Sunday, April 25, 2004
A caveat, one without which I am too cowardly to share the thoughts below: The opinions expressed below are mine and only mine, and they are opinions and only opinions. They may be completely wrongheaded, and what I find intensely praiseworthy may be only as so much shite to you. You are even free to tell me so, although, of course, I will like you better if you don’t. 
There are two kinds of writing that I love. One aims to soothe, the other aims to challenge and enlighten. I am a big fan of stretching one’s boundaries, challenging one’s assumptions, shining a light on misconceptions and false assumptions. But that is a discussion for another night. Tonight I am considering the nature of comfort.
I have eaten a lot of cooking and read a lot of writing that is meant to engender a very specific food memory, mostly of the comfort-food variety. True comfort food is supposed to evoke Mom, or Grandma, or a gaggle of aunties, or a Mom-Grandma-Auntie-like neighbor lady. It is supposed to be about nurturing, sharing, love made tangible, communion with ourselves and each other and nature and generations of ancestors. I have no quarrel with such ideals as long as they are organic, by which I mean that they flow naturally out of your own experience. But if you try to create a Momma’s Kitchen O’Love idiom when you hated your grandmother or your mom believed that real women make reservations, then the people reading your words just might suspect that they are being sold a bill of goods. They will feel manipulated. They will become vaguely resentful.
This is a problem I have with a particular culinary memoir, one that I won’t name here (although if you’re an astute foodie, you may be able to guess what it is). When this book came out, I was thrilled. It had everything to recommend itself to me: It was a collection of thoughtful essays about food, which I love to read. Each essay boasted plenty of research, incorporating science, history, funny stories and puckish observations. It was a celebration of home-and-hearth cooking, a glorious field that has not been given proper historical consideration (although, thankfully, that is changing thanks to the work of disciplined culinary historians). It was published in hardcover by my favorite publishing house, a small press that, among other worthy tasks, is rereleasing the long out-of-print works of my adored Dawn Powell. It is filled with terrific recipes. It is written by a bright, funny, kindhearted woman who is obviously a demon cook. If I were invited to her house for dinner, I’d consider myself lucky.
And yet, and yet. It is hard for me to overstate how cold I was left by this book. I was not won over by the tale of her father’s first taste of stew and polenta at his mother-in-law’s table. I was not enchanted by her breadbaking aunt. I should have been enamored of her grandmother’s blackberry pie recipe, but instead I was irritated by her repeated shots at restaurant food and the cooks who were unable to tell pate brisee from good old American pie dough. I was irritated even more by her unspoken but urgent insistence that I love all these women, women who were certainly kind and gentle and skilled cooks, but who I barely knew, certainly didn’t know well enough to love, and felt disinclined to love by virtue of that bludgeoning: See how lovable they are, so much more so than those awful, awful restaurant chefs? By the time I got to the essay on food as aphrodisiac, I wanted to throw the book across the room. At the same time, though, I felt guilty. Wasn’t she writing exactly what I wanted to read? Wasn’t she writing exactly what I wanted to write? Aha...a question of sour grapes? Maybe I should try reading it again? Surely the problem was with me, not with her? The reader reviews on Amazon were unanimous in their praise. Writers I respected showered accolades on the book. It had to be me.
Friends, I read this book four times. In the end, I decided that the problem is probably with me, but I just can’t will myself into feeling something that just isn’t there. I am sure that the writing works a special kind of magic, but I am just impervious to it. That’s fine. None of us is universal, no matter how we wish we were. And I have to admit that I am curious about the earlier drafts of the book, seen only to the author and her editor. The author is a graduate of a writing program, and it shows in her writing: technically, it is flawless, but there is, to me, anyway, an overwritten, overrevised, overpolished quality to it. I wonder if there is an earlier, rougher, more compelling draft, burnished into smoothness. The author also claims that she used a large number of sources to research her essays, but her bibliography doesn’t reflect this; instead, she gives a “recommended reading” list. Did she try to include all of her sources, and was she discouraged from doing so? (I do have to take issue with a flight of fancy she has about Fannie Farmer “stamping her dainty foot” as she insisted on volume measurements in recipes. Anyone who has ever seen a picture of Fannie Farmer, or read even a brief biographical sketch of her, would know better than that.) Once upon a time, was there a book inside this book that I just might have loved?
