Deniz’s comment on the Netherlands lunchbox ethic of single ingredient sandwiches made me think about my Tyler Durden side, who is always trying to oppress my middle-class hedonist tendencies. Those who know me for a long time also know how much time I have wasted on trying to reconcile my obsession with food with my left leaning world view. It is not really easy, especially thinking that on more than one occasion, I had been harassed and bullied by my comrades, just because I wanted to write about food and politics at the same time. Apparently you have to be pure and clean of worldly pleasures to do politics right. I tried. I literally spent months trying to get rid of my “sinful” tendencies, but it was second nature to my middle class position. I realized that it would never happen. Then I realized it doesn’t have to happen. The latter took longer than I could have imagined, but well it did happen.
This Friday, I had my first real conversation with my butcher. Bear in mind, he doesn’t know that he is my butcher yet. We have that kind of relationship you have with a high school crush that you think is your boyfriend while he has no idea who you are. I go there every week, sometimes twice, to get something like a chicken breast or a tiny saucisson, or just three strips of bacon. Things I buy are a dead giveaway of my living conditions: one little piece of merguez cry “hey I live alone”. But they don’t complain. They put three extremely thick pieces of bacon inside a butcher paper, write 80 cents on it, and draw a smiley with a “merci!” scribbled next to it.
Perhaps saying that you have a butcher sound slightly pretentious (what next? “my butler”?) but take this: Being friends with your meat supplier also gives you some perks that most people don’t have, such as getting a special cut of meat, or an honest “perhaps, not the lamb today madam” confession. But come on, who has a butcher anymore unless they live in a big metropolitan city? Our meat comes in boxes, prefrozen, preportioned. Our younglings think that chicken grows on styrofoam trays (and only as breasts), and that sausage is a kind of root vegetable. The means of production has shifted in massive scales. No petit bourgeois butchers are in sight in most American cities, because all we have is some poor alienated meat factory worker who actually has no means to acquire the goods he helps to produce, nor has any idea what he is making to start with.
Over the last two-three decade, the culinary traditions of many centuries have reduced into the capitalist agro-industrial complex. As a secondary consequence, one of the biggest cultural creations of humankind has become a ridiculous status game. Labor intensive arts of curing, smoking, pickling, drying, salting cheaper cuts of food as well as game and offal has been pushed into esoterism, just because they are not profitable to sell; and hence became only accessible to upper classes. The food as we know it has been reduced into a meat patty and a blue box, and those who seek further are ostracized as snobs (or god forbid, “gourmets”). Cooking became a tedious and puritanic task. Boil chicken, add rice, don’t put garlic, “it stinks”. Vanity contributed to this decline further. Please. No salt, no butter, no cream. Just “Fat free fat”, a tiny bit. With a tub of olestra on the side.
So how does this rambling tie back to my atrocious fight against my own obsession with the things that taste extremely good but questionably inaccessible to the masses? This Friday, while trying to pick a piece of saucisson (a little dried sausage) and contemplating leftover rice instead, I started a conversation with the shopkeeper whom I learned later was the owner’s relative. He started telling me all the differences between the duck and the rabbit and the turkey sausages and how they are made. My eyes literally started sparkling. That minute, I understood that I wasn’t doing anything wrong by buying something esoteric, in fact it was the right thing to do. Always. Historically. Supporting artisans that make their own food, craft their own food, and most importantly know this food is our only weapon against the fat free salad dressing and the rib sandwich that is not made out of ribs. It is also the only way people could make a decent living just by producing and selling food, like my butcher who also takes three weeks of vacation every year. I wanted to ask him, “when did sausage become decadence?”, but decided to save it for a less busy day.
After this brief episode of mis-enlightenment, I got carried away and bought some duck for my Sunday dinner. I served it over some pureed mashed red lentils that were enhanced by some of the duck’s fat, garlic (yeah it stinks, and it is fantastic) and fresh rosemary from the garden. Then to balance this indulgence I decided to take a simple lunch to work next day. Some salad with leftover lentils and tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese was all I needed. I did this not because I wanted to be clean in a metaphoric and spiritual sense, but I realized that all fat and no grains makes missy an unhealthy girl. So, no more Tyler Durden trying to take my butter from me because it is a sin! Only my arteries can tell what I should or should not eat. Afterall, The Fight Club was a juvenilistic and misogynistic attempt of social criticism, and honestly, Tyler Durden was a jerk.
