“Take out the electric can opener. Open a can of tomatoes. Pour the contents into the blender. Open a packet of Lawry’s Italian Tomato Sauce Seasoning. Pour the contents into the blender. Blend. Pour the mixture into a saucepan. Heat. Voila! Spaghetti Sauce!”
That, I kid you not, were the instructions my mother gave me on how to make spaghetti sauce. The idea was not just the maximum use of processed ingredients, but also apparently the maximum use of electricity. When she gave me these instructions, I hung on her every word. I anxiously absorbed her wisdom and looked forward to my dinner of a big plate of spaghetti and sauce with an iceberg lettuce-based salad on the side.
I adored my mother. She was a wonderful person and I miss her every single day. But she was a terrible cook. I feel like Dr. Henry Louis Gates could do a show tracing the origins of why my mother was such a terrible cook. He could show how her lack of skills flowed inevitably from her background as the child of eastern European Jewish immigrants. She didn’t just cook meat. She destroyed meat. Everything was burned or broiled till it reached that hue I like to call “flanken gray.” Vegetables were cooked till limp. Frankfurters and other salted meats were taken out of the freezer and placed directly in the broiler, served with canned beans as if they were a fine cassoulet. She did make one great dish she creatively called “cabbage soup,” which I have since learned is a recipe out of the wonderful Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook (by Gertrude Berg and Myra Waldo), just as creatively called “Meat and Cabbage.” It’s basically a meat and cabbage borscht, easy to make and requires a long slow cook so it was right up my mom’s culinary alley.
But it’s really not fair to attribute my mother’s lack of culinary prowess on her eastern European background. If my mother’s lack of cooking skills were simply a matter of culture and genetics, Professor Gates would have been mightily confused since there are many excellent cooks of eastern European Jewish immigrant stock. I think my mother’s inability to cook was a product of several additional forces. First, my grandmother wasn’t a very good cook either. She emigrated to America by herself when she was 13 years old. Once here, she worked a lot. She worked in the garment industry, organized a union, and saved enough to bring over other members of her family. I’m sure she cooked, but I’m also sure it wasn’t a priority, and she wasn’t spending a lot on groceries. Once she got married and she and my grandfather saved up a little money, he and his brother opened a newspaper/candy/stationary store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. While I am sure my grandmother cooked enough to feed her family, she also worked in the store and continued her civic activities. Growing up I only remember two signature dishes from my grandmother. The first dish was her noodle kugel, which we do have the recipe for but it’s basically carbs and dairy, so I haven’t had it in a while. The second dish was her matzo balls, which we affectionately called “hockey pucks.” I don’t know how she did it, but my grandmother made matzo balls that both looked like and had the consistency of hockey pucks. They weren’t black, but they were hard. I think there was an oven involved, but I’m not sure. They tasted good and softened up in soup, and we loved her enough that we told her they were great, but the Passover before she died was the last time any of us had them. We literally couldn’t recreate them.
So, in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when my mother got married and set up house with my father, my guess is that she had gotten little instruction from my grandmother on how to cook good food. At the same time, it was the dawn of the era of the modern convenience. The “Bird’s-Eye” generation was in full swing, and women like my mother were told that if it was freeze-dried, canned, frozen, or processed it was modern and superior. The faster you could bring it from your refrigerator or freezer to your family’s table, the better. To her credit, my mother did not believe in TV dinners, which were all the rage, but she was highly influenced by the promise of the modern age and “the great big, beautiful tomorrow” being touted by the Carousel of Progress at the 1964 World’s Fair (which we visited frequently). Other than the components of that iceberg lettuce salad she often made us, she never bought a vegetable in its natural state. The Green Giant was her sous chef.
Suffice it to say, I did not learn how to cook from my mother. As a diabetic I try to pay attention to every ingredient I put in my mouth. I can’t always do that when I eat out, but I can when I eat at home, so I try to keep processed foods to an absolute minimum. This is especially true now that I have to watch out for hidden dairy. I make exceptions because I truly believe that exceptions help you stick to strict diets. But I try to make sure that the even the ingredients in my exceptions are things I can recognize and understand where they came from.
I remember a long time ago a friend saying to me that we need to cut processed foods out of our diet. At the time I thought it was a crazy idea. Processed foods are ubiquitous! How can you eliminate them? Now that I have almost done it, I realize it’s not really that hard. It starts with being very intentional in how you shop for groceries. You should spend almost all of your time on the outer aisles of the store. Produce, meats, bakery, dairy, those sections form the outer ring. When you buy anything in the middle, reading labels must become part of your routine. The more ingredients on the label, especially ones you don’t know or can’t pronounce, the more suspicious you should be. If there is something processed that you really love, check the nutrition label to see how bad it really is. How high is the salt content? Sugar? Saturated fat? If it’s not too bad, make it a treat. If it is, think about whether you can doctor it to make it healthier. For example, I have a weakness for ramen noodles. I just love them. They got me through college. But they are so high in salt it’s scary. So I still buy them but will leave out the salty flavor packet and will add flavor to the broth in other ways (e.g., use low salt chicken or vegetable broth, soak dried mushrooms in water as a base for a broth). If you must have chips, spring for the better ones that are actually made from potatoes or corn and maybe have a little less salt. (Shout out here to Tostitos Multi-grain Scoops and Terra Sweet Potato Chips). If you can’t live without chocolate, switch to a quality dark chocolate (did you know Reese’s makes a thin dark chocolate variety?)
It definitely takes more work, a lot more thought and actual reading in the supermarket that does not involve tabloid magazines. It’s a level of intention and discipline not everyone has. But it will help you eat better and thus feel better. If you can’t put in this much effort, try one of those meal services that will do it for you. There are a lot out there that offer healthy options. Or start slow. Start by eliminating certain types of processed foods. Then you can move on to something else. Before you know it the frozen food aisle and the cookie and candy aisle will be distant memories. Or, you will know exactly which item in those aisles you like and can have, and you will swoop in, grab it, and leave without loitering by the Ben and Jerry’s or the Oreos. Just start somewhere and see how it goes. Before you know it you will be laughing at yourself for thinking it wasn’t possible.