Enough with kicking this poor book to the curb already. So, Jen, just what do you want, anyway? Despite my seemingly harsh words earlier about comfort food writing, I do have a particular fondness for writing that evokes a certain kind of comfort, the kind that is found in a temporarily well-ordered universe. I call it “Friday night mind,” that feeling you get when your immediate burdens are lifted, when you are freshly delivered from work and obligation, when you can deviate from your regular dinner routine (i.e. cooking if you live on takeout during the week, ordering takeout if you cook during the week), where you can stay up late if you want to. It is a sense of presence, a moment of contentment and satisfaction with the present moment.
It is the feeling I get every time I read Laurie Colwin’s essay “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant,” from Home Cooking. In this piece, Miss Colwin reminisces about a 7’x 20’ apartment in Greenwich Village where she lived for eight years, cooking on a two-burner stove, doing dishes in her bathtub, cultivating her coffee palate. Although all of her anecdotes are rich and funny, I particularly liked the story of her moving in, aided by two friends named Alice, on a cool summer day. As a housewarming present, a friend had given her a fondue pot, and she decided it would be nice to serve steak fondue to the Alices. She bought a fancy piece of sirloin from the butcher, made two dipping sauces and bought a third, bearnaise, from a delicatessen. The fondue was not a success, the oil going from not hot enough to so hot that boiling oil overflowed from the sides of the pot. Miss Colwin saved the day by sauteeing the steak cubes in a frying pan and pouring all of the sauces over them. She and the Alices devour the steaks, then head out to a bar for burgers and fries.
It is also the feeling I got the first time I read “Doing the Subcontinental.” This simple essay was like a little movie for me, the image of a cold weatherworn night, the heroine with a mind full of worry and a heart full of trouble, visiting a friend stirring something interesting in a pot, taking it home and replicating it in her own kitchen. I also love the party at which the keema macaroni is served. I think of a large group of happy people, broken off into smaller groups of happy people, the table with the keema macaroni sitting on it, “calling no attention to itself.” It is hard to elaborate, or to encapsulate, just what it is that resonates with me so, but resonate it does.
It was this essay that inspired me to track down a copy of Curries Without Worries, which brings out that familiar rush of comfort and pleasure. I have a lot of Indian cookery books, all of which are splendid books full of luscious and fragrant recipes, but Curries is easily the friendliest, chattiest, calmest, warmest of the bunch. Sudha Koul is both a great believer in basic Indian home cooking and an enthusiastic teacher of it. Consider the following passage, from the introduction to the 1983 edition (I have the 1994 edition, published by Cashmir, Inc., Pennington, NJ):
I still remember the day when some very dear friends of my husband invited us for dinner and served an Indian meal. They had, on occasion, enjoyed Indian meals cooked by my husband and wanted to give his still quite new bride a surprise. And they did! I had come to the U.S. for the first time and was intrigued by the prospect of eating an Indian meal cooked by Americans. To my surprise they served a delectable looking vegetable curry and hot, fluffy rice...a simple and authentic Indian meal. I eagerly took a mouthful and bit into something hard and pungent, almost bitter. The quintessential Indian spice turmeric...in its natural state! Swallowing it rapidly, I thought to myself that the recipe must not have explained that ground turmeric was required. I cannot think of any spice used in Western cooking that would even approximate such a culinary disaster had it been added whole instead of ground.
Even a cookbook must be inspired, and this episode sowed the seeds of a desire to introduce my new friends to Indian cooking. I hope my relating this episode at the very beginning of the book will not make an apprehensive reader even more apprehensive. I must add that, after removing the remaining pieces of turmeric, I enjoyed a hearty and delicious meal. The food was not rich, heavy, overly spicy or gourmet, rather, it consisted of wholesome, honest-to-goodness, everyday Indian preparations, thoroughly enjoyable and healthy, despite the aforementioned oversight. I was made to feel at home by the thoughtfulness that had gone into its preparation and by its superb quality.
The second edition, published in 1989, includes this amendment to the introduction:
Remember, this is not a book for fanatics. It is an authentic Indian cookbook used by genuine cooks of Indian cuisine. Adjustments have been made to a new time and place. No cuisine stipulates only one way of making a dish. Betty’s apple pie tastes different from Pam’s, both are real and delicious. You may not be able to replicate that dal you had at a friend’s house, but there are as many ways to cook dal as there are friends!
