Now You're Cooking
Oct. 8th, 2012 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldOne commenter liked this piece the best. Pretty much everyone else who read it thought it was too weird.
Ultimately I rejected this story on the grounds that it was pushing the definition of “memoir” too far, given that it was not an account of a specific experience and in fact digresses at length on proto-philosophical flights of fancy.
The version below was edited to exceed the original 1,000 word limit (currently 1,104).
In the early days – and I mean the early days, before the Internet – eating was treacherous business. Finding sustenance was literally a matter of life and death, and the whole notion of “comfort food” was about as familiar as “power steering.”
Man hunted and foraged for his own meals, passing these skills onto their sons early, such that the central preoccupation of most cave-parents was whether their son would “get in to a good forest.” And when a boy came of a certain age, his village would send him out into the wild with some rudimentary weapons and a quasi-religious ceremony featuring a corny prehistoric DJ and a theme like “Woolly Mammoth” or “Invention of Fire.”
Things are different today. Most of us let multinational agribusiness conglomerates do our hunting and foraging for us. The only thing we really have to worry about anymore is whether this food contains gluten, whatever that is. I often imagine that all the gluten we are removing from our food is being weaponized by the U.S. government, just in case we ever need to invade Seattle.
For most folks, food is now the only safe harbor from existential anxiety. And Macaroni and Cheese has emerged as the most comfortable of comfort foods and the contemporary analog to that ancient youthful rite of passage.
Macaroni and Cheese was invented by Yankee Doodle, who came to a town (thought to be south Philadelphia) and whose original recipe called for one part feather to one part cap. Benjamin Franklin ordered it “Wit Wiz,” and a classic American dish was born. The recipe has evolved over the years, such that it has developed its own warning color as a defense against predators.
And now the recipe has been streamlined to the point where it has become the first “meal” a young person learns how to cook. This is important because no one knows more about existential anxiety than the American pre-teenager, perpetually subject to the callous whims of peer pressure, authority figures and toxic hormone levels, they crave comfort and control. As if to meet this need perfectly, macaroni and cheese has become every teenager’s first step toward self-determination. And rickets.
I must have been 13 or so when I cooked my first batch – from the familiar blue box, not from scratch. (There was no scratching involved whatsoever. Incidentally, if your cooking regularly involves scratching, consult a physician.)
Fortunately, I was already well-schooled in the cooking of pasta, the first and most vital step of the macaroni and cheese recipe. The most essential skill was patience, since my parents’ stovetop was of the electric variety, which meant that boiling water took what seemed like several hours. As it is said, “a watched pot never boils.” And just in case you’re curious, it doesn’t work with mixing bowls, coffee mugs or mason jars, either. Avoid plastic. Just forget about wicker.
And then, once you dumped the pasta in the water, it took forever to cook thoroughly. My mother used to say that you could throw a string of spaghetti against the wall, and if it stuck, it was done. Unfortunately, the small, tubular noodles were much more difficult to retrieve individually than a long string of pasta, and I would find myself hovering over the pot, desperately and fruitlessly trying to snag one of the noodles with the tynes of my fork, a practice that would accurately foreshadow my teenage romantic life.
Once the pasta was done, it was time for the butter and milk. The instructions specified a quarter-cup of butter and a quarter-cup of milk, which I believed to be a ratio carefully calibrated to promote good health and vitality. Now I realize it is intended as a rough guideline intended to delay coronary disease.
I would carefully measure out the butter, largely ignoring those hash marks on the wrapper, which are always warped and off-center and seem way more problematic than just eyeballing it. Instead of bothering with those arbitrary and misleading measurements, the butter and margarine people might as well just print a disclaimer giving up on the American educational system.
Additionally, my parents raised me to be super-careful about leaving milk out and letting it spoil, so I got in the habit of leaving the milk carton in the fridge until the last possible moment before hurriedly measuring a quarter-cup into the pot and then quickly putting the carton back. I realize, of course, that this makes zero sense, given that I’m stirring the cold milk into a warm pot. But years of guilt-based discipline have conditioned me to regard milk sitting out on the counter as a normal person might regard a smallpox outbreak.
The last and most essential step was the addition of the cheese-like flavor compound, which is as apt a symbol of American scientific ingenuity as has ever been developed – the modern-day equivalent of magic beans, except with much less soluble fiber. Through the miracle of science, milk and cheese cultures are transformed to a crystalline powder, preserved and packaged for my convenience, then brought to life again in my saucepan.
With a wooden spoon as my magic wand, I gradually added the powder into the pot while stirring, careful to maintain an even mixture with the noodles rather than dumping the whole thing on top and letting it “trickle down.” While this “trickle down” approach was widely discredited in the late 1980s, a conservative subset of chefs have recently decried equitable distribution as “culinary socialism” and threatened to filibuster dessert.
Once an even consistency was achieved finally the dish was complete. (As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of bad macaroni and cheese.”) Many folks add chicken, or sliced wieners, or broccoli (presumably as a garnish) to the dish. But in that moment, I was eager to savor the simple purity of my creation while my Mom cleaned up.
It made for a simple, satisfying meal. But as I grew older, I came to realize that the comfort wasn’t in the macaroni and cheese itself; it was in the knowledge that the macaroni and cheese was always there for me, just ten minutes away. It is not just fuel, but emotional sustenance.
Obviously, macaroni and cheese is not a substitute for love, though it is a highly effective love delivery system (and, incidentally, an adequate substitute for roofing insulation).
Learning to love oneself is a crucial part of growing up. In a way, I became a man when I first cooked macaroni and cheese. Our caveman ancestors would be proud. Although they would probably be frightened by the color.
