An Everlasting Meal

Several months ago I happened upon a book called An Everlasting Meal, Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler. I'm not sure where I first heard about it, but it's on 2 of my “want to read” lists. I read the book in bite-sized pieces over a couple of weeks and almost immediately started reading it again. It's wonderful, so I thought I should let you know about it.

I love this book and think it will end up living on my kitchen counter. It's well-written, practical and funny. Yes, it's a cookbook. But, no, it's not what you're thinking. There are some recipes, but it's mostly an ode to cooking and food. It's a book length letter, encouraging us that we too can make beautiful, delicious and thrifty things to eat when we're hungry.

In the foreward, Alice Waters (who is called the mother of American food and opened her restaurant, Chez Panisse, the year I was born) in speaking of the author says, “She is teaching people not just how to cook but how to love to cook.”

Tamar Adler suggests amazingly simple cooking, like the kind you do without a recipe, throwing whatever you have in the cupboard and crisper together, stiring and tasting along the way, until something delicious pops out. In fact, in a chapter called “How to Catch Your Tail” she says, “Or do the most sensible thing that you can in most kitchens at most times, which is put the tail ends of everything in a pot, season it well with salt, add a bit of cubed potato and some butter, and simmer it until it is all tender.” I love that she wants me to use what I have. I love that she's a big proponent of using salt, not to make things salty, but to make whatever you're cooking taste good. And, I love that she makes me think I can cook as she does.

Last night I made meatballs for dinner. They had 24 ingredients. They were delicious, if spicy, but 24 ingredients, seriously? Cooking doesn't have to be that complicated to be good. At the beginning of her book in a chapter appropriately called “How to Begin,” Adler recounts reading a fast-and-easy cooking magazine with recipes for “boil-and-toss pasta” and “last-minute omelets.” She says, “All pasta is 'boil and toss',” and “There's plain deceit in hawking 'last-minute' omelets. Omelets happen almost instantly, no matter what you do to speed them up or slow them down. Suggesting there are special 'last-minute' ones is akin to selling tips for breathing air more rapidly – if you have an egg, you have a meal that needs but a quick tap to be cracked open.”

Regarding the title, An Everlasting Meal, Adler refers to one meals' endings leading logically into the next. She cites fried rice and vegetable soup as examples. Upon thinking about this I realized that some of my favorite foods are made from the “leftovers”. Fried rice is one example, but my grandmother's cornbread dressing was originally made from leftover biscuits and cornbread. These stale scraps were broken apart, mixed with chicken stock, celery and onions, spooned into a pan and baked. It's one of the most delicious things you will ever eat. Adler says, “But cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page. There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what's left; there should be looking at a meals' remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become. I have tried to include more of that and fewer teaspoons and tablespoons and cups.”

All of this encouragement has had a rather profound effect on my attitude toward cooking. Though I've always enjoyed being in the kitchen, I admit that I don't cook like Adler suggests. I may sometimes begin with a lot of something that needs to be cooked, but then I go in search of a recipe, put ingredients on my grocery list and plan that meal into our week. But, since reading An Everlasting Meal, I'll put more things like rice and good olive oil, crusty bread and eggs on my list because, Adler says, you can make a meal out of that. I wish I could sit on a stool in Tamar's kitchen and watch her cook. I'm sure she would feed me delicious things to eat served on little toasts, rubbed with garlic. She seems fond of little toasts.

My notes from An Everlasting Meal so far!

Though I started writing this with a spoonful of canned frosting in my hand and I fed my family frozen pizza last week, I have high hopes for making better use of the produce that will soon roll in from our CSA or farm co-op. On Wednesdays when our delivery arrives, I'm going to start boiling a big pot of water and turn the oven on high. I'm going to start cooking our good stuff so meals for the week will already have begun. Tamar makes me think I can actually do it. Whether I fold those vegetables into rice or tuck them into omelets, I believe (I BELIEVE!) we'll end up eating them all. With simple directions like this, we can't go wrong: “All cooked vegetables, whether boiled or roasted, become wonderful salads. They need only a handful of toasted nuts, chopped fresh herbs, a few vinegar-soaked onions, and a sharp vinaigrette. It's really all most food ever needs. The combination may be the universe's only reliable youth serum.” Who doesn't want that?!

But, maybe the most influential and beautiful part of this book is the connection Adler makes between eating well and living well. Illustrating this is her chapter (yes, chapter!) about grits. If I didn't love her before, I certainly do now. Adler says that a 1952 Charleston newspaper declared that grits could make peace. She says, “...it's true that we all fight less when we eat well, which an abundance of grits guarantees. The paper was also right because grits...are vehicles for butter, cream, and cheese, and most tempers can be at least a little cooled by large quantities of those.”

Maybe I should feed my twin boys grits more often? I don't know about making peace with grits, but I will say that I once fed the pickiest boy on earth my grits casserole. Drew ate seconds happily, never knowing exactly what they were. This same boy wrinkled his nose at a turkey sandwich on homemade bread. So, maybe I was making peace after all.

Again, Alice Waters writes, “An Everlasting Meal is an important work about living fully, responsibly, and well, and gently reveals Tamar's philosophy that what we eat and how we eat it is inextricably linked to our happiness.”