Culinary Adventures of an Unfoodie: Eating with My Father (March/April 2015. Palm Sunday)
I just spent 5 days with my 91-year-old father. He lives
part of the year in the suburbs outside of Washington, DC, in the home he
bought in the early 1960s when he joined the state department (USOM, later
USAID). As an economic advisor, he worked all over the world, oftentimes taking
his family with him, so that I was fortunate to live in Korea, Taiwan,
Thailand, Vietnam, and Pakistan. With all of that traveling, it would be a
reasonable assumption to think he was exposed to a lot of different types of
food. He was, but it left little mark on his culinary consciousness. Food is
fuel and nutrition to him, and the cheaper the better. That might be because of
his growing up poor in the southern Appalachian Mountains (squirrel hunting
with homemade rope traps was a pastime as well as a way to have a meal), or his
personality, or his values. Whatever the reason, he is the opposite of a “foodie”*—perhaps
an afoodie, nonfoodie, or unfoodie.
Eating with him therefore is an interesting experience. Not particularly
aesthetically satisfying, but interesting from a thought-provoking perspective.
He knows I enjoy trying different foods, so he gamely accompanies me to various
restaurants—usually inexpensive ethnic, “hole in the wall,” family run ones
where the food is likely to be tasty but not gourmet, and the clientele dressed
casually so that his favorite wool pants left over from WWII don’t stand out.
Two instances of eating out with him stand out this time.
The first was after the church service on Sunday morning. Growing up, Sunday
dinner was always a special occasion for my family—and many other southern
Protestants. Ideally it was at grandmother’s house, and she had cooked a
splendid meal, but since we lived away from extended family, we had to make do
with going out to eat. So, this particularly Sunday (Palm Sunday), he wanted to
take me out after church. He first offered his own favorite establishment—a
fast food franchise that delighted him with its prices and its unlimited
lettuce and tomato for topping its hamburgers. I politely suggested he might
have another place in mind, so he said he would take me to a where he used to go
with my mother after church. That had potential since my mother was very
adventurous and generally had good taste. We ended up, though, at a bagel
franchise with packaged salads and generic sandwiches. They did offer “New York
style bialys,” which looked promising, but tasted no different from any other
mainstream, white bread bagel—and butter for it cost 60 cents. He was thrilled, though, to share something with me that he had shared with my mother before
she died 5 years ago. That meant a lot to him—and to me, and made up for the otherwise
dismal aesthetic experience. A reminder that food serves many functions and
carries many meanings.
The second instance of an unfoodie eating experience was a
meal with a younger sister and her four children. They had the day off from
school so had spent the afternoon visiting my father and playing in his
backyard. They were tired and hungry, so, for convenience—and a treat for
them—we all headed to an all-you-can eat pizza place. It included a minimal
salad bar (iceberg lettuce…), pasta, soup, and about 10 varieties of pizza.
Dessert was cinnamon rolls and pizza dough slathered with something sticky and
sweet. My father was delighted and sampled a little of everything. Towards the
end of the meal, he turned towards me and asked quietly, so as to not be rude,
what kind of food we were eating. I told him it was American. He looked
surprised. “But what is it called and where is it from?” Although my scholarly
side flinched, I knew what he meant. He didn’t have pizza growing up in the
North Carolina Mountains, and he never had had pizza delivered to his house.
I’m sure he had eaten it before, but his memory was beginning to slip, and he
oftentimes couldn’t remember names of people or places.
But this was more than poor memory. Not only was pizza not
part of his culinary universe, food in general was not part of his
consciousness. He generally didn’t think about it, other than making sure that
there was something reasonably filling and nutritious served on time. His own
meal system consists of hot or cold cereal every morning for breakfast and then
eating at exactly noon and 6 pm. The food itself is oftentimes a mixture of
leftovers and canned goods (salmon is a favorite)—lots of variety and lots of
vegetables, frequently flavored with ketchup. Given that he is 91, walks
several miles a day, and is remarkably healthy, I can’t really criticize his
diet. Aesthetically for me, it does leave much to be desired, but it obviously
nourishes him quite well. And he does recognize that it is valued by other
people and that it can play a central role in social rituals; thus the visits
to restaurants with me.
So, what do we call someone like my father? Someone who eats
for nutrients, energy, a full stomach, and for whom the aesthetic experience
correlates with the inexpensiveness and speed with which the food is delivered.
Perhaps, more importantly, is it necessary to have a word? Food comes in many
forms and has many social and cultural as well as biological functions. It
doesn’t “speak” to everyone, and not everyone chooses to intentionally and
publicly invest it with their identity and creativity. As someone who studies
the “meaningfulness of the mundane,” I like to think that recognizing food’s
potentials enriches life and can make a difference in how we then treat it—and
the environment and other people--but I also think it important to acknowledge
the validity of the various ways in which individuals interact with the
world. So, rather than bemoan or criticize my father's lack of foodie inclinations, I remember that that lunch of canned salmon, cottage cheese, leftover broccoli
stir-fry, crackers, and peanut butter is meaningful because of the person I am
eating it with.
* The term foodie is credited to food critic, Gael Greene,
who used it in 1980 in New York Magazine. It seems to have been popularized by The
Official Foodie Handbook, published in 1984 by Paul Levy and Ann Barr. It is generally used to refer to someone who prioritizes food over other aspects of life, and tends to value gourmet, "interesting" food over everyday dishes.
The negative associations of the name no longer seem to be attached
to hunky turkey. The customers who recognized it seemed to have positive
memories, and a vendor even offered an updated version—the Hunky turkey dog!
Perhaps most of the people are far enough removed from the days of
discrimination and hardship. Or perhaps the idea that it is heritage makes the
difference. After all, heritage to most people refers to the past. Individuals
in the present can look back on that past with fondness and respect if they
want to, but it no longer controls who they are and what opportunities they
have—or what they can and cannot eat. Like other ethnicities, being Hungarian
means having certain dishes in one’s repertoire of culinary possibilities,
particularly at festive occasions. It doesn’t limit them, however, to just
those foods. The fact that the dish is now a choice means that they can
re-appropriate it, give it new meanings, and celebrate it—just as Mario Montano
described Mexican Americans in Texas doing with some of their quintessential
foods (menudo, fajitas). The idea of it being a choice, however, I think is
crucial. Otherwise, it still speaks of limitations and restraints and being
defined by one’s past. (And, given current tastes in food, it probably doesn’t
hurt that the dish features bacon!) 