[EXPAT VOICE] Slow Food

I love eating. My husband and I were recently invited to a big embassy reception where the dessert table was roughly the same size as our flat. I tried everything on it -- really, I even went back to the savory section and sequestered one of the large dinner platters because (for some unfathomable reason) the dessert plates were half the size. Then I went back for seconds of the things I especially liked: a zingy yet creamy lemon tart, a delicately baked raspberry cheesecake and a now-I-can-die-happy chocolate mud pie. I tried to go back for a third helping of the pie, but the other diners had cottoned on to how good it was and I was too late. I’m still trying to come to terms with my loss. This ability to feast is actually even more impressive than it sounds, as I’d already done the same for the savories table. The reason I am in fact not the size of a well-fed buffalo is that I rarely eat just for eating’s sake, but only if I actually like what’s on offer. I am the sole cook in our house (discounting barbecues, which for some reason my husband views as a wholly masculine affair) so I get to choose what we eat and how it is cooked. This should mean that a) I need to weigh myself on a scale made for large trucks and b) we can become the ultimate Slow Foodies. Unfortunately, two things stand in my way.

Firstly, when you do all the cooking day in and day out and there is no alternative, kitchen time quickly becomes a chore rather than an experimental playground: These days, new tasty recipes are like the holy grail to me, my imagination has become so weary. Secondly, I have two children (at home and under my feet): Spending three hours crafting in the kitchen without the rabbit being (lovingly) decapitated, the neighbors banging on the door to complain about the noise, or worst of all, having to accommodate the boys “helping” me and extending one meal to daylong, flour-soaked chaos, is little more than wishful thinking. Twenty minutes is my optimum time for meal preparation. I can just about push it to 30 if I’m convinced my efforts will be worth it (vanilla fudge is my main exception here,) or 45 if I start really early and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is on. On the plus side, as long as I’m not required to do more than occasional stirring, the meal can cook for as long as it wants.

Living in Turkey has certainly pushed me more in the direction of Slow Food. It is so much cheaper to buy dried beans and chickpeas than the convenient but over-preserved tinned version. Likewise, I almost always opt for a few kilos of fresh tomatoes rather than the canned variety. The tomatoes in particular extend the overall preparation time, as (without even a pretense of rationality) once they are cooked my husband develops an intense phobia of their skins. After watching him choke on and spit out every last one the first time I made him bolognaise, and after a long discussion on hereditary insanity (his mum does it, too) I have made it standard policy to peel every tomato I cook. Love comes in many different guises. Actually I’m not that loving -- he also claims to be equally affected by the hair-thin skin you find between onion layers (I hadn’t noticed it existed before I met him) but as these almost always sneak under his food radar I make very little effort to remove them.

I guess most of our meals are a 50\50 combination of speed cooking and fresh preparation. I make about 90 percent of our pasta from scratch and I can have enough for six hungry adults mixed, rolled and cut before the cooking water is boiling. It’s undeniably fresh and extremely tasty, but then I’ll team it with something beyond easy like chicken nuggets or those delightful who-knows-what’s-in-them mini sausages. I make a great chicken tikka but tend to serve it with the world’s most undistinguished oven chips. About my only fully “fresh” meals are the oh-so-exciting chicken casserole and the nice-for-lunch homemade bread with soup.

To be honest, the area where I really fall down as a Slow Food wannabe is the whole “taking time to enjoy your meal” aspect. I grew up in a house with old-fashioned meals. We were summoned with a “gong” (this sounds far more glamorous than the reality, which was my dad banging a stick on an old oven door), we didn’t put elbows on the table, there was always a main course and some type of freshly baked pudding (which you only got if part “a” of the meal had been finished). We said “thank you” whether we’d enjoyed the meal or not (because someone had taken the time to prepare it) and we asked to be excused at the end of every meal. If only my brother and I’d had matching outfits, it would have been very Sound of Music-ish. I often wonder if people still eat like that or whether this type of tradition has gone the way of pinafore dresses.

In my husband’s home everyone ate together around 7:30 p.m. when his dad came home from work. They didn’t indulge in the archaic traditions my family did, but they also tended to substitute a first course of soup for a last course of pudding. The most important aspect of their family meals was that every last grain of rice was eaten. Begging, pleading, weeping, gnashing of teeth, bribery and blackmail were regularly employed to ensure nothing went to waste.

By comparison our house is pretty relaxed. My husband works irregular hours and I can expect him home any time between five and midnight. This lack of structure is not conducive to family meals if you want all the participants to be a) awake and b) in a good mood. He is also not a natural at meals with children. The dropping of crumbs irritates him to an irrational level. It makes him twitch. It makes him sweat and by the fifth crumb you are guaranteed an explosion. He has a similar reaction to small bottoms that can’t sit still. Neither of these things trip my irritation switch, however, “dream eating” pushes me over the edge. Dream eating is my children’s version of passive resistance to being cajoled into eating food they don’t especially want. Each mouthful is chewed upward of 30 times. After each swallow, a period of blank staring and possibly mindless chatting about the color of the wall ensues.

Theoretically, dream eating is entirely compatible with the Slow Food movement. However, somehow when I imagine languorous, three-hour meals there is candlelight glinting on full wine glasses, a low thrum of sparkling conversation (possibly in Italian), a huge black-pepper grinder, salad with big wooden spoons and a balsamic vinegar dressing. There is an antique yellow tablecloth and two big baskets of crusty brown bread. There are not scuffed plastic plates, small children trying to covertly feed their salad to the rabbit or three pints of chocolate milk rhythmically dripping on the floor. The food has not been cut into interesting shapes to enhance its desirability, nobody thinks their loaded fork is an appropriate tool for head scratching, and above all there is absolutely no reason to discuss bowel movements (potential or otherwise.) Frankly, after doing all the cooking and knowing that I will also be doing all the clearing up, which will include both vacuuming and mopping as well as the obligatory dishes, I use most meals to replenish my energy levels as quickly as possible whilst consecutively switching my voice on to auto pilot to repeat at three minute intervals: “Don’t forget to eat your food... That means picking up your fork ... and putting it in your mouth ... and chewing...”