Are you there?
I‘m sorry. I hit a road block (also known as a writer’s block). But i have more insights relating to the topic I abandoned a few days ago. I mentioned Michael Pollan, American author and journalist (b. 1955), best known as a food guru. He’s famous for his Food Rules:
*Eat food
*Not too much
*Mostly plants
—and for his caution about not eating anything your grandmother—or great/great?—wouldn’t recognize as food. Of course, It depends on which grandmother, where she came from, what she does, whether she cooks (some don’t) and if she can spell.. That raises a lot of questions.
Pollan has processed food in mind with all the preservatives and additives that are very hard to spelll. I’m sure he wasn’t thinking about ethnic foods.
My maternal grandmother came from Iceland and as a chid I learned to love and spell kleinur (a kind of doughnut without a hole); ponnukokur (crepes wrapped around brown sugar, or for festive occasions, strawberry jam and whipped cream; hardfiskur (dried fish used as a scoop to eat butter). Harder to spell and later to love were skyr (Icelandic yogurt) ; mysostur (a spreadable cheese that looks like but doesn’t taste like peanut butter; hangikjirt (literally-hung meat, usually lamb, smoked); rullupilsa (spiced lamb roll), Ilfrapilsa (liver roll), including but never learning to like hákurl (fermented shark—I cannnot eat something that smells like urine). Ah, but I share with everyone the love of vinarterta (a layered cake with stripes of prune/plum filling with a butter cream frosting) and gravadlax (cured, dilled salmon fillet, way better than smoked).
I am a sort of cook.I call myself a writer who cooks, not a cook who writes. I’ve had three cookbooks published—very difficult to write, BTW. At my advanced age I’ve done a lot of cooking and I have read a lot of food/cook books. Apart from a grounding in French and Continental cuisine and my knowledge of immigrant Icelandic foods, I have the eclectic knowledge of a smattering of what used to be foreign foods, now part of the Canadian cuisine, like pasta, holopchi, Swedish meatballs, Boston baked beans, chop suey or chow mein (?)—you get the idea.
I had to go through all this thinking to come to terms with what is happening now.
Tune in for the next appetizing instalment.