Zombie Cooking

Rather than cooking zombies (which, by the way, is easiest during the winter, when they are not moving around and are easier to catch and dispatch. But you knew that already, right?). But in any case, to return to our usual example: You and a bunch of your friends are holed up in a mostly abandoned farmhouse; between you and any form of fast food is a moaning hoard of zombies (and no, it is not January so you can’t just walk out and lop their heads off..that would be cheating). You’ve got plenty of fuel, a stove, a pantry full of canned goods. What to do…what to do?

One of the incidents in Jamie Oliver’s first “Food Revolution” program (the one which was filmed in West Virginia) that had this huge effect on me was the family who had a lot of health issues that he was matched with by a local pastor.

The family also a freezer filled with pre-packaged, processed junk masquerading as ‘meals’. And I recall vividly the look on the mom’s face when they opened the fridge up and the light bulb went off for her.

Now, a totally different light bulb went off for me (and the same light bulb went off for Jamie Oliver long ago because he’s been in the ‘fighting crappy food at home and at school’ business for a very long time). And that is that most of us have no clue how to cook. And I’m not talking about kids just out of school who are on their own and end up with six packs of beer and empty takeout pizza boxes in their fridges. Although there have been canned and frozen fruits and veggies around since the 30s, the invention and growth of what we’d call pre-made ‘convenience’ foods, snacks and meals has only been with us since the 1950s and Swanson’s tv dinners (remember those?). Now, at first, these were marketed to moms as a strictly ‘one off’ or emergency ‘just in case’ sort of thing. Moms by and large were still full time home makers and the expectation was that mom would have a family dinner on the table at 5:30 p.m. and Dad, Buddy and Sis would dutifully troop to the table, tuck in their napkins, and work their way through the meal, punctuated by pretty standard conversation of the ‘and what did you do in school today?” sort.

As more and more women entered the workforce in the 1960s and then in almost tsunami-like numbers in the 70s and 80s, two things happened: First, families started struggling with gender roles at home because of changing opportunities and perceived lack of time and second, food processing companies marketed processed foods more and more as the substitute for family meals. Moms could ‘feel good’ (or, conversely, not feel so guilty) about going to work or staying late at the office or factory because these dinners could be brought to the table in such a short period of time. With the advent of microwave ovens at a family-level price point in the 1980s, this whole operation could be boiled down (so to speak) to two operations: Take the item out of the freezer, and ‘nuke’ it.

It is no mystery how today, we have two generations of people whose entire connection with cooking consists of a freezer, a box or plastic bag and a microwave oven. No mystery how 62% of Americans have absolutely no clue how to boil an egg (I’m not kidding about this). First – we’ve been brainwashed by food processing companies to believe that cooking takes this huge amount of time; we don’t have any time, and therefore in order to put what they define as a meal in front of ourselves and our families, they are going to rescue us (“Here I come to save the day!!!). And secondly (and this is my theory – anyone else out there can argue this with me at any time), the growth of stuff like The Food Network basically has turned Americans into spectator cooks who watch very photogenic and amusing people, using very high tech stuff that almost no one has in their kitchens, produce these amazing almost orgasm-producing glorious perfect dishes. If you don’t have experience actually producing edible stuff in a kitchen (or any place else for that matter), seeing these sorts of visuals on a constant basis would make anyone lose whatever confidence or interest they might have in picking up a knife and going at it.

Now, I’m a big believer in the fact that if cooking and food prep were all that difficult or required anything over a pot and a source of heat, the human race would have died out probably 50,000 years ago. We’ve just allowed ourselves to become overwhelmed by this idea of perfection and lack of time.

Perfection is pretty but not necessarily edible and I’m sorry – as a woman who has worked her entire adult life and brought up three kids, I’ve got to say that there is no such thing as ‘no time.’

Lack of organization, definitely. Lack of planning, certainly. But NOT lack of time and with a little practice, no lack of skills, either.

SO, Aunt Toby (and this is in response to comments and answers to the poll) is going to do a series of videos with basic skills items: how to boil (and fry and poach and maybe, God help us, shir) an egg; how to use a knife and chop up veggies, how to chop up veggies for Chinese food (a slightly different skill and a useful one even if you are not making Chinese), how to take apart a raw (but not live) chicken, cooking some real meals when you live alone, and so on. These will be cataloged and linked. Then (and here is the clever part), when I do separate videos on specific dishes, I will first direct readers to review the appropriate videos and then we’ll get into the whole ‘how to do it’ stuff.

I’m also going to do some articles on planning. Too many of us (and we’ve fallen into this at certain times in the history at Chez Siberia – trust me) eat too many either ‘grab and go’ meals or too many restaurant meals and between the amount of salt and sugar in restaurant cooking, food safety issues (salmonella, anyone?) and the sheer unmitigated cost, a whole lot of America’s family’s food dollars are not going where they should go.

So – let’s get started – the first video will go up this coming weekend.
(Zombies courtesy of laughing squid)