After reading The Apprentice, Chef Jacques Pepin’s amazing and entertaining memoir, I feel both inspired and humbled as I continue my quest to provide you with ideas for simple meals.
I began this food blog to help those not used to stocking a pantry or cooking because a pandemic brought the dining habits of many to a screeching halt. I learned that there was a need for basic, common sense food education. There is already so much information out there. I wasn’t sure who specifically needed help or exactly with what. But I knew I had practical experience that could fill a need.
When I naively began, I didn’t even imagine posting pictures of food. I was responding to an emergency with survival instructions. That’s how I viewed it. My original blog posts contained no pictures. I quickly began to add some as I realized what a visual society we have become that expects them. Friends then told me to begin using social media and start posting videos there as well. Wow! This is not what I had in mind at all. But I heeded their suggestions and started to avail myself of other professional resources to further this cause. Am I reaching my target audience?
I have been told that my pictures can’t compete with other food bloggers. This is true. I didn’t set out to compete with anyone or to shoot beautiful pictures. Although I am continuing to educate myself on topics that might make my blog more appealing, I wonder if it matters.
My aim is to ask you, my readers, to reconsider the way you approach food. There has been a huge transformation in this field over the past 50 years or so. Americans used to view food purely as sustenance. There was no such term as “foodie”. In more recent years, the pendulum has swung so far the other way that “foodie” has gained snob appeal and no one feels equipped to cook without a recipe, list of ingredients and a step by step video tutorial. Now it seems that either you are the person who cooks or the person who eats what other people cook because preparing enjoyable meals has been glamorized by the media and overpriced by restaurants.
Jacques Pepin, a living legend who can cook anything he pleases with the finest ingredients and techniques, recently demonstrated how to create a satisfying meal for a family of 6 using a few inexpensive pantry items in response to food insecurity in America. Is it haute cuisine? Do “foodies” marvel? Is the dish worthy of a photo shoot? Probably not, but it’s relevant to our times and it makes me want to give tuna casserole a chance.
