Person on the Page

I didn’t attend a culinary institute.  I haven’t cooked in any of New York’s finest restaurants.  I haven’t eaten at any of them, either.  I can’t drop the names of any famous chefs and tell stories about my experiences with them. I can’t say that I was sexually harassed or humiliated or lauded by any of them. 

I didn’t know Julia Child. I have never been her fan. The only one of her recipes that I have tried is the one for coq au vin. It took hours to make, and the result wasn’t delectable enough to justify the effort. Who has that much time and energy to devote to one meal? I can’t tell stories of having run into her here or there, in Europe or the U.S.  She never snubbed me, nor confided in me about anything.

I haven’t earned the right to be a food snob. I can’t afford to insist on using the finest farm-made butter or only the best balsamic vinegar.  I’m not determined to buy only the best, locally sourced, organic vegetables. I can’t use my knowledge of culinary secrets to impress anyone. I probably wouldn’t always be able to tell an expertly prepared dish from one that has been prepared somewhat sloppily.  I’m pretty sure I couldn’t distinguish hearty bleu, from gentle roquefort, from sweet gorgonzola.

While I have earned a PhD, I do not have the seemingly obligatory MFA in creative writing that appears to open doors among publishers in the food writing arena.  I am not, therefore, what one of my classmates in graduate school called a “card-carrying creative writer.” I’m just a writer. Publishers’ doors have opened to me, but rarely. 

I have read the works of some of the best food memoirists: M.F.K. Fisher, Laurie Colwin, Julie Powell, Amanda Hesser, Hannah Howard. And I applaud them all.  But they seem to have had just the right experiences, just the right education, and they inhabited exactly the right cities to facilitate establishing themselves as food writers.

Hannah Howard, for instance, worked at exclusive New York restaurants while she earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Bennington. And me? I lived most of my life in an economically depressed region of Maryland where, trust me, there are no noteworthy restaurants. I earned my PhD at West Virginia University because I could commute there every day and be back in Maryland in time to pick my children up at school. Clearly, I did not have just the right experiences to make me a shoo-in for food writing.

I don’t have the insider, right-there-in-the-restaurant-kitchen scoop on the food world that would allow me to wow readers with my stories. I haven’t traveled the world collecting culinary experiences among likely and unlikely folks and then made stunning connections between food and culture, food and being human, food and empathy for others. I confess that I have idolized Anthony Bourdain for having done those things. Though his gifts were obvious, of course, his success seems to have been the result of a certain amount of privilege that I have never enjoyed.

Sadly, I can never be the kind of food writer that the abovementioned people have made themselves.  But is there a kind of food writer that I can be?

During an airing of CNN’s Larry King Show several years ago in which he was interviewed, Anthony Bourdain commented that a home cook cannot really cook, at least not at the level that a professional chef does. Home cooks don’t have the high-quality equipment and access to the best grades of foods that a chef has.  If you want a really good meal, he said, you have to eat out.

With all due respect to the late Mr. Bourdain, that’s where he and I part company.  Didn’t the recipes and cooking techniques and the classic food combinations and preparation methods that chefs employ today originate with home cooks? Weren’t they developed over the centuries by mothers, fathers, and other caregivers who worked alone in whatever semblance of a kitchen that they have had throughout history to feed and comfort a family? Weren’t the first chefs home cooks? I mean, there was a time before restaurants existed, right?

I have never been anything other than a home cook.  And while nothing that I have prepared over my years in the kitchen would likely stand up in taste and presentation to a dish prepared by the most average of chefs, my experiences with food, with cooking, and with eating should not be discounted. I believe that I have something to say.  

I can tell readers about how a woman who finds herself suddenly single and alone at midlife can recover her sense of self and gain self-esteem by growing her own food. I can tell them about the satisfaction of gathering peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, and green beans from a garden that she started, cultivated, and maintained by herself. I can describe for them the satisfying zing of the knife as she slices carrots that she has just pulled from the ground.

I can tell readers how two people, a divorcee and a widower, can find and navigate love later in life. I can tell them how the two can build a life together consciously by coming together each evening at the dinner table. I can tell them how a woman offers a man the best dishes she can create because her cooking is something that she has to offer him. I can describe the sound of two people’s laughter at the table and ringing through the house after the two have each endured a long period of struggle and grief.

That’s the kind of food writer I can be. I can write about discoveries made while being a home cook.  In some remote but lively corner of the world of food-writing readers, are there people who might want to read such writing?

I don’t have the answer.  I want to know.