of which is good for the social fabric, and being aware of these parameters is slowly becoming more of a general yardstick (meterpole?) by which we establish our new criteria for selecting WHERE we eat and WHAT we eat. At least here in overly conscious Berkeley.
I can think of a small number of restaurants that choose to provide top quality organic this and free range that, allow for health benefits and living wages for their staff, and I do indeed applaud these selections, and consequently…ironically…because of the menu prices which such largesse affords, it only encourages me to eschew these fine establishments and pursue my own cooking whims.
Cheaper. Healthier. At home.
Hi, Chris, thanks for chiming in. Solid points all, especially the emphasis on saving money by cooking at home.