If I had a friend like this at my elbow, I would never know a moment’s fear in the kitchen. This passage, this book, it is more than comforting, it is fortifying. It makes an argument for kindness as one of the most powerful weapons we have against the things that would sap us. Spite, indifference, needless cruelty, sloppy work, sloppy weather, heartbreak: we cannot make them stand still, yet we can make them run, as Andrew Marvell said. Take a pot of keema, a tray of gingerbread, a bowl of lentils, a tub of bearnaise sauce from the delicatessen. When they help you find a place in time that you would not trade for anything, that’s when you know you have found something special.
I am (almost) speechless with this Jen. Of course, I’ve gushed about your writing before. Of course, I’ve told you of the inspirational nature of your musing time and again. But here, wow- am I a bad cook cause I didn’t get along with my mother (or just cause she was a bad cook? O- the Pandora’s box nature of it all).
All I can do is what I always do- share my anecdotal evidence. My trip to sister-in-law’s condo… If ever there was a polished falseness, a practiced indifference yet lack of caring that absolutely rings true, she is it. Her dear husband is the cook, and in his creamy shrimp and scallop buttery wine sauce I saw heart, love, commitment. This girl should know the luck that has been bestowed upon her in this culinary find of a man (with the good sense to make a nice meat based red sauce for the child’s palate, as well). We joked of our show on Food Network- me being the clueless patsy chopping the veggies of to the side, or course. I told him I had a previous commitment to that dream…
Perhaps the problem you had with that book is the problem I have with many movies - why must you hurt someone else to make yourself look better?
For example, I couldn’t stand the Home Alone movies - they’re just painful to watch. I actually had to get up and go out of the movie theater. And I love romance novels, but for their witty repartee and lighthearted fun, not for their stormy romances and love lost.
One of my alltime favorite cookbooks (now, remember, dear, I’m not a connoisseur, as you are) is the Frugal Gourmet Three Ancient Cuisines. He takes such unabashed pleasure in introducing you to food, describing the setting of each of his introductions to the dishes. I wouldn’t want to eat all of the dishes, but you long to go to these places he describes and eat.
And thank you, as always, for your intelligent commentary. Of course they’re your opinions - that’s why I read it! If I wanted dry facts, I’d go browse an encyclopedia. Keep opining, m’dear.
You had better be published and published soon so I can take these words in black ink on paper and carry them around and read them and slap the jacket at people saying, “Read this!” and leave your article in a shiny magazine, or your book of comfort and easy prose, on end tables, on the drain board, on the bedstand, to be read, to be shared, to be read again. You’re bursting, overflowing, nine months pregnant with words--great things to say and such a voice born to write, and to rite of hearths and food and pots of things.
I hate it when a book does that to you, what you describe above, somehow lies through its warm dimpled face and oversmooth prose. It happens to me with Nature and spiritual writing, and of course with fiction. When something stinks you know it, even if you tear apart the entire kitchen, empty the fridge, unthrow the garbage, take every piece of fruit from every bowl and wash it--and you still can’t find it, but you know it’s there somewhere, the rotting flesh. My mother made lasagna last night--comfort food for us if ever there were. She my brother and I, with the bread, the kitchen table, trying to string together enough moments of peace to raise momentum, to carry on without choler. There was something different, something almost wrong with the lasagna last night. No way in hell I would say anything, but in the sauce, there were problems. This is something my mom has made thousands of times, variations always clearly defined, but always excellent. And here a niggling note, a dischordance, an uncomfortable wondering. Of course I still enjoyed it, was glad for it, I assumed it was me, my taste which was off. Tasting other moments and things and rolling them into my food. So, morning and coffee and surprise question from Rosalie, my mother, “Do you think that lasagna is alright, or should I make a roast tonight?”
“What do you mean is it alright?”
“Did it taste funny to you?”
“Funny how?” (too much of my mother’s sense of self is bound to food, so I get very cagey when talking about her cooking with her)
“Funny different, not bad or anything.”
“Yeah, well something was different, but it was still excellent. Of course we should have it tonight.”
“I knew it. I had to buy a different brand of tomato.”
