Over the weekend I posted an anti-cookbook rant by Steven Poole which was published in The Guardian on Friday,
Two NZ writers, and both regular comment makers on this blog, have responded.Thanks guys, I'm with you.
Keri Hulme has left a new comment on your post
"Let's
start the foodie backlash":
I found this rave - unenlightening...
I love food. I love cookbooks. Since I've been in my mid-teens, I've thoroughly
enjoyed experiencing new tastes (hey! I'm the one who, at 15, introduced my
whanau to garlic! 1962 if you want to know the exact date-)
But food is food. I do not confuse it with spirituality or social pretension or
any other trendy writers forced assumptions to raise their own profiles-
we are homonids who can eat & digest a remarkable range of foods (not quite
so many as rats) and thrive. Let us enjoy the extraordinary range of riches
available to some of us (wealthy folk by and large) and let the rest of us
(literate comparatively wealthy types by & large) enjoy the books, the
explorations by chefs...by all means, be informed about what you eat, and how
it got to you in an edible condition, and make your choices about what you eat
therebye.
I chose not to eat abattoir-killed meat way back in
my 20s, and I refuse to eat anything that isnt truely 'freedom farmed' (yep,
that includes eggs)* or wild-caught/shot.
Everyone makes their own decisions about what & how much & why they
eat. This person's gripes about 'foodies/foodists' sound sanctimonious (heh!)
and ridiculous - would he really prefer us to read porn?
Mark Hubbard has
left a new comment on your post "Let's
start the foodie backlash":
I read the whole sorry, misguided rant. Sacrilege and proof one should never
write on an empty stomach, Mr Poole. Just as the only thing that makes me want
to take up smoking, again, after sixteen years, is the admonistrations of ASH,
though I'm still in bed reading this, now on principle I have to get up and
light the charcoal in my barbeque. A foody Chardon-day upcoming, I'm cancelling
the work. If Mr Poole thinks he's in the vanguard of a revolution, well the
counter to it is every meal.
Seriously, though, even if empty headed network programming didn't drive you to
the Food Channel, a love of life would. Rick Stein, Hugh Fearney-Whatnot, and
the glorious Nigella versus Destroyed in Sixty Seconds or The Ridges - I'll
take the foodies every time thanks.
8 comments:
Hah.
Though for the record, albett I run a blog - which to most readers here would be anathema - I class a writer as someone published by a recognised publishing route, so that counts me out ...
Not a lot of time for food this week either: work and running a covert - like GCSB, but competently - operation to rescue a local dog. Learning I'll take animals and food over an undetermined, but large portion of the human population. Radicalising myself PETA style for confrontation next week after data is logged.
And note it's fine to put above covert operation publicly here, because I think it safe to assume people who can treat a dog like this wretched one is being treated, have never read a book. And there's a blog post in that. I haven't been so angry for a long time (and that's saying something).
... albeit ... see, everybody needs an editor.
Personally I agreed with every word of the original Guardian article. I'm a Brit and I feel that Kiwis may not be fully aware of the context it was written in. Foodie-ism has become just the latest example of the British class system at work, whereby the food tastes and traditions of ordinary people are denigrated. Nowadays it's not acceptable to act as if you're superior just because you went to Eton, so you have to assert an allegedly superior taste in every aspect of life, and that now includes food. My favourite dish is egg and chips and I feel like some kind of modern Engels every time I go to eat it in the sort of cafe in which people of my level of education are never, ever supposed to be seen.
Oh Elaine, foodie-ism can't be to do with class. Even in England, surely? Perhaps Nigella, but Hugh, Jamie, Rick, (add every NZ cook book certainly) are about bringing the joy of food for all, regardless of class. Food must be the one thing above snobbery. Classic example being the Farmers Markets which have come on the coattails of the foodie: every market we've been to, and that's a lot (admittedly in NZ) have the entire cross section of society there.
Food is about an enjoyment of life, and also, particularly, sociability. Indeed, I could as easily argue food is egalitarian.
And hey, some of my best friends aren't 'foodies' - though they never turn down a lunch invitation either out or to our place - and I don't look down on them (much) ;)
Sorry Mark, but you are completely wrong. Delighted to hear that farmers' markets in NZ attract the full spectrum of society but this is emphatically not the case in the UK. Attending farmers' markets is one of the strongest markers of class identification in present day British society. People on lower incomes are never seen at them, mostly because the prices charged are so high that they are simply unaffordable for them.
Of celebrity chefs, Jamie Oliver has come closest to achieving popularity in all income groups, but his advertising work for Sainsburys, which positions itself as a middle-class, aspirational supermarket, has led to his being adored by middle-class aspirational people. His campaigning work on school meals was excellent but there is a backlash against it by some lower income parents who see it as just another example of posh people finding fault with their parenting practices. When he did a TV show about teaching people in a deprived area to cook they had to keep explaining to him that they just couldn't afford the food he wanted them to eat.
Taking TV chefs seriously is now a badge of upward social striving. Actually Nigella may be the most popular with viewers who don't take food seriously because she is now all about camp and self-parody.
P.S. I should have mentioned the Hairy Bikers. I'm not sure if they've reached NZ yet. They are two blokes with impeccably working-class credentials who present good food in a very unthreatening way. They are the only TV chefs that I personally can stand watching. They did a series called Mums Know Best which adroitly linked nostalgia for traditional food to modern standards of cooking, and included mums from immigrant communities. Their books are mega bestsellers. I think if anyone can make good food classless it will be them.
Well it looks like class is out of control as ever in England :)
I don't get that at all.
And yes, love the Hairy Bikers, and the Two Fat Ladies (though they had high connection), the sailor guys are good at the moment ... hell, I love them all.
Good to see your latter post foodie pics Graham, though that place you were sitting in looked a bit collegiate.
Actually a final point for Elaine. Regarding the phrase, quote:
"... who present good food in a very unthreatening way"
Given that means there is a 'threatening' way to present food, I will honestly go to my grave having no idea what that means ;)
We do seem to have moved a long way from the mother-land.
Post a Comment