Chewing the Fat: No Reservations' Anthony Bourdain
Excerpt:
Loved this:Q. The inauguration is tomorrow. Do you have any advice for our soon-to-be president ... About food?
A. I'll tell you. Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic. I mean I'm not crazy about our obsession with corn or ethanol and all that, but I'm a little uncomfortable with legislating good eating habits. I'm suspicious of orthodoxy, the kind of orthodoxy when it comes to what you put in your mouth. I'm a little reluctant to admit that maybe Americans are too stupid to figure out that the food we're eating is killing us. But I don't know if it's time to send out special squads to close all the McDonald's. My libertarian side is at odds with my revulsion at what we as a country have done to ourselves physically with what we've chosen to eat and our fast food culture. I'm really divided on that issue. It'd be great if he [Obama] served better food at the White House than what I suspect the Bushies were serving. It's gotta be better than Nixon. He liked starting up a roaring fire, turning up the air conditioning, and eating a bowl of cottage cheese with ketchup. Anything above that is a good thing. He's from Chicago, so he knows what good food is.
"... Nixon. He liked starting up a roaring fire, turning up the air conditioning, and eating a bowl of cottage cheese with ketchup."
There's this pivotal time, in your 40s I think, late 40s, maybe 50s, early 50s ... when all of a sudden people realize that what they eat matters, it either makes them feel good or not so good. And they sit on that thought for awhile until something concrete arises, like debilitating arthritis, or high blood sugar, or god forbid a heart attack. Then, some of them, to quote Bourdain here, "start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market." Some others start taking drugs. It's one or the other at that point, there's no turning back.
3 comments:
Nixon, came from a family of Quakers, and out of the traditions of many Philadelphia area ethnic groups like Amish, Mennonites, Moravians... Putting ketchup on cottage cheese, or the similar schmierkase, was pretty common. My family puts maple syrup on cottage cheese, another ethnic tradition...So would you fault someone from an Italian family from serving a pasta dish at the American holiday of Thanksgiving, as so many do? Doubt it...
Picking on someones occasional food choice, that they no doubt inherited, is pretty elitist...But celebrating even the odd combinations is much more American in spirit.. or at least it used to be
Nixon's only connection with the Society of Friends,was through his mother, nee West from Indianapolis In. She was a sister of Jesamyn West author ,who was my first wife's great aunt as was Mrs Nixon.
We ate cottage cheese w/ ketchup! Yum! (I'm from PA.)
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