Making Minestrone

This morning we watched a finger of fog drift across Annadel from the direction of Oakmont.  As we drank our coffee and read the newspaper the finger became a curtain,  lifting and spreading until it covered a mackerel sky. It was one of those mornings where anything could happen weather wise.

By the time we got home the weather seemed to have made up its mind to be cloudy and cold, and it seemed like an excellent day to make some minestrone. OilMan had picked the last of the tomatoes which were on the verge of becoming compost if we didn't use them and there were a few carrots and a couple of zucchini left . 

I feel that making minestrone should be a contemplative activity...done with attention to detail and becoming immersed in the sensory pleasure of fresh herbs and garden grown vegetables. I often wonder as I carefully add the veggies and time the amount of time each ingredient needs to simmer if it wouldn't work out just as well if I threw them all into the pot at once. It always tastes better the second day anyway.

As I chopped and diced and sliced, I turned on the radio and who should I hear but Alice Waters echoing my musings about preparing and sharing food.. I have met her a few times and find her little girl voice and her personal style somewhat at odds with each other. She is, for lack of a better word, a bit of a diva. But I can't help but admire her for her oft reacted message, from which she has not deviated since she started Chez Panisse when she was 22 years old.

She feels that corporate advertising and agriculture is ruining our relationship with food, our health and our relationships with each other. She feels that preparing food should be a sensory experience which cannot be transmitted through advertising on a television screen, and that fast food teaches us that it is ok to A) Eat in the car  B) Eat quickly  C) Not understand where our food comes from or how to prepare it nutritiously and economically as well as economically.

She puts her money where her mouth is. She started a garden at a middle school in Berkeley which is still going strong. There is a whole program at the school with a kitchen and dining room where kids learn not only how to prepare meals but how to serve them. Even picking fresh herbs from the garden can lend a whole new slant on preparing a meal.

My brother and I were raised by a mother who was part of a generation that still believed these things and passed them along to Rick and me. We are often making comments about how Mom would be spinning in her grave if she saw that the table wasn't properly set, with anything from a carton or bottle in a proper serving dish or that the family wasn't seated around the dinner table together. She was a good cook too and she passed the love of cooking along to both Rick and me, although I'll confess that after fifty years of cooking I'm not averse to some take-out food....