Ultimately I rejected this story on the grounds that it was pushing the definition of “memoir” too far, given that it was not an account of a specific experience and in fact digresses at length on proto-philosophical flights of fancy.
The version below was edited to exceed the original 1,000 word limit (currently 1,104).
In the early days – and I mean the early days, before the Internet – eating was treacherous business. Finding sustenance was literally a matter of life and death, and the whole notion of “comfort food” was about as familiar as “power steering.”
Man hunted and foraged for his own meals, passing these skills onto their sons early, such that the central preoccupation of most cave-parents was whether their son would “get in to a good forest.” And when a boy came of a certain age, his village would send him out into the wild with some rudimentary weapons and a quasi-religious ceremony featuring a corny prehistoric DJ and a theme like “Woolly Mammoth” or “Invention of Fire.”
Things are different today. Most of us let multinational agribusiness conglomerates do our hunting and foraging for us. The only thing we really have to worry about anymore is whether this food contains gluten, whatever that is. I often imagine that all the gluten we are removing from our food is being weaponized by the U.S. government, just in case we ever need to invade Seattle.
For most folks, food is now the only safe harbor from existential anxiety. And Macaroni and Cheese has emerged as the most comfortable of comfort foods and the contemporary analog to that ancient youthful rite of passage.
Macaroni and Cheese was invented by Yankee Doodle, who came to a town (thought to be south Philadelphia) and whose original recipe called for one part feather to one part cap. Benjamin Franklin ordered it “Wit Wiz,” and a classic American dish was born. The recipe has evolved over the years, such that it has developed its own warning color as a defense against predators.
And now the recipe has been streamlined to the point where it has become the first “meal” a young person learns how to cook. This is important because no one knows more about existential anxiety than the American pre-teenager, perpetually subject to the callous whims of peer pressure, authority figures and toxic hormone levels, they crave comfort and control. As if to meet this need perfectly, macaroni and cheese has become every teenager’s first step toward self-determination. And rickets.
I must have been 13 or so when I cooked my first batch – from the familiar blue box, not from scratch. (There was no scratching involved whatsoever. Incidentally, if your cooking regularly involves scratching, consult a physician.)
Fortunately, I was already well-schooled in the cooking of pasta, the first and most vital step of the macaroni and cheese recipe. The most essential skill was patience, since my parents’ stovetop was of the electric variety, which meant that boiling water took what seemed like several hours. As it is said, “a watched pot never boils.” And just in case you’re curious, it doesn’t work with mixing bowls, coffee mugs or mason jars, either. Avoid plastic. Just forget about wicker.
And then, once you dumped the pasta in the water, it took forever to cook thoroughly. My mother used to say that you could throw a string of spaghetti against the wall, and if it stuck, it was done. Unfortunately, the small, tubular noodles were much more difficult to retrieve individually than a long string of pasta, and I would find myself hovering over the pot, desperately and fruitlessly trying to snag one of the noodles with the tynes of my fork, a practice that would accurately foreshadow my teenage romantic life.
Once the pasta was done, it was time for the butter and milk. The instructions specified a quarter-cup of butter and a quarter-cup of milk, which I believed to be a ratio carefully calibrated to promote good health and vitality. Now I realize it is intended as a rough guideline intended to delay coronary disease.
I would carefully measure out the butter, largely ignoring those hash marks on the wrapper, which are always warped and off-center and seem way more problematic than just eyeballing it. Instead of bothering with those arbitrary and misleading measurements, the butter and margarine people might as well just print a disclaimer giving up on the American educational system.
Additionally, my parents raised me to be super-careful about leaving milk out and letting it spoil, so I got in the habit of leaving the milk carton in the fridge until the last possible moment before hurriedly measuring a quarter-cup into the pot and then quickly putting the carton back. I realize, of course, that this makes zero sense, given that I’m stirring the cold milk into a warm pot. But years of guilt-based discipline have conditioned me to regard milk sitting out on the counter as a normal person might regard a smallpox outbreak.
The last and most essential step was the addition of the cheese-like flavor compound, which is as apt a symbol of American scientific ingenuity as has ever been developed – the modern-day equivalent of magic beans, except with much less soluble fiber. Through the miracle of science, milk and cheese cultures are transformed to a crystalline powder, preserved and packaged for my convenience, then brought to life again in my saucepan.
With a wooden spoon as my magic wand, I gradually added the powder into the pot while stirring, careful to maintain an even mixture with the noodles rather than dumping the whole thing on top and letting it “trickle down.” While this “trickle down” approach was widely discredited in the late 1980s, a conservative subset of chefs have recently decried equitable distribution as “culinary socialism” and threatened to filibuster dessert.
Once an even consistency was achieved finally the dish was complete. (As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of bad macaroni and cheese.”) Many folks add chicken, or sliced wieners, or broccoli (presumably as a garnish) to the dish. But in that moment, I was eager to savor the simple purity of my creation while my Mom cleaned up.
It made for a simple, satisfying meal. But as I grew older, I came to realize that the comfort wasn’t in the macaroni and cheese itself; it was in the knowledge that the macaroni and cheese was always there for me, just ten minutes away. It is not just fuel, but emotional sustenance.
Obviously, macaroni and cheese is not a substitute for love, though it is a highly effective love delivery system (and, incidentally, an adequate substitute for roofing insulation).
Learning to love oneself is a crucial part of growing up. In a way, I became a man when I first cooked macaroni and cheese. Our caveman ancestors would be proud. Although they would probably be frightened by the color.
