A New Slogan for Michael Pollan
Northwest Culinary Academy participated in the Michael Pollan event at the UBC Farm this weekend. Firstly, the Academy’s students who volunteered for the event, including those that helped with all the tedious mise en place over three days, proved again to be professional and great ambassadors of the school’s philosophy. They showed they cared and I’ve always said that caring cooks are the best people I know. Also, I had an opportunity to thank Michael Pollan personally for making my work as a culinary instructor more meaningful, for his writing has indeed instigated socio-political dialogue about our decisions as professional cooks. Such dialogue has now become reality in the Academy’s curriculum. A good thing.
Professor Pollan said two things in his speech I really admired. He admitted this (I paraphrase): The fact that we need a writer to point out the obvious, something we should already know, something most grandmothers and great-grandmothers know instinctively, says a lot about the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. I’m glad he said this because, to be honest, I never read his books from cover to cover for that very reason. I once picked up a copy of Omnivore’s Dilemma at Chapters and simply couldn’t get past its first seven climatic words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Don’t need a weatherman to tell me which way the wind blows, I thought. But food, like the weather these days, is a complex story and Michael Pollan comes in from fascinating and provocative directions. I will give it a more thorough read. Luckily I was given a copy by one of students that day at the event, which I had signed.
Mr. Pollan at one point of his brilliant outdoor lecture on Saturday suggested we submit any catch phrases, like his “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” As he pointed out, to differentiate foods into good and evil - the evil, synthesized, manipulated, corporate, convenient, packaged and brilliantly marketed foods versus the good, natural, organic, pastoral, and healthy (and also, by the way, brilliantly marketed) - will not solve our problems. Furthermore, it doesn’t get to the root of our problems. The root of our condition is simpler than we think. In my mind it’s all about cooking. We.ve chosen to cook less. I believe this with every cell of my body, cells which I inherited from grandparents who understood this to be obvious. Those that can cook will have good reason to put real good as opposed to evil packaged processed foods in their supermarket buggies. Those that can cook will have good reason to go to the farmer’s market to pick out fresh local vegetables, or even plant their own garden. Those that can cook are in control, not being controlled. What we’ve had since WW II is a cooking fall-out. We need a more fundamental, more active slogan like: “Cook more.” The old adage “You are what you eat” is not accurate enough. “You are what you cook” is more accurate, for if you are not cooking, you are at the mercy of someone else’s food politics and ethics.
But I’d like to take this one step further. I’ll share a slogan I’ve been using for years when teaching both professional and amateur students, and which I believe is more action-packed, graphic, has an edge and great sound effects: “Cut more plants, less plastic”. This reduces the saying “You are what you Eat” to “You are what you CUT.” Yes, cut, because all plants, though very romantic when harvested in the fields, must be sliced and diced into small even pieces to cook well into something delicious. Onions, garlic, ginger, herbs, carrots, celery, parsnips, celery root (gnarly and all), and so on all start on the cutting board before they hit the pan, then the plate, and finally the table. We use the most beautiful and loving words to describe the table, but when it comes to the cutting board, the first step to move food from nature to the communal table, we face the inconvenient truth that this requires skill and a bit of time. Michael Pollan uses the action verb “EAT”. But I say to you “CUT.” There is no quick and easy solution here that is made simply with the brain. Sorry, your hands are the key. And if you’re cutting into plastic, tin, or paper rather than plants, in other words using scissors or a can opener more often than a knife, you’re most likely not gardening, not eating local foods, and putting easy-scan foods in your shopping cart (perhaps the cashiers are behind this convenience food conspiracy). If every citizen from an early age were taught how to use a knife to cut plants - which at the same time exposes them to plants - we’d solve many of our health and perhaps environmental issues. Talk is good, but the sound of honing a knife and cutting is music indeed.
By the way, by my calculation, the eight vegetables we used for the event were cut into over 40,000 pieces, cubed, so that as many people could enjoy as many of our appetizers (we served over 400 pieces) with as many different flavours.
Tony Minichiello
Culinary Instructor
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