Ah, the wonder and the danger of comfort food, but also trying to say that when reading, you can taste an omission. You can taste it when someone has said, “Here are my ingredients, here is how I put them together,” and it’s not true, not the same. In all writing, about food, about politics, in satire, even fiction--especially fiction!--you have to tell the truth, no matter what tools you use to do it, no matter what absurdist fantasy of words you create, you have to be honest, or the shit stinks.
So burn the book, or keep it around to keep you honest. It’s hard though, when others will rave about a book, rave and drone and gush and rub it all overthemselves and insist you do the same--remember that they just can’t feel what’s missing.
Write us a book Jen.
Happy belated birthday to Lloyd. I hope you guys had a blast.
Dawn Powell, Laurie Colwin, Bakerina.
I second and third the sentiments above. Good writing is good writing in any genre. The soul is revealed. Bad writing hurts. Kinda like a bad friend, or a friend who is false and hiding something. Four times? Wow, that must have been painful. You are a beautiful writer. I share your love of Dawn Powell and Laurie Colwin. When I read Laurie Colwin as a young woman, I felt as if I had discovered her. Her books are still in print. Dawn Powells were reprinted about 15 years ago, I think. Have they gone out of print again? Thanks for your writing.
Wow. Now I’m the one who is speechless. I had no idea that this would strike such a chord; in fact, I almost deleted it for fear of seeming too temperamental. Thank you all, really. *gulp* 
Okay, maybe I’m not quite speechless…
Collena, I doubt that you are a bad cook, dear. And I know plenty of people whose moms were bad cooks, and who went on to create their own Kitchens O’Love. But if you fill pages and pages of “Every Sunday I couldn’t wait for Momma to make her famous Brunswick Stew with dumplings!” when your momma did no such thing, well, that will tell in the end. But you need fear no such thing. I’ve heard about your way with skillets. And yes, tell your brother-in-law that you have already been snapped up for another Food Network show, dammit.
Now, Court, there is no reason to apologize for Jeff Smith. He’s a nut, but he’s my kind of nut. For the same reasons (even though his presentation is quite different from the Frug’s), I like Nick Stellino, too.
Owen, honey, you do know how to give a girl a moment. (Carol Cleveland voice) And what a moment! (/Carol Cleveland voice) Very interesting story about the lasagne. I feel like handing a hard copy of it to everyone at the Italian deli who yells at the proprietor for charging a little more money for San Marzano tomatoes, and saying “look, if you can’t taste the difference, then I’m sorry, he can’t help you. Go to Key Food and buy the tomatoes that don’t taste like anything.” Grrrrr.
Leigh, a Dawn Powell fan *and* a Laurie Colwin fan? Be still my heart. I felt that same sense of discovery when I read “My Mistress” in an anthology in 1983, and when I borrowed “Happy All The Time” from the Carnegie Library in 1986, and with every book of hers I’ve ever picked up since then. God, I miss her. As far as Dawn Powell goes, three of her books were reprinted in the late 80’s by Random House (Angels on Toast, The Wicked Pavilion and The Golden Spur), and two others were published by another press that I can’t remember right now (The Locusts Have No King and A Time to Be Born). The Random House editions have fallen out of print, but now Steerforth has started republishing everything: the New York novels, the Ohio novels, and now Powell’s letters and journals. The Locusts Have No King is still my favorite, but it’s getting harder and harder to say that for sure, with so many reprints being released every season.
I hope he’s not quite your kind of nut. As I recall, he’s either doing or did time for child molestation…
My word, Court, I had no idea! When did this happen? I hadn’t heard a thing about this—although it *would* explain why you can’t find the specials on PBS anymore. God, what a world, what a world…
Isn’t that the frugal gourmet guy who is in jail? Is that him?
TACOMA., WA. - Six more men have filed lawsuits against TV’s “Frugal Gourmet” for sexual abuse, bringing the total to ten plaintiffs so far. Rev. Jeff Smith, 58, ordained as a Methodist minister, served as a campus chaplain at the University of Puget Sound in the late 1960s. He gave up preaching for cooking in 1973 when he started a restaurant and catering business called the “Chaplain’s Pantry.” Located near a high school, he hired students to help him in the kitchen as part of the work study program.
Eight of the plaintiffs are men who say Smith abused them as boys, with accusations ranging from fondling to rape. The other two plaintiffs are the parents of an alleged victim.
