Harping on Bad Habits.

I seem to always go looking for trouble – even where there is none. Such is the life of a maverick. (Since Sarah Palin’s preposterous rise to fame, the word “maverick” is having a re-birth.)

I counsel others to think, to do, to act, to vibrate with anticipation of every new day. I however, find that more and more, the palliative quality of TV is too seductive to resist. I can become a passive receptor, content to lie back and let someone entertain, divert, or amuse me.

Having made my case for slothfulness, I can proceed to my point: cooking, or more specifically, the presence of ancient bromides in the fine art of cooking.

Watching one of my favourites – The Food Network, I am uplifted by the artistry of Anna Olsen, blondly glittering her way into the inner depths of my gustatory psyche. (Wow! Talk about flights of poetic fancy!)

The point – wait for it – it’s coming. She is busy concocting something delectable when she says: “Nothing like home cookin’.” I am startled. If I had a cook like Olsen in my home I would never go out to eat again.

The point here is not the beautiful Mrs. Olsen, but the notion somehow that home-cooking is the be-all-and-end all. The expression keeps cropping up on other cooking shows like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The best of the fine food in a small town diner is that it is: home cookin'! It is not!

Besides, I have a special antipathy toward home cooking. It’s right up there with other aphorisms and bromides like “No place like a small town and no people like small town people.” You can, if you wish, substitute “country-folk” for “small town.

I bow to Flannery O”Connor, during whose short life, targeted the notions of “good ole country folk” and their apparently inherent goodness, trustworthiness, and reliability.

Back again to Home Cooking.
I don’t know about you but I have eaten in some homes where the food was so dull and pedestrian it was nearly an insult. Not every mother is a good cook. Not every home-cooking kitchen is paradise. Some of the food is awful. It has been coasting for years on its unwarranted reputation.

Near me, in the St. Lawrence Market area of Toronto is the Saturday-only Farmer’s Market, where all the good things of country living are sold. It is where I, believing in the inherent virtues of country- folk cookin” bought a corn bread.
It was the driest, most totally tasteless thing I had ever eaten. It reminded me of the other “country-cookin”” fable – the one where you xtop by a farm house on the way back from the cottage to buy some home-made pie. It is often good but it is also often terrible – crust like wet cardboard, and fruit overcooked.
In all fairness, I have experienced some great stuff too – like the pieces at the big War worth competition that brings mothers’ food to the masses.
But by and large, we have been seduced because we want to be. We really do want to believe that home is not only where the heart is, but it’s where the cooking is down-home good.

My advice: stay away from anything billed as “home cooking”, and stop lying around watching TV.