Kari Sullivan

Michael Pollan on the Food Network… and I couldn’t agree more:

We learn things watching these cooking competitions, but they’re not things about how to cook. There are no recipes to follow; the contests fly by much too fast for viewers to take in any practical tips; and the kind of cooking practiced in prime time is far more spectacular than anything you would ever try at home. No, for anyone hoping to pick up a few dinnertime tips, the implicit message of today’s prime-time cooking shows is, Don’t try this at home. If you really want to eat this way, go to a restaurant.

For the most part, cooking shows on television are not for cooks. So much is compressed into a thirty minute show that even seasoned cooks like myself can’t get much out of them. And even if you could learn from cooking shows on the Food Network, would you want to at this point? More and more, I see hosts using cake mixes and store bought hummus in their creations. That’s not cooking, and even if it is, I don’t need a tv show to teach me how to do that.

Even if cooking shows are for entertainment only, they still are sending viewers some pretty bad messages. These shows also play into a sick sort of “guru worship” that pervades our culture these days. It’s more about picking the right guru than the right cooking philosophy or ingredients.

It doesn’t matter whether you should saute or steam your vegetables. What matters is if you’re more of a Rachael Ray type or a Paula Deen type.  Viewers are encouraged to identify with hosts and hopefully buy their overpriced muffin mixed. Unsurprisingly, the audience is rarely encouraged to truly experiment and learn in the kitchen. Your guru is there to do if for you instead.

But are things as hopeless as Pollan suggests in his article? Are cooking shows a toxic element of our food culture? Not if you turn off your television and go online. There are so many amazing amateurs doing internet cooking shows these days. They’re unlike what you see on the Food Network. Online cooking videos are instructional, interesting, and accessible. You’ve got very diverse culintary points of view, low start up cost, unlimited time, no editing, and no commercials. No wonder there is a cooking video for almost every taste, subject, and personal style. To be honest, it’s a huge oversight on Pollan’s part not to notice or mention YouTube chefs.

Even an average cooking show on YouTube is likely to be better than an average Food Network segment. If someone takes the time to make and edit a cooking video themselves, you better believe that they’re passionate… or at least entertaining and quirky. And while every video may not be a winner, there’s so many of them to choose from that it really doesn’t matter. If you do a video search for almost any dish, you’ll find a mediocre to amazing video showing you how to prepare it. And better yet, they almost all come with recipes.

Best of all, since amateur internet cooking videos are universally homespun, they have an authentic feel to them. You’re watching people cooking in their kitchen, free of studio tricks, make-up artists, and cleaning crews. Mistakes happen, words are fumbled, and family members accidentally enter the shot. That’s true entertainment.

Once again, the internet wins. Here’s a video of Julie Hasson, one of my favorite internet cooking show hosts cooking crackers from scratch. Everything a cooking show should be, and there’s plenty more on YouTube where that came from.

Even though I’m a hippie-yuppie at heart, I resist all hippie-yuppie trends until I embrace them passionately. This is what happened to me with local produce.

My first experiences with local produce in Austin were not great. I felt like I was getting the hard sell at the local farmers market, and I ended up paying too much for items that were a lot cheaper at Central Market.

(I still am not a huge fan of the farmers market, because it seems so overpriced and gimmicky. If anyone in Austin has the inside scoop on the best way to shop there, I’d love to know.)

Over the past year, I’ve noticed that I really do like eating mostly local produce. It’s worth the money, effort, and hassle for me most of the time.

The first thing I’ve really started to believe is that freshness does matter. I’m not going to talk about biting into a perfect, local tomato. That’s so tired at this point, and raw tomatoes aren’t really my thing anyway.

Fresh potatoes, however, *are* really my thing. They seem so much crisper and less starchy than grocery store potatoes, which are usually sort of sad. I now know that there is little better in this world than a freshly dug potato roasted with olive oil.

Without exception, all local produce tastes way better than anything in the grocery store, even Whole Foods. I know that Whole Foods and their competitors do carry local stuff, but it tastes a few days old to me. And some things, like perfect figs and blueberries, are pretty much impossible to find at the supermarket.

Another feature I love about local produce is that it’s not afraid to be ugly. I prefer tasty produce to pretty produce. Super ugly cucumbers are super crisp and yummy. My local box also has watermelons with a TON of seeds. For me, this is the biggest treat in the world. I find seedless watermelon to be mealy and gross, and the old fashioned kind is so hard to find.

Local, organic produce is imperfect and dirty and sometimes even has holes in it. However, everything I’ve tried tastes so much better than those perfectly shiny apples at the store.

Getting a local produce box that I have no control over forces me to experiment and improvise. I took this to the extreme this morning when I put basil in my fruit salad. Weird but totally inspired. My basil was about to expire, and I had to use it. Out of necessity, I discovered that basil goes great with fruit!

Since I have no control over my local produce box’s contents, I am forced to cook things I don’t feel like cooking. I’m no fan of okra, but I roast it up and eat it anyway. I’ll get used to it over time, and eating a diversity of plants is probably good for me.

Finally, I like knowing where my food comes from. For a long time, I felt like I was avoiding factory farming by eating vegan, but that’s not exactly true.  Factory farming of animals is so fucked up, twisted, and gross. However, industrial farming of produce is pretty bad as well. If I can avoid it, I’d prefer to.