The earliest incident is said to have happened in 1974 and the most recent in 1992. The statute of limitations for criminal prosecution has passed. The civil suits are scheduled for trial next January.
Smith has kept quiet about the cases, but they have already put his burgeoning career in jeopardy. His newest cable TV cooking show has been suspended and talks with PBS about new episodes for his series are also on hold. His book publisher won’t talk about him.
Smith, who has two adult sons, is married but has not lived with his wife Patricia for more than 20 years. She is named in the suits as having known of her husband’s activities and has retained her own lawyer. (6/17/97)
Cooking star pays plaintiffs in sexual abuse suits
Originally published in Current, July 27, 1998
By Steve Behrens
In most sexual abuse cases, it’s one person’s word against another’s. In the Frugal Gourmet’s case, it was his word against 20 or more.
Four days before he was to face trial in Tacoma, Wash., Jeff Smith, host of the popular PBS cooking show, agreed July 1 [1998] to pay an undisclosed sum to seven young men who had accused him variously of groping, kissing and raping them when they were teenagers.
“Based on my interviews with a lot of the principals involved, I think it would have been pretty ugly,” says Deborah Holton, a Portland Oregonian reporter who has followed the story closely. Court TV had asked to cover the trial, and it could have featured testimony against Smith from more than a dozen people who didn’t sue him, as well as the seven who did. The plaintiffs’ lawyer was also attempting to force testimony by Smith’s wife and partner Patti, who has lived apart from him for years; Judge Fred Fleming had told her to testify, though Smith was appealing that ruling.
An eighth man had filed a separate suit, alleging that Smith already had agreed to a settlement with him in 1991 and had begun paying him hush money.
In settling with the seven, Smith, 59, did not admit to their charges, which he has flatly denied in the 18 months since the first suit was filed. Smith hasn’t discussed the allegations with reporters, either; he declined Current’s request for comments. No criminal charges were filed.
Though the law hasn’t spoken on the accusations against Smith, the scandal has quick-frozen his 24-year career as one of public TV’s kitchen stars. PBS broadcast rights for his latest series, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian, expire in October, and United Methodist Communications last year canceled a separate series, The Frugal Gourmet Keeps the Feast, that ran on the Odyssey cable network.
Nat Katzman, Smith’s producer for the last four series, says he’d like to make more Frugal Gourmet programs, but he and Smith haven’t talked about a new series, and the chef hasn’t put out a new cookbook on which to base programs.
If Smith does go ahead with a series, he probably will face the hurdle of signing an underwriter to cover all or much of the costs. PBS seldom puts money into how-to shows anymore, according to Katzman. And the Frug would face increased competition for airtime.
“While he was one of the first popular chefs, he’s not the only popular chef available to us,” says David Rubinsohn, programmer at WHYY, Philadelphia, which has continued to air the Frug.
Stations’ reactions are sure to vary from city to city, predicts Judith LeRoy, a well-connected program research consultant. “There are a number of people who firmly believe he will be back.”
In the Chaplain’s Pantry
Except for one plaintiff, who says he was picked up and assaulted by Smith while hitchhiking in 1992, when he was 14, most of the men cite events in the 1970s. Observing a state law that exempts some cases from the statute of limitations, they carefully note in legal papers that they only realized in the 1995-97 period about the damage they had suffered.
In the 1970s, these plaintiffs were high school students working for Smith, a Methodist minister and former chaplain at the University of Puget Sound, when he operated a deli and catering service, the Chaplain’s Pantry, near downtown Tacoma.
At the time, several staffers of public TV station KTPS (now KBTC) often ate lunch at the deli, and were impressed by the extroverted, knowledgeable proprietor, says John Givens, a travel program producer who was then executive producer at the station. Smith began making cooking programs for the station and soon adopted the title The Frugal Gourmet. With his lively, humorous presentation, his taste for theological and anthropological observations and his eclectic recipes, Smith came to rival Julia Child as a TV cooking personality. In 1983, Smith took the show to a bigger producer, Chicago’s WTTW, and in 1990 to Katzman’s A La Carte Productions. His cookbooks grew from a thin KTPS booklet to national bestsellers.
A key figure in Jeff Smith’s drama is Clint Smith (no relation), one of the men who had worked for Jeff Smith at the deli and later served two years in prison for forging checks on the chef’s business account.
