Jennifer Jeffrey, Writer & Editor

The Feminist in My Kitchen (Part 2)

When I first began to wonder whether the slow-organic-local food movement is sustainable for and friendly to the larger community of women, I started to notice everything about it that wasn’t.

I started thinking about how we as women feel such tremendous pressure to stay svelte, balance our budgets, keep a journal, send birthday cards, raise brilliant children, work on our relationships and keep our pedicures fresh, and now we must also research, procure, and prepare food that is sustainably produced, locally grown, and in season.

It didn’t seem fair. It made me feel cranky.

Then I asked myself: why do I feel this way, and what is causing it? Over the course of a couple of weeks, this is what I came up with:

The System is Broken. It’s not the fault of the farmer’s market that I feel overstressed. Rather, the game itself is rigged. The workforce rewards people who are willing to put in ridiculous hours and disregard personal health and long-term wellbeing. It does not reward self-nourishment or play or rest. Even more insidious is the fact that our buy-more culture has lured us into a devil's bargain with debt. Even if we’re working at a job we love, it requires an insane juggling act to live a balanced life. That there aren’t enough hours to nourish ourselves properly, or that we have to make a choice between eating well and building our careers is just… craziness.

Convenience Has a Dark Side. Convenience has been our friend, but not a trustworthy one. We can put dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less, but those cans and jars are slipping us toxic additives and chemicals on the sly. Like the friend who keeps borrowing money but never pays it back, Convenience has become a liability. The fault lies with us: we haven’t set proper boundaries. We need to speak out, vote with our dollars, and support products that are healthy and safe.

The Feminist in My Kitchen

One day during the Pennywise Eat Local Challenge, as I was dashing between meetings and wondering how on earth I was going to create an evening meal composed of local ingredients within budget with almost no time to shop, this thought flashed through my head: this whole eat local concept is so not friendly for women who work.

I’m a woman who works, but I have an edge in that I work at home (most of the time), and can therefore  dash out to my local farmer’s market on a Thursday morning without having to get permission from the Boss. I can put beans on the stove to simmer in the mid-afternoon. I can flip through my cookbook collection when I need a break from the keyboard.  I have the luxury of choosing between my corner mega-grocer and other, healthier options.

My flexible schedule is no small advantage when it comes to putting locally grown meals on the table (heck – even meals on the table at all), a fact that becomes crystal clear on weeks when I suddenly have more projects than I can handle, and What To Make For Dinner is the very last thing on my mind.

If eating local is still a challenge for me, what about women who, voluntarily or not, log 8 to 10 hours a day, five or six days a week, in an office or hospital or courtroom? What about women who, in addition to working long hours and commuting back and forth, also have children at home who need love and affection and help with homework? What about women who, in addition to work and kids and a significant other, also think it might be nice to hit the gym two or three times a week? Or have a social life? Or read a book or take a judo class or become a better photographer?

How do those women get it all done?

How does the laundry get washed and folded? How do books get read and dental appointments made? How on earth do these same women have time to plan balanced meals, let alone meals composed of organic, in-season ingredients… grown locally?

I wonder. I wonder if the slow-organic-local food movement is truly sustainable for and friendly to the larger community of women.

I wonder if our little blogsphere sits here debating the provenance of our nectarines while the larger community of women – most of whom have no time for surfing blogs, let alone writing one – head out to work feeling more guilty than ever before, as the mountain of expectations and unattainable standards grows ever higher.

Can we call ourselves feminists (simply defined here as people who desire the equality of all women, everywhere) and still suggest that an ideal dinner consists of handmade ravioli and slow-simmered marinara from vine-ripened, hand-picked tomatoes and a salad composed of vegetables that (let’s be honest) are Not Available at Safeway?

Divine: My Newest Favorite Chocolate Bar

I'm not much of a breakfast girl. I wake up full of ideas and ambition, and making a mess with eggs or crunching through a bowl of cold cereal sounds like a terrible chore. Instead, I brew myself a pot of tea and sit down at my desk to write for a few hours. I always do my best writing before noon, and I've learned not to put it off.

