Please Just Make Me A Damn Sandwich

 The Biker and I have always had a united credo...recycle, do it yourself, live simply, think globally, act locally.  That is our family creed.  I know, you'd think it would be "Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc"* and yeah, OK, that's also part of our thing too. Hey, you can have more than one family credo.

I have been involved in the politics of food ever since the beginning.  The Biker, not so much.

When I first met the Biker, he had no clue.  He'd been living on government commodity supplies flown in every three months to the FFA base where he lived up near the Arctic Circle, where he grew up.  Koolaide? White sugar? Margarine? Bologna?  Hell yeah, bring that shit on!  

Our moment of truth came when I caught him sneaking a - sit down, breathe deeply, happy place, happy place.....quarter cup of BROWN SUGAR into my pot of marinara sauce one day.  I was understandably appalled, and gobsmacked. He and I had a serious talk about food, flavor, the perception of freshness, cultural flavor profiles, and the difference between live and processed.

That poor man had no clue.  No clue whatsoever! None!  You grow up on an FFA station near the Arctic Circle, they don't teach you shit like that!

Now me,  I had grown up with people who believed that as long as whatever edible on your plate had been cooked to death, it was safe.  I understand where that impulse came from.  They grew up in the days before the USDA and the Health Department.  But me, I grew up in the days when you could watch Julia Child and Graham Kerr on television, telling you how to make food that actually tasted good.

When I was eight years old I saw Graham Kerr make a cheese souffle on T.V.  I thought 'Well, we have eggs and cheese, that doesn't look too hard," and so I made that.  I made it.  It was a cheese souffle. And it really is not hard to make.  You need to separate a lot of eggs, and use an electric mixer, but it's not like fuckin' brain surgery or anything.  I presented that cheese souffle to my parents, and while my mother and her demon chorus of issues dealt with that fact, my father ate that bastard like a chainsaw going through cottonwood.

I have always been the technician.  I love the industrial, mechanical aspects of cooking, the chemistry, the heat and the whole mixing of compounds.  And for all the years that my daughter lived at home I was the cook, and we ate like royalty on a blue collar budget, if I do say so myself, and I do. I was able to teach my daughter the importance of locally sourced products, and living out in the boondocks, I have access to the freshest of the fresh ingredients, and that's how she learned to cook, from me, just a suggestion here, mostly her watching and me yakking away, and then her eating the results.  She grew up into a fearless home chef, a political cook like I am, because food is politics, the politics of the worker, the stuff of life.  She absorbed the story of how food gets to the table from what we taught her and what she saw out here in farm country.

Then my  husband lost his job, and was home for two years.  The aluminum plant he worked for pulled out to manipulate the price of their product worldwide, and they did it by closing down the local plant that he worked for.

He could have laid on his ass getting stoned and bemoaning his state.  What he did?  Was temp work.  At food plants.

We have a lot of them locally. It surprised me how many there are.  And all kinds of products, from pure protein for weightlifters to boutique chocolates.  Between temp jobs, he got caught up in the wave of daytime 'food porn' television shows.  Now my Biker, he's a big boy. Likes his carbs. Between that and Nigella Lawson, (BABY I NEED YOU) and the Fat Ladies and Tony Bourdain, he was hooked.  All he would watch was food porn.  The reason this is so bizarre to me, now, writing this, is that my Biker is all about the combustion engine situation. Suck, Bang, Blow. Cars and motorcycles. Things that go fast and burn dinosaur juice.

But see, what you need to know about my Biker is that he is probably a genius. He's the smartest person I've ever met anyway, and if you can get him off the subject of fuckin' cars, he's fascinating.  Well read. Knows his shit.  Keeps us afloat financially by manipulating our assets.  You wish you had what I have, but you don't, so HA on you. This bear be ALL MINE.

He watched those shows, and while I was going to college on a PELL grant, and doing temp work, he would be at home trying out those recipes with our daughter, and they'd cook together. (They also go shoe shopping together.  I don't know what that's about but they'll talk brands and materials and I just ignore it. Shoes are just foot gloves as far as I'm concerned.) 

This dude from the literal top of the earth, the North fucking Pole, taught himself how to cook, and he blows me away.  If he needs me for the technical stuff, I'm there, but he's the one who knows how to get the best flavor out of what he's using. It's a gift.  It's an actual gift, like perfect pitch.  He has it.  And because we all live out here where the food of America is produced, he knows how ethics, morals, politics and ecological responsibility correspond with the meals that go on American tables - shit, tables worldwide. AND HE COOKS IT.

Here's my take.  Food is all about feeding hungry people.  That's what food is.  It's not about polymerized tamari on a wire, or foams, or little dabs of sauce and small pretty towers of this and that, rare and expensive.  Food is about getting the best flavor and the best nutrition and the most beneficial local effect, on the ground, out of what you eat.  That's what we do.  Here at Rancho FirstNations, food is a political act.  And when you think about it, it's one of the most basic political acts.  Feeding hungry people.  Supporting local producers.  Reducing the carbon footprint. Distributing surplus FOR FREE to your neighbors.

Think globally.  

Act locally.  

Set a table for your neighbors.  

Feed the world.

________________________

*We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us