Bibliophilia: ​Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation – Michael Pollan

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation – Michael Pollan​

He is an author that I’ve read several books by, and always enjoy them a lot, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma, (highly recommended reading - the section on corn alone blew my mind) and The Botany of Desire, (where he posits the theory that instead of us manipulating plants for our own ends, plants manipulated us into manipulating them for their own ends. That they held out things we found desirable, and in so doing, they have been spread across the globe.)

The book is structured around the 4 “elements” and explores a cooking technique for each. Fire is explored through Barbecue. Water is explored through Braising. Air is explored through Bread. Earth is explored through Fermentation. He apprentices himself to various experts in each field in order to learn more about the culture and science behind different techniques. The book looks at cooking as a major part of what makes us human - that we manage to take things that are not digestible and use the cooking process as an external organ of digestion. But the book also explores cooking as a fun activity, one that makes us more self reliant and more appreciative of nature. It’s an eloquent and graceful treatise on the importance of bringing food and cooking back into the home.

If Pollan has a theme with some of the books that he has tackled so far, it’s the relationships between us and the food we eat - and how we seem to overlook how important it is on so many levels. Cooked isn’t so much a how to, but more of a why to – an anthropology of cooking.

Bibliophilia: The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World – Michael Pollan

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World – Michael Pollan

I absolutely loved The Omnivores Dilemma (please read), and while this didn’t cause quite the paradigm shift of TOD, I enjoyed this a whole lot. Humans like to think that we control plants....but perhaps plants are far more active participants in the whole affair. One of the most mind blowing sections of TOD was on corn. This is a continuation of that exploration of the link between people and plants.

He examines four plants and the things that we appreciate about them: Apples and Sweetness, Tulips and Beauty, Marijuana and Intoxication, and Potatoes and Control. Each of those plants was at one time endemic to only a small part of the planet, but the qualities that humans found attractive about them meant that we spread them across the globe, a feat that would have been difficult or impossible without the intervention of humans. In time humans tweaked these plants into ever newer strains and variants, that, again would likely have been impossible without the brains and hands of people. But could it be that there is some vast plant intelligence that knew what it was doing and used unwitting people to help in its aim to spread throughout the world? Do we control them or did they seduce us into controlling them?

This Omnivores Dilemma

I figure it’s good to re-assess and re-evaluate why you believe and do the things you do every once in a while. Just kind of healthy, no matter what. Otherwise you become dogmatic, and besides whining, I find little else as odious.

When I was 19 I became a vegetarian. For quite a few reasons. I was intrigued by the claims that a vegetarian diet was healthier and could reduce the possibilities of many of the maladies people suffer from in the developed world. My dad died far too young of heart problems. I didn’t mind being an epidemiological experiment to see if there was any validity to the argument that a meatless diet could stave off an early death. The realities of modern intensive farming practices are horrific and I really didn’t want to be complicit in it. While it might be naive and idealistic, people voting with their buying power might have some small effect. Consumer power might be slow, but it does have a possibility of effecting change over time. Congruent with my discomfort over the way animals are treated in a mechanistic system, there was also the staggering environmental toll it is taking on the planet. For all those, and probably several other good reasons, I made a decision to eschew meat.

I wasn’t strident about it. If people wanted to know why I made the decision I did, I could lay out a very cogent argument why. But I felt I might do more to persuade people as to the correctness of my stance by quietly living my life and politely and rationally explaining my stance when interrogated, than by haranguing anyone about what they ate.

I never had any problems with it, it’s always been relatively easy for me (at first, the options in restaurants and grocery stores were somewhat limited, but as time went on, the possibilities increased exponentially), and it’s not like it’s caused me any difficulties. I have always been healthy, hearty and hale. Anyone who has to practically jog to keep up with me walking isn’t left with the idea that a vegetarian diet left me weak and unhealthy.

I made a decision, I was comfortable with it, and I quite happily lived with the decision for more than twenty years. Two decades is a pretty long time though, and maybe it was time to revisit the reasons for a belief system.

A few things got me to thinking about it. One of the forums I go to we ended up getting into a very interesting discussion about the subject. A member who I respect and is one of those fonts of knowledge on almost every subject imaginable, raised some intriguing points. I also read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan (highly recommended reading – it’s worth it just for the section on corn alone). So those things got me doing a bunch of reading and quite some contemplating.

T.O.D. got me thinking about a lot of things - agriculture mainly. How it’s done wrong and how it can be done right. The book is an excellent piece of reportage and while it re-inforced some of my initial disgust with factory farming, it gave a me a whole new appreciation for small scale farming. While the afore-mentioned section on corn was fascinating, the section on PolyFace Farms was equally paradigm shifting. Traditional agriculture is a very symbiotic thing, and has an ecological balance totally lacking in what farming has become.

And also I’ve just been thinking more and more that eating as locally as possible is the best way to go. A large part of why I stopped eating meat was on account of the environmental impact. But can I really be patting myself on the back for eating mock chicken made from soya beans grown in Brazil, shipped to Israel and then flown to Canada? Or eating produce grown in New Zealand or Chile or South Africa and flown here? I love fresh fruits and vegetables, but what impact is my diet having on global warming and the lifestyle of people in those countries? Something tells me that people in Chile aren’t buying much Canadian produce out of season. While I’m not going to go completely whole hog into a 100 mile diet or anything like that, I figure that if I truly care about future generations having a planet they can live on, I should certainly reduce the radius my food travels.

And there has also been an idea floating around in my head to go hunting. Kind of a nagging idea I couldn’t shake. Maybe just one of those very primal things locked somewhere deep in our psyche…I don’t know. I’ve never really had a huge problem with hunting. As long as it’s done humanely, and you stick to regulations and you actually use that animal in the fullest sense, okay. My main problem was always with intensive factory farming. If you go out and kill a deer, and get down to the nitty gritty of what that act is all about, okay. I go out and practice all these outdoor skills and I think I’m quite competent at a lot of them, but that is one area I never practice. I always figured that if the need arose that I would do it. But is that really realistic? And stuff like pemmican and jerky really do make a lot of sense as a trail food.

I go out and forage for stuff when I can and I helped out in the garden at Dundurn Castle and in Jen’s garden and that got me some local veggies. I figure that’s a start. But I see lots and lots and lots of rabbits whenever I go out on a hike. And I see lots and lots of lots of deer whenever I’m out and about. Hhhmmmmhh, if I really want to reduce my eco footprint, maybe I should start wrapping my brain around the idea of their being a food source.

My pals Scott and Ashley also raise free range chickens and turkeys. There are also several farms around here that let chickens lead the lives they’re supposed to, and feed them what they’re supposed to eat. Harkening back to the idea of fake chicken, which is better? If I can jump on my bike and go out a ways to buy a chicken that was raised 20 KM from my house or a very processed food source with a huge distance to travel, it doesn’t take much to figure out which is better. Or if I can get some of S&A’s chicken when they come down this way, cool.

It’s not like I’m rushing out to McDonalds to scarf down Big Macs or anything like that. And its not as though it’s ever going to be a huge part of my diet. But I figure if I know where it comes from, or I had a hand in procuring it, once in a while isn’t so huge a deal. I will still likely remain mainly vegetarian, but I have broadened the dietary parameters a bit.

Still not a fan of factory farming or cruelty or shitty diets, but my view has shifted a slight little bit anyway.

Still a bit of a weird thing to get used to, but meh. It’s kind of neat in a way, cause now a whole new range of possibilities open up.

I’m not fond of dogma, and I figure it’s good to take a step back and go, “hey am I dogmatic about things?” I don’t really think so, but I figure that long held beliefs do deserve to have some light shone on them once in a while.

I guess it’s just the realization that the route to a goal (a more sustainable future) isn’t necessarily a paved highway with directions clearly posted, but perhaps it’s a meandering path in the wilderness. Probably it’s a bit of both.