Common Ground: Mom’s Cooking, So Hold the Arugula

July 2008 | Life, the Universe and Everything

Mom’s Cooking, So Hold the Arugula

By Andi McDaniel

I confess. I’m one of those “thoughtful” eaters. You know the type: we’re the ones interrogating the arugula in the produce section, scrutinizing the ingredients on each box of Annie’s Mac and Cheese. When there’s a traffic jam in Aisle Three, it’s usually us, commandeering the tortilla chips, weighing the question of local vs. organic against any number of other eco-socio-ethical concerns.

I shop this way because, according to what I’ve learned from books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Fast Food Nation and spending two summers working on organic farms, it’s the most effective way to “vote” for a healthier food system.

But for all my pondering in the produce aisle, there’s a point where I draw the line. The few times a year when I visit my folks at my childhood home in suburban Chicago, you won’t hear me talking about food miles or the sheer horror of a transcontinental February tomato. When my mom’s cooking, I check my dogma at the door.

It wasn’t always this way. It used to be that when I went home to visit, I’d have to bring my mother up to speed on my latest food
philosophy.

“Are you eating meat these days, honey? Or are you still worried about those poor cows being all cooped up?”

“I couldn’t find organic yogurt, sweetie, so I just got you low-fat.”

“I can’t remember. What is it you’re boycotting this week?”

Looking back, I’m amazed at her diplomacy. But at the time, I thought I was the one with the admirable values.

It all started when I was about 20. Leaving behind my Kraft cheese childhood, I’d gone off to get a world-class liberal arts education. It was at college that I began thinking systemically, questioning authority and reading books with titles like Milk: The Deadly Poison. Before long, I’d learned so many dark secrets about the all-American diet that I completely lost my appetite.

“Natural flavors” are manufactured in New Jersey? Milk really doesn’t do a body good? Easy Cheese isn’t cheese at all?

While I was intellectually fascinated to learn how the world really worked, on a deeper level, I was confused. How could my mom — with her loving hands and her legendary Sloppy Joes — have been enabling such a compassionless industrial food system? How could her careful dietary nurturing have been based — at least in part — on lies and misinformation? She meant well, right? So what went wrong?

I tried to realign the incongruent parts. If I could just explain to her what I’d learned, I figured, she’d be sure to come to the same conclusions I had. Soon we’d be eating sprouts-and-hummus sandwiches together while watching documentaries for fun.

The crusade began. I introduced her to bok choy. I demonstrated how to make pumpkin pie with real pumpkins. I built her a compost bin and told her it would reduce her weekly garbage by half! And I dutifully accompanied her to the supermarket, providing running commentary free of charge.

Trouper that she is, my mother tried to listen.

“Interesting, interesting,” she’d say, tossing a bag of iceberg lettuce into her grocery cart as I decried its utter lack of nutritive value. “Hormones in milk!?” she would half-heartedly gasp, while scanning the shelf for whichever brand happened to be on sale.

The fact was, my mother simply wasn’t interested in rebuilding her lifestyle from scratch. But it was a long time before that dawned on me. For several years, I’d visit and she’d do her best to accommodate my vegetarian diet, then my preference for organic, then my conviction that local trumps organic in a pinch.

Not that we actually discussed much of this at all. Usually when I brought up my “food politics,” her eyes would glaze over and she’d say something like, “Well, you know more about this stuff than I do.”

And I did know more about this “stuff” — such as what it takes to grow good green beans and why organic strawberries are worth the extra cost. But did I know enough about where she was coming from?

Back when she was a young mother, nutrition was certainly a concern — but the guidelines of the day offered little beyond the food pyramid and the recommendation of three servings of fruits and veggies a day. Never mind if those servings were canned pears in sugary syrup or a tasteless tomato, harvested green and shipped from Mexico for your convenience.

What’s more, processed foods — from TV dinners to Hamburger Helper — represented progress. No more precious time wasted canning tomatoes — or making pumpkin pies from scratch.

But the most important thing I’ve come to realize is that to my mom, food is a language. When I visit home, I constantly have food before me. Feeling down? Have a snack; it’s probably your blood sugar. Missing your ex-boyfriend? Never fear — eat a ginger snap.

When my mom slides a little plate with a few orange wedges, a cup of Yoplait and some Ritz crackers my way, what she’s really saying is “We love you, honey.”

So on that fateful Thanksgiving, when I plunged my fork into Mom’s buttery mashed potatoes to find three small pieces of roasted turkey underneath, her message rang loud and clear: “Is it really going to kill you to eat one bite of turkey on Thanksgiving? Do you know how long it took to cook this crazy thing?”

Maybe I was just tickled by the sentiment. Or it could be I was simply tired of scrutinizing my food. But I ate that turkey. And I asked for seconds.

These days when Mom’s cooking, I tell her to serve it up. “Gimme some of those Hungry Jack Pancakes, marooned in Aunt Jemima’s ‘maple’ syrup! Serve me that famous spaghetti sauce, made with good ol’ feedlot-style ground beef!”

I’ve realized it’s little more than timing and circumstance that made my mother an advocate for American cheese, and me for locally grown tomatoes. Sure, I don’t want guilt on my dinner plate — but she’d rather not have politics in her pumpkin pies.

Don’t get me wrong; I stand behind my passion for food that’s locally and organically grown. But food is only one part of a meal. There’s also that part about the person sitting across from you.

And for the few fortunate times a year when that person is my mom, I try to concentrate on my gratitude that she cooks for me at all. Because even when what she serves is somehow corrupt, my mom’s message is pure. And how can I refuse a helping of that?

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: