Book Review: How to Cook a Wolf

How to Cook a Wolf
By MFK Fisher
202 pages.

This book was written for housewives and home cooks who wanted to learn to enjoy and be more creative in the kitchen, given the economic challenges of the Great Depression and the food and fuel shortages of World War II.

Fisher teaches us to cook with joy and creativity even with the simplest of ingredients, to admit hunger when it is present and to enjoy food with relish whether it's plentiful or not. She gives hints for making food stretch further, without making it seem stretched. She provides recipes, but more than that, she stimulates the imagination to use what is available and to add unexpected flourishes of freshness, luxury, or even quantity when nothing else is to be had. If you are someone without a penny in your pocket, she gives instructions to borrow fifty cents and then make a gruel that will keep you healthy and working for a week even though she admits it tastes terrible.

She challenges us to consider a piece of buttered toast, even if it's your last piece and has to be shared, as a fine feast. In what might be my favorite chapter, "A Wise Man," she writes,

If ... there is not very much to eat, the child should know it, but not oppressively ... twenty years later, maybe, he can think with comfortable delight of the little brown toasted piece of bread he ate with you once in 1942, just before that apartment was closed, and you went away to camp.

It was a nice piece of toast, with butter on it. You sat in the sun under the pantry window, and the little boy gave you a bite, and for both of you the smell of nasturtiums warming in the April air would be mixed forever with the savor between your teeth of melted butter and toasted bread, and the knowledge that although there might not be any more, you had shared that piece with full consciousness on both sides, instead of a shy awkward pretense of not being hungry.

Making mealtime a gathering that stirs fond memories even in times of depression or war is a sign of fortitude and creativity that I hope to emulate as a chef.

Fisher's cooking and writing is certainly influenced by convenience foods that were beginning to gain popularity in the '40s, and really took off in the '50s. I was surprised by her glib acceptance of canned foods (especially soups, mushrooms and tomato juice) and boxed cakes and cornbread. In my opinion, hardly any trustworthy recipe encourages the use prepackaged ingredients. Okay, I admit I will substitute a can of stock in a pinch (though this bouillon base is cheaper, tastier and keeps wonderfully in the freezer). But I'd rather not hear a "gourmet" singing the praises of a certain boxed gingerbread, even if she does admit in the end that her grandmother's recipe is better. But perhaps I'm losing the point that this book was written for an audience that did not have a lot of personal choices to make regarding food. They were bound by rations and economy, sometimes time and perhaps even raids and blackouts.

I was struck by the constant reference to conserving cooking fuel, which is not even a concern of mine when considering my week's menu or any recipe for that matter. I would have a difficult time, indeed, if I were forced to consider more than the price and preparation of the food.

I was also surprised by her unabashed enjoyment of a raw egg. What would ServSafe say?!

A few things I loved: the focus on economy, the focus on creativity and the charge to re-think nutrition outside of the meat-potatoes-and-vegetable-side standard of the time (and the current midwest). This book was an inspiration. This is the first time that pigeon and kasha have been desired items for my grocery list. Do you think I can find a pigeon supplier in Omaha?

Food and Politics

The photos above are taken from the book Hungry Plant: What the World Eats. The authors traveled around the world asking families to purchase one week's worth of groceries, stack it up and gather 'round for a photo.

East meets west. In the western family/grocery photos we see huge piles of food, mostly colorful packages with doubtlessly long lists of unpronounceable ingredients on them. The contents are chock full of sugar, hydrogenated oils, artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and sodium. Families from Africa and Asia display large amounts of whole grains and starches, smaller amounts of vegetables and fruits and very little else. There is rarely any pre-packaged food. Simple, even meager ingredients, but mostly whole foods -- real food.

I shop around the outside of the grocery store, avoiding the aisles for the most part. I try to buy local, grass-fed beef, pork and chicken. This summer I started growing my own vegetables organically. Our milk is rBGH-free. In fact, the cows who produce the milk we buy never get a taste of grain because the farmer we buy from thinks corn and especially soy are the devil. Our eggs are free range -- or cage-free organic when I buy them at Baker's. I've cut corn syrup out of my diet and most artificial sweeteners (true confessions: I still haven't kicked the occasional Diet Coke). Still, I consume large amounts of other sugar and dairy products. I eat more than my body needs and move less than my body wants. I am American, after all.

For ten years I worked for a non-profit that was provided advocacy, care and development for women and children in poverty around the world. I've been to some of the worst places in the world according to a lot of people's standards (to me, they're just the best places to eat). Needless to say, I am very conflicted with issues of food and politics. I am very conflicted about living in an over-consumptive society and being over-consumptive myself. How can I limit myself to the privilege of ethically- and locally-produced food when I have friends around the world who are hungry for just about anything right now? I guess because I think it matters...and there is part of me that thinks it's all connected somehow.

Feeding a hungry world is of utmost importance to me -- but how we treat our land, our farmers and our animals is equally important. I don't think that producing more food is necessarily better unless we drastically change the food system. We can grow more food, but the people who need it sure aren't getting it, and the ones that don't are throwing it away in mass quantities. After working to help the world abroad for a long time I think that right now I am ready to focus to help my own community be the best it can be. One of the things I love about Omaha is that people here are interested in making this city and our world better. It starts in your own backyard.

So for now, I have bought into buying local, sustainably produced food when I can so that I can have the best, freshest products possible, while trying to cut out the other stuff. Maybe it isn't possible for other people to do this for any number of reasons. But I do think that we all need to re-think our ideas of what good food is and be pickier about getting better food, even if we have to eat less of it. I think the east can show us how to cook real food from real ingredients. How to rely less on sugar. How to eat simply but deliciously, and using very basic ingredients.