Mid-way through the morning, I want just one thing: a piece of chocolate.

I keep a variety of chocolate bars around the house for just this reason; sometimes I want something experimental, like one of the Vosges Haut-Chocolate bars (Woolloomooloo is a favorite); other times, I want something sticky-sweet, like the Kalouga bar from Bernachon, a dark chocolate bar that oozes thick, glorious caramel. I'm all out of that one at the moment. Sob.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a new favorite: Divine Chocolate, made with cocoa from a farmer's cooperative in Kuapa Kokoo in West Africa. Not only are their chocolate bars wrapped inside a gorgeous label decorated with indigenous African symbols, but they also taste, well... divine. My current favorite is the 70% dark chocolate bar, but I'm also a fan of the Dark Chocolate Mint, which has crunchy bits of mint inside, and is ever-so-yum.

Divine Chocolate is sold at Bittersweet on Fillmore, a shop so full of wonderful things that I might as well hand over my wallet as soon I walk through the door. Have you tried their spicy hot chocolate? It has a high sigh factor.

Bittersweet: the chocolate cafe
2123 Fillmore Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. ~ Anais Nin

Fairfax Scoop: Where to Go When You're Melting

Last week’s heat wave nearly did me in. If you’d dropped by on Wednesday or Thursday in the mid-afternoon, you would have found me face-up, gasping for air, like a fish out of water.

Extreme heat is my nemesis. Not only does it turn my face into an oil slick, it also zaps my will to do constructive work or think creative thoughts. It destroys my ability to be social or write blog posts. It renders me unable to sauté or steam or poach.

The menu last week at Chez Moi? Ice cream with a side of ice cream. For dessert, we’ll be serving…ice cream!

By Friday, I had devoured my whole stash of the frozen stuff and so, on tip from someone in the know, I drove out to Fairfax to find a little ice cream shop called Scoop. She said it was worth the drive; I was just happy for an excuse to sit inside an air-conditioned car.

The Organic Question

The Scene: the San Rafael Civic Center Farmer's Market, on a brutally hot morning in June.

A middle-aged woman bends over a display of ripe red tomatoes, quickly filling up a plastic bag. She starts to hand it to the man behind the display, then hesitates.

WOMAN: Are these organic?

MAN: No, they aren't.

WOMAN: Oh no.

MAN: But we don't use any pesticides.

WOMAN (hastily inverting her bag and allowing the tomatoes to fall back out):  Listen, I only eat organic. (brittle laugh) That's why I'm as old as I am.

OBSERVER NOTES: hmm. she's not as old as the man she's talking to, but whatever...

MAN: Did you know that organic farmers can use pesticides and still call their produce organic? I don't use pesticides at all.

WOMAN: Listen, I don't have the time for this. Thanks anyway. (beats a hasty retreat)

MAN (sighs, shakes his head): Some people. They already have their minds made up, and they simply refuse to listen.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I don't know about you,  but the label "organic" doesn't carry as much weight with me as it used to.  Given the increasingly relaxed standards about what "organic" really means, I have less and less faith in the word. I'd rather ask the farmer about how he or she grows the produce for sale at the market, although that isn't always realistic. Sometimes the booth is crowded, or I'm in a hurry, or (like today), I feel like my whole body is about to melt into a puddle, and I just want to get my produce and go home!

How are all of you dealing with the "organic" question?

The Best Meal in Morocco

Today's NYT article about communal ovens in Morocco brought back fond memories of my trip to Morocco in January, and especially of a meal we ate at a nondescript roadside stand on our way to Marrakech.

The stand was set behind a gas station, of all things. Imagine walking into a Chevron station in the middle of... say, Nevada... and instead of being greeted with sickly-pink hot dogs rotating inside a Plexiglas case, you find a butcher stand and a wood-burning oven, and people standing at the ready to cook your order as soon as you decide what you want.

