How I Discovered Organic Food
My first exposure (sans dirty raincoat) to organic food was actually in Florida, USA where I was living. It was during the time when they made a complete mess out the presidential election and there was loads in the newspapers about chards and whether Bush or Gore had the most votes. Hardly the most auspicious start to my stay there, but there you go.
While my husband Roland was working at the Ritz Carlton as Executive Chef, I ended up studying and teaching at a university for a year (a story in itself!). There I learned to juggle studying for a master’s degree, teaching, and running a house for the first time in my life. What was great was the discovery of two things 1) an organic shop called Wild Oats and 2) cooking magazines - both the Americans do very well. Wild Oats was like heaven. They had the most amazing food counters where you could lunch pre or post shopping and served fresh salads, soups, and fab hot dishes made with all organic ingredients. And the main shop? Oh my word! Like Jasons Supermarket but all organic/natural products. The fresh fruit and veg section had about a 100 varieties daily, and some were cheaper than conventional!ÂThe meat counter was wonderful too with loads of easy things like sausages (at least 10 different varieties) as well as chicken and beef with a variety of cuts to choose from.
Now since I was married to a chef, I hadn’t planned on cooking being part of my repertoire. Charming hostess, beverage captain extraordinaire, dish washer, yes. Cook? Er no, but thanks for asking. As it turned out, I could live as One-Who-Was-Cooked-For providing I was content to eat around ten-something every night. This I did for a few months until one day I bought Roland a cooking magazine called Food & Wine which had loads of very nifty recipes that I thought would be good for R to check out.
Naturally, with working 15 hour days, six days a week, the poor chap simply didn’t have the energy for frivolities like magazines. So it sat there. For weeks. After all kinds of subtle gestures on my part went unnoticed (i.e. leaving it on his pillow etc) I cracked it myself and was stunned to realize that it didn’t actually look that hard! So I started trying things out and fell in love with cooking.
With cooking vegetables at any rate. Cooking meat is not really my thing. I can’t poke a steak with my finger and tell you anything but except that it’s hot. Being able to tell if it’s done to your specifications (twitching, rare, medium, medium-well, well-done, charcoal) is not my forte (except the two - raw I can manage and I can tell when it’s burned too). So I found I was concentrating on vegetables. Meat was the afterthought that Roland could cook when he got home. So instead of meat and two veg (very British concept, that). It was veg and some meat. While you may think the view one of semantics, it’simportant to understand that I was basically bought up with vegetables as colorful filler and not an important part of the meal as such.
This is where the food fun really begins!