There are so many food issues out there now, that it absolutely boggles my mind. Environmental issues and disasters always affect the poorest nations/people the most. Farm subsidies here in the US are bad for foreign farmers (and foreign eaters), yet it is continually more difficult for small farmers in the US to make a go at it. Our president is practically sleeping with Monsanto, the multinational agriculture business that is the leading producer of bovine growth hormone, genetically modified seed and herbicide to name a few. Monsanto continues to get bad press for basically seeking world domination of the entire food system (a big undertaking but one that Monsanto seems up for!) but they are far from the only big, bad multinational messing up the food system.

I am looking forward to continuing to engage these issues as I am in culinary school. I have a lot to learn. In the meantime, I am working on honing my own weekly grocery pile and supporting people who make/grow good, real food. Maybe I'll take a picture, sometime. :)

Restaurant Review - Daily Grub

I made a lunch stop at Daily Grub, a new restaurant serving farm-to-table comfort food on 20th and Pierce Street. The restaurant is in a converted bar and has a rustic feel that is also very open and clean. Well designed, the kind of place you want to stay a while. It doesn't advertise itself as a vegan or vegetarian restaurant (a sure way to scare off Nebraskans!). But in all reality, it's a vegan establishment. Who knew vegan food could be so tasty or so filling?


I started with the spring mushroom and herb soup, which came with a baguette from Bread Oven. I could wax poetic about this soup all day. The mushrooms were pureed with cashews. The perfect amount of fresh thyme complimented but didn’t overpower the rich nuttiness of the soup. A very good olive oil was drizzled on top and some coarsely ground black pepper. The soup was very thick and perfect for bread dipping. If I had one complaint it would be that it was almost too thick and hence, very filling. I wanted to fully enjoy my next item!

Unbeknownst to me, my second course also had cashews as an ingredient, which tied the meal together in a way that I did not expect from a somewhat random order of mushroom soup and sope.

This was a black bean and corn sope with avocado, ranchero cashew cream sauce and topped with pear and cabbage salad. It came with a side of nice-n-spicy homemade red chili sauce and a lime wedge to squeeze on top. Everything about this sope was delicious but my favorite part was the pear and cabbage salad. The pear offered a sweetness that I was not expecting, but it went so well with the other flavors! I could have downed another one of these tasty fellas but I was saving room for dessert.

For dessert I ordered the Three Lady Mulberry Tart. Now, I’m not a huge fan of mulberries but I decided to go out on a limb and try it. We had a mulberry tree on the farm I grew up on and I always thought they were “trash” berries. We had enormous quantities of fresh strawberries and olallieberries available to us from my grandparent’s garden, so I never even knew that anybody even ate the lesser mulberry until I moved away.

Okay, now to get my childhood reminiscing sidetrack under control: this was a raw tart (did I mention there are always a couple raw items on the menu?). The crust was made from what appeared to be oatmeal, almonds and honey formed into a sticky, flat round. A sauce made from mulberries and chocolate mint was spread onto the crust and on top of that, a pretty sprinkling of ripe mulberries.

The presentation of the tart with its purple then even-darker-purple layers plated on white looked great. But this was actually the most disappointing part of my meal. An overabundance of fresh chocolate mint had been purred into the sauce, which made it incredibly pungent; it actually made my mouth go a bit numb and tingly. I would have much preferred the yummy crust simply topped with berries and a mint garnish.

While the final taste was a disappointment, this is still easily my favorite new restaurant in Omaha. I love both the idea and taste of locally-sourced comfort food with southern, Mexican, and other international influences (mostly Indian and Thai). The dishes were fresh, bright and wonderfully balanced. The servings aren't too large, and are full of veggies and good stuff for you, yet very filling. Healthy comfort food ... what more could you ask for?

Wednesday's Class

About serving others:

A memorable part of today’s class was when Chef told a story of helping a woman with a flat tire in Miami. He was devastated after losing everything — businesses, boats, planes — to a hurricane. He had no option but to move away from his friends and the life he’d made in the Bahamas. After relocating to Miami, he was forced to do some soul searching and figure out what his next steps would be. He was stuck in a funk.

Driving down the road he sees a woman stranded on the side of the highway with a flat tire, struggling to fix it and having no clue what she is doing. He stops to help and slightly freaks the woman out. He changes the tire and he tries to pay him for his gesture; but he doesn’t want money. He realizes that this is the best he’s felt in a year since he lost it all. In helping someone else, he found a way out of himself and his own depression. His act of service helped him more than it did the woman whose tire he’d changed.

Serving people benefits others, and it’s good for me. Chef humbly admitted that he’s embarrassed that it took him so long to figure this out. It made me think of all the times I have thought of only myself way too long, and gotten into a self-focus loop. Conversely, I am very aware of how much joy, personal satisfaction and pride I get from serving someone a meal—especially if I know that it’s delicious, artfully prepared and every detail is full of care. It’s the best feeling in the world!

About limits:

We also had a good conversation about limits in terms of attitude and respect.

Negative Limits = Setting limits for absolutely no violence, temper tantrums, cursing, improper tone

Neutral = Picking your battles!

Move toward positive encounters = Acting positively. Make it right and tell someone. Apologize if necessary. Fake it if you gotta — just do what you learned and it’ll kick in eventually.

I’m thinking about:

What other limits do I need to set for myself, in addition to those having to do with attitude and respect? Safety/sanitation issues, integrity, business partnership decisions, family/work balance … these are things that need to be thoughtfully considered as I work toward starting my own business.