It’s becoming increasingly impossible to talk about food without mentioning food cost. It seems as if every trip to City Market, even if it’s seemingly inconsequential, ends with a wince, and that’s after comparing and contrasting the different specials and discount shelves.
Yes, I could really clamp down on my finances and get by on a diet of processed foods and Tums. Frozen pizzas are a staple of any balanced budget, but who wants to, or can, live like that? There have been arguments that food is art. While there’s a trail of gas stations turkey sandwiches during my many road trips that say otherwise, not all paintings are masterpieces, and I’d argue that there’s an art form connected to all of our senses.
There are visual and auditory mediums. Massage could be considered an art form, as could sex. People wouldn’t buy perfume or cologne if they weren’t pleasing aromas, and you literally can’t have a good meal without taste or smell. Even texture plays a part in taste and eating.
Someone who’s had a slimy canned mushroom before their first chanterelle likely is going to approach the next batch of fungi with hesitation. There’s a number of tries, between eight and 15, that researchers say are required before you know if you like or detest a new food. My contention is it’s probably a lot less if the bite in question is cooked properly and the ingredient is of substantive quality.
That’s why those frozen meals consist of vegetables that reheat well. During the growing seasons, however, eating frozen or canned offerings between June and October should be outlawed. The reason preserving started was to extend the life of foods that you literally couldn’t grow. Now, it’s just cheaper to make items that are shelf stable and don’t rot in a matter of weeks.
Access to good, quality food is expensive, and even more so for good, quality restaurants. I thought about writing on the mountain town-ification of Durango and how it parallels a lot of what happened while I lived in Aspen. Watching all of the bar and grills get replaced by bistros and steakhouses was as depressing as it was divisive.
The reason it’s polarizing isn’t just for consumers, and the reason I stop short of getting mad at restaurant owners, is it’s a pretty well-established fact that starting a restaurant is one of the worst business ventures that you can try. Asking chefs or restaurateurs to open an affordable eatery is asking for a level of altruism that many business people and capitalists have deemed foolish.
So the question is not just: How do those priced out of certain grocery aisles and restaurants get a quality meal? It’s how do eaters incentivize restaurants to whittle down its already paper thin margins? And that’s even before asking how long are these prices going to stay this high?
The only redeeming value of paying exorbitant prices for a carton of eggs or a pint of cherry tomatoes at the grocery store is the costs are pretty comparable to those you find at the farmers market. While that might work out in a backward way for local purveyors, and I want to prop up an agriculture industry that’s facing its own set of challenges, the current climate in the U.S. is skewed toward big corporations. Hell, some American farmland is being sold to China.
That brings me back to the conundrum of how to talk about food in a way that’s not demoralizing or a reminder of the lagging economy. I guess it’s this: Art doesn’t have to be expensive to be pleasing.
It could be an omelet with farm eggