Personal Essay

Andrea MacMichael

Food and Travel Seminar

11/13/16

Back to the Basics

            I can’t be someone I’m not. I’m not a vegan, nor a vegetarian, and I’m not the kind of prepared person who plans breakfast for the next morning and meals for the entirety of the next week. Meals in my life have been about fueling up before practice or household chores. These meals have also been about family- made at home and eaten together. My parents have always scoured the weekly circulars to find the best prices for meat, yogurt, cereal, and especially produce. These have been the essentials for chili, pasta dishes, steak and potatoes, salads, and many more amazing meals I have helped cook at home with my family. Of course, I have loved the “special treats” of fresh mozzarella for caprese salad, the golden loaf of crunchy Italian bread from the bakery rather than the $1 pre-sliced baggie for assembling pulled pork sliders. Everyday eating has not been filled with the most expensive or always the freshest ingredients, but it has always been filled with the good intentions of two hard working parents and more than anything, the personal touch that comes from cooking at home.

            When I endeavored to cook my idea of the “perfect” meal, I was overloaded by more than just what to make, but also how to make it and where to get the ingredients. It is true that buying most products from the grocery store supports an industrial food system that filling us with a whole lot of artificial garbage, as well as treating the very animals we eat in ways most people would consider cruel. But can I stop buying from the grocery store? Do I even know where or how to obtain grass-fed meat and local produce not treated with chemicals or genetically modified for faster growth? The answer I now find myself saying is that maybe I can cut back on grocery store shopping in the future, and, no, I wish I knew the places to buy these sustainably harvested foods. Before learning about where our food truly comes from in this industrial food system, I would not have thought twice about simply going to the grocery store, because the grocery store was all I knew, other than perhaps the Eastern Market and the Gratiot Market, but my family and I went infrequently and I don’t think the products are still connected to the widespread industrial food system. Nonetheless, I came to a point where I had to decide what I valued for this meal I was to cook, and I decided to go with what I have grown up believing: a few fresh ingredients and some careful preparation always makes for a tasty dish. So I went to Meijer, because that is what my parents would have done (we have Kroger in Southfield, but that is beside the point) to find ingredients for a quick meal like the one I was going to make. To be good, it didn’t have to be fancy, say ratatouille or a prime cut of meat. Even with the industrial food system and the desire to buy from local and sustainable markets, I wandered down the bright isles and picked up the cheapest box of spaghetti noodles I could find, a package of fresh basil and parmesan cheese, and two cartons of cherry tomatoes. I knew the tomatoes and the basil would make plain old spaghetti noodles taste incredible. “You just can’t beat fresh fruits and veggies,” is what my Dad says.

            You really can’t beat fresh fruit and veggies if they are sold for less than $1/pound. My dad happened upon an incredible market in Dearborn named Super Greenland, and now having shopped there for produce for the last two years, it astounds me that anyone with a knowledge of the store could shop anywhere else for produce. About every two weeks we load up an entire cart piled to the top with a rainbow of various vegetables and fruits. While also selling packaged goods and meat, the store is mainly a produce market. Wacky Wednesdays are the days we nudge our cart along through the stampede of other customers with shopping carts. Eyes light up at signs displaying: 2 heads of romaine for 50 cents, 17 lemons for $1, 2 pineapples for $1, and 50 cents/pound of apples. Every day, but especially on Wednesdays, this heaven of a market sells out whole displays of cucumbers and tomatoes, nectarines and grapefruits for dirt cheap prices. Produce makes for colorful, healthful, and delicious meals, and I am thankful that some markets make it affordable to load up a cart with the good stuff.

            Taking this into consideration, I knew if I used some fresh veggies, even a simple pasta dish would be delicious. Whenever we were low on food at home when I was growing up, I knew I could reach into the cupboard and throw some noodles on the stove to boil and cut up some veggies to go on top, maybe adding some ranch or Italian dressing and cheese to top of the colorful bowl. Noodles could fill me up and keep me going, and they simply tasted delicious. They are a thick and tender compliment for the crunch of added cucumber or gushing tomatoes, and for the creamy, sour flavor of ranch. The perfect meal isn’t specific to me, but more of a reminder of where I have come from and an example of what resources and ingredients I have to work with at any given time. Right now, in the dorms in college, with only a small but of cooking experience, the perfect meal to me was a simple meal that reminded me of being at home and cooking with my family. Giada De Laurentiis calls it Cherry tomato Spaghetti. I call it noodles and veggies.

            Cooking in the dorm is a hassle to say the least, and produces only mildly appetizing results. I received some weathered and beaten pots and pans from the RA and my roommate and one of my other friends gathered in the little kitchen on my floor to cook. More interested in keeping my friend from eating all of the raw cookie dough out of the package (as a sweet-tooth, I always believe in dessert), I did not notice when the water started to boil and my roommate, with all good intentions of wanting to help with the meal, poured the long spaghetti noodles right into the pot without breaking them. “Sonal, what are you doing?” my friend Myranda asked with a laugh, noticing that the noodles looked more like an art piece sticking out of the pot than anything else. “Oh shoot I should have broken them in half!” she replied. I laughed, it would be fine. In a separate pan we started sizzling up the halved tomatoes and chopped basil, and added the noodle and parmesan cheese in at the end to finish the dish. “It’s not that exciting, but I know it will taste good,” I assured them. Maybe it was the fact that we cooked the food in dirty old dorm pans or maybe it was the cheap “fiber noodles” I bought, but the dish and the rock hard cookies to go along with it were completely average tasting, and not as good as the noodles at home that I remembered. It was surely due mainly to the noodles I think. They were sticky and clumped together, but the idea was there. The warm tomatoes oozed their tangy juices beautifully over the noodles and the parmesan and basil added great bright color and freshness to the sad glop of noodles. I would make the meal again in a second. Cooking with people I love and eating foods that are readily accessible can make for great memories and a great meal. Next time I will make sure to buy noodles that don’t have fiber added to them. Something is just not right about those.

            Maybe in the future I will try to buy from sellers with locally produced foods and try to eat entirely out of the industrial food chain, but for right now, my perfect meal doesn’t have to be perfectly free of corn or artificial ingredients. I have become more aware of and interested in the importance of eating in these sustainable ways, but I cannot be fully committed at this point in my life. I think a perfect meal can change. A lot of my values will remain intact as I continue to grow up, but I think I will change in some ways, and so may my bowl of noodles and veggies.