Real Food Has Curves

After writing so many cookbooks, after leaving the confines of Manhattan for open-pastured New England, and after embracing everything seasonal and organic in the past few years, Bruce and I might as well be card-carrying foodies.

Except I've recently burned my card. It happened when I read this among Michael Pollan’s many food rules: It’s not food if it arrived through your car window.

That did it—even though I’d already looked the other way after reading his article in The New York Times blaming women for the obesity epidemic. Even though I’d bit my tongue when Alice Waters told viewers on 60 Minutes to buy organic grapes rather than a second pair of designer sneakers. Even though I’d chalked up Jonathan Safran Foer’s claims about the complex emotional life of chickens to a hipster misfire.

No, it's the sheer elitism of Pollan’s it’s not food that caused me to torch my foodie card. Not It’s not real food. Nor It’s not the best food for me. Instead, It’s not food.

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This is how I work most days.

Well, OK, not asleep. But I sit at my desk writing with Dreydl asleep next to me. Some-times, he wanders away to go on house patrol (there's always some dratted robin to bark out of the yard)--but soon enough, he's back next to me, sighing contentedly.

I, too, am back. I'm sitting in my familiar, old, sturdy, Presbyterian chair at my small desk after an eight-city, eleven-flight, sixteen-TV-segment, kick-my-patootie book tour.

And I've come home to bounty beyond belief. It's summer here--full on, no holds barred. We went to our CSA today, the first time this year--and came home with a ridiculous haul. Plus, our neighbors brought over buckets of sour cherries and apricots from their trees. We're deep into food. Deep. Over the next few days, hold on. Strawberry sorbet, here we come. And cherry clafouti. And lots more.

But today, I think I'd like to be ridiculously self-indulgent. (I can already hear my mother saying, TODAY?!?) I'd like to tell you what I discovered on this whirlwind book tour. For what it's worth, here are my top ten lessons learned:

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As we've been on our crazy, whirlwind, two-week, eight-city, eleven-flight book tour these past two weeks, we've met a recurrent question in our talks at bookstores and cooking schools: what exactly is processed food?

My photo here might be a great example of the problem. It's a mushroom and pepper pizza Bruce made for lunch the other day.

First off, it's made with a store-bought, whole wheat pizza crust.

Real food? I would argue "yes."

Processed, too? Well, yes. But not in the way we use the words "processed food."

For example, this crust was made with nothing but all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, olive oil, and water. No hydrogenated shortening, no stretchers, no emulsifiers. In other words, it's about how Bruce or I would make a whole wheat crust at home on our own.

As we keep saying, "convenience shouldn't be discounted, just examined."

And while we're on it, the olive oil in that crust is processed. No doubt. The olives are pressed. But Bruce and I use only "first cold-pressed olive oil." If you use olive oil from "refined olives," it means the manufacturer used chemical solvents to extract the oil from inferior or unripe olives. What was merely processed food suddenly became "processed food." (If that makes any sense.)

Or take that sauce on our pie. It was a combination of jarred marinara sauce and canned tomato paste, a combo Bruce whirred in the blender until smooth. Was it real food? I'd say so, even though both are canned.

How would I know? Because I read the label. The jarred marinara had in it just what I would make marinara with: tomatoes, herbs, olive oil, onion, garlic, and sea salt. A lot of the other jars on the shelf had corn syrup (to cover the taste of bad tomatoes), MSG (same reason), emulsifiers (not enough bad tomatoes to thicken it up on their own), and on and on.

And the mozzarella on the pie? Yes, processed. We are not advocating a raw-food diet. But nonetheless processed in a way to still make real food.

So processed food is not necessarily "processed food." Do you agree? Is our pizza "real food"? How do you make a line in the sand between the processed stuff and the real stuff? Does it have to do with the chemical signature? Does it have to do with something about taste? With labels? With recommendations from others? How can you tell?

As you probably know, this blog is devoted to the concept of getting off processed food. Quietly, in its own little way, it's about reducing the chemical signature of what we eat. It's like being Dreydl there, gnawing on the bone. He's getting back to basics, back to where the marrow is.

Can we reduce the chemical signature of what we eat? Yes.

But can we completely? No.

And right there is the question of balance.

(More after the jump--but don't miss the discussion going on in the comment thread. Very, very good stuff.)

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