Clint Smith began making his accusations to reporters in 1993, according to press reports, and in summer 1995, went public on a local talk-radio program that was hashing over the topic of celebrity abusers. According to the Oregonian, he said: “I know you’re listening, because whenever you hear the word ‘pedophile,’ you start to worry. So hear me, Jeff. It’s over.”
One person who heard Clint Smith on the radio, according to Holton, was George Heitman, a maintenance worker at a Christian day camp, who was the first to file suit. In January 1997, Heitman charged that the chef had coerced him to have sex when he was 15--leading him to drugs and attempted suicide. He wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to anyone else, he told USA Today.
In April 1997, Clint Smith filed suit separately, through a different attorney, and six others joined in Heitman’s suit several days later.
“When I read the articles in the newspaper, my jaw hangs open,” says John Givens, who worked on the first Frugal Gourmet shows. Givens says he had never seen any sexual misbehavior by Smith, though he recalls hearing that someone had once leafletted cars around the restaurant, making accusations against the chef.
Clint Smith’s suit charged the PBS star with both rape and breach of contract: that Jeff Smith had “intimidated, coerced and persuaded” him to have sex in the late ‘70s, when Clint was under 16; agreed to a large 1991 settlement; and then failed to pay the full amount. He filed a document purporting to be the settlement with the chef. The defense attorney called it “a bogus creation.”
Judge Fleming dismissed the suit, now under appeal, but information on the case is scarce; the judge closed hearings and sealed documents in Clint Smith’s case last fall, apparently to avoid pretrial publicity that could sway potential jurors in the seven-person case.
“Just about everybody I talked to told a simlar story of being encouraged to drink alcohol and undergoing a grooming process,” says Deborah Holton of the Oregonian. “Jeff Smith was a well-known and respected member of the adult community there. The boys went in thinking this is a good guy, and they were pretty overwhelmed by the touching and the drinking. They ended up feeling they were a little collusive.”
One plaintiff, Chris Thomas of San Diego, told USA Today he stuck with the job at Smith’s deli even though he was fending off advances by the boss. “It was one of those dirty little secrets--in a big way.”
Heitman had been deeply ashamed of what happened. “I felt very trapped, and very confused,” he told the Seattle Times. “My parents were happy that I was working. I wasn’t a real high achiever at school. It was a total nightmare.”
The plaintiffs tried to place some responsibility on Patti Smith, the chef’s wife and business partner, for not stopping the abuses, and Holton, the Oregonian reporter, who has done volunteer work in social services, believes other members of the larger community may also have erred by not investigating rumors about Jeff Smith.
“In the course of talking with people around Tacoma, I found this was an open secret in Tacoma,” says Holton. “This community had heard about this and known about it for years. ... I think part of the reason people don’t want to believe it is that it means they had turned their back on it.”
Web page originally posted July 28, 1998
Current: the newspaper about public TV and radio in the United States
Current Publishing Committee, Washington, D.C.
Wow. Where was I when all this was going on? I think I was applying to culinary school, getting into culinary school, applying for scholarships, going to school, doing my internship, living in my little restaurant bubble, not looking up for an instant at anything going on in the world around me. Considering that Lloyd grew up in Tacoma, and thus has good radar for any news from home, I can’t believe we both missed this. Unless he told me about it, and I just didn’t hear him.
My, it’s getting dark in here. :(
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I am (almost) speechless with this Jen. Of course, I’ve gushed about your writing before. Of course, I’ve told you of the inspirational nature of your musing time and again. But here, wow- am I a bad cook cause I didn’t get along with my mother (or just cause she was a bad cook? O- the Pandora’s box nature of it all).
All I can do is what I always do- share my anecdotal evidence. My trip to sister-in-law’s condo… If ever there was a polished falseness, a practiced indifference yet lack of caring that absolutely rings true, she is it. Her dear husband is the cook, and in his creamy shrimp and scallop buttery wine sauce I saw heart, love, commitment. This girl should know the luck that has been bestowed upon her in this culinary find of a man (with the good sense to make a nice meat based red sauce for the child’s palate, as well). We joked of our show on Food Network- me being the clueless patsy chopping the veggies of to the side, or course. I told him I had a previous commitment to that dream…