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Organics. The organic orchards do look pretty…

You can tell it’s organic because of the grass below the trees. In a ‘regular’ orchard the grass doesn’t grow because they put down some sort of pesticide to kill it. Not sure why they even bother.

Organic food is something I don’t know much about – of course, that never really slowed me down in terms of making comments. I don’t go out of my way to buy organic unless it is bananas which, for some reason unknown to me, always seem to last longer and taste better.

Here are a few issues with organic: One, the grocery store (nearby me, independent, they have local produce unlike the Safeway not too much further away that brings in produce based on their supply chains in the USA. We get cranberries from Massachusetts. We have some of the largest cranberry bogs in North America about a 40-minute drive from my house. Yeah) …anyway, my local grocer – has organic produce but because they fear that people will try to pass it off as non-organic and pay the lower prices – have it wrapped in all kinds of plastic and labels.

I would sooner eat food from a non-organic farm or not at all than have to deal with the sort of packaging they put on that stuff. It’s organic, but it’s also encased in plastic. Kind of ironic, really.

Generally, I like local, fresh, and recognizable produce. Seasonal is nice, too. Raspberries in January are going to be expensive and unimpressive, no matter how cool it is to see them in the store. How they grow them, pick them, package them, fly them from Bolivia to Vancouver, drive them to the grocery store, stock them, and mark them up for less than a zillion dollars a pint is beyond me. But I ask the same questions about Australian wine.

Back to organic. I have had great organic produce. I have had some really forgettable organic food, too. I just wish I understood it better.

The bananas, though. They’re tasty.

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Bowl of Cherries

Bowl of fresh cherries.
Soooo looking forward to having a few of these next month .

I eat these things like popcorn. Aside from stained fingers, there is little downside to enjoying a few cherries. You get to spit out seeds across the backyard, they taste great, you can look them over pretty carefully so you don’t end up with one that might be a bit, uh, off…

But there’s more: They are generally the first fruit that comes out in my neck of the woods. There is something I just love about the concept of local fresh fruit – as opposed to wooden strawberries from some spot several time zones away – and, of course, they’re tremendously photogenic.

Getting a bit existential for a moment, does a bowl of cherries signify anything more than just a great snack? I can’t think of anything biblical regarding cherries, and they certainly haven’t been involved as a flashpoint for any international conflicts, as far as I remember. They also didn’t kick over a lantern and burn down a city.

And yet I can’t help that in eating these guys there is something I should feel guilty about – further to yesterday’s comments on the article that suggested that telling everyone how great your sourdough bread is is actually a form of snobbishness and social exclusion.

I don’t want to exclude anyone. I want to eat my cherries. Is it possible to strip politics out of writing about food? I’m not sure it is.

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Homemade bread as a marker of social status – discuss.

In the Saturday Globe and Mail, Mark Kingwell wrote an article about how the bread making craze is a way for snobbery to manifest itself. I’m not entirely sure I’m getting this right. I have read the article many times but it’s a bit above me. And I have a degree in Art History. And I read all the time.

Basically, Kingwell sees the creation of all these sourdough loafs that are immortalized on social media as a manifestation of the snob class.

He says:

To be clear, I”m not really interested in the bread part of this equation. I have eaten bread from bakeries large and small, and also baked bread myself sometimes and eaten that. Bread is a great human achievement, sure. But like every aspect of everyday life it is also a pwn in a larger chess game of status.

Ok.

I guess.

He also says:

Well, go ahead and bake bread. But your homemade toast is a boast, and the food posts are a judgement, a declaration of authenticity. Also – here’s the kicker – so is the act of claiming that they aren’t. In fact, that last move is the ultimate attempt to leapfrog into meta-boasting and meta-judging.

Uh. What is meta-boasting? You know you’re in trouble with words like that when Duck Duck Go returns travel in Meta, Italy as the first response to that search query. And you’re in even deeper trouble if this article itself is the first non-Italian option as to what meta-boasting is.

I struggle with academic articles like this because I’m not entirely sure I’m being told off, but I do get the distinct impression that by sharing my bread photos I’m one of those nauseating, smug, baker-people. Judgemental and snobbish.

Here’s my take. I like bread. A lot. I think the whole notion of baking bread is brilliant, and I want to share. I especially want to share my successes, but I’m happy to share my failures, too. (although those last couple of loafs of sandwich bread will never see the light of day as long as I’m alive. God, those were awful.)

I get frustrated when I’m told that when I’m saying, “Hey, this worked!! Who knew?” I’m actually virtue signalling in some way. Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but I just don’t think so.

If I am, I apologize. And I plead by case by offering my usual defence: Cluelessness. I apologize if I’m being obnoxious, but I need someone to be a little more specific than this to guide me to being a better person. (Oh, the irony).

I comfort myself by knowing that when I tried to make a sourdough starter it was a dismal failure. The bread I bake is currently with yeast only. So, technically, given that Kingwell was talking about sourdough bread, I’m free to do as I please.

I’ll try sourdough again in a little while. When this all blows over.

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