We felt like we'd walked into an alternate universe. There we were, smack in the middle of the desert, tired and hungry, and minutes later we were sitting down to roasted lamb and hot, char-flecked bread, breathing in the heady scents of cumin and mint and hot, sharp peppers. To say that it was a restorative experience wouldn't do it justice.

I blogged about it then, but since I had so much fun going back through my pictures, I thought you might enjoy another peek as well.

P.S. I unwittingly had my camera on the wrong setting for most of the trip (grrr!), and many of the pictures came out grainy. Sigh. Guess that means I'll have to go back...?

Performance Anxiety Can Happen to Anyone

Wednesday’s New York Times article titled “Dinner At the Foodies’: Purslane and Anxiety” made me laugh out loud. 

I was especially amused at this quote from history professor Joshua Schreier:  “Saying ‘I got this olive oil from this specific region in Greece,’ is like talking about what kind of car you have. And people don’t want to be associated with the wrong kind of olive oil.”

Oh, Joshua. You don’t live in the Bay Area, do you? Here, we wouldn’t dream of bragging about olive oil from Greece. Instead, we’d bring out a bottle of olive oil pressed from trees just a few miles from our kitchen table, by someone who shops at the same farmers’ market that we do. Greece? Bah!

(Ok, that was sort of a joke, but I did find just such an olive oil last weekend. Don’t let me forget to write about it.)

I don’t tend to worry about the ingredients when I’m planning a dinner party; with so many wonderful resources close by, I am usually confident that my ingredients are top quality (though I do not, I confess, make my own tortillas or pickle my own ramps). No; my dinner party anxiety is of a different stripe. When I read Derrick’s post referencing the same article, I thought: what the hey.

Pull up a chair.

My New Farmers' Market Bag

Now I won't have to bring so many plastic bags home from the Farmers' Market!

Bonus: if a scuffle breaks out over the last of the cherries, I'll be able to help keep the peace.

Off I go...

I Can't Teach You How Pitch to Gourmet

Towards the end of last year, in preparation for our big trip in January, I contacted two people I wanted to meet and asked if I could sit down with them when I came to town. One was Richard Näslin, executive chef at the Ice Hotel in Sweden, and the other was Choumicha, the foremost food television personality in Morocco.

They both agreed to meet me. Our meetings (one in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, and one in Casablanca) were delightful; both Richard and Choumicha were warm and smart and engaging. They graciously responded to all of my questions. I typed furiously on my laptop as we spoke, and snapped a few pictures before we said goodbye.

I’ve been feeling guilty about it ever since.

See, I told them I was a freelance writer, and that I was going to turn our chats into articles that I would then send to magazines, with the hope of getting something published. I didn’t promise them anything, and neither of them seemed to care one way or the other.

But I cared. I really, really wanted people to know about these two. I felt like they were special, and that there was a compelling story in both of them.

Story or no story, there was the pesky issue of getting through to an editor who felt the same way. The whole business of magazine article writing has always been something of an enigma to me. Several years ago, when I decided to write for a living and not just as an incidental part of a job, I naturally thought that I would write for magazines. Isn’t that what writers do? Write articles? I envisioned opening up the latest issue of Saveur or Food and Wine or Vanity Fair and seeing my name in perfectly set type, nestled among pretty pictures and riveting words.

Then I sent out a few queries. I waited.

Aww, Shucks!

Thanks, Typepad!

If you've arrived here via the Typepad Featured Blog link, thanks for stopping by.

I'm not just saying this because they featured my blog today (Why me? I'm blushing!), but I'm a huge fan of the Typepad system. They've made it painless to get a blog up and running, even for someone like me who doesn't have a lot of time to tinker with HTML.

They're hosting some of the best blogs in the 'sphere, and I'm thrilled to be one of them. One of the Typepad blogs, that is...

Snoop around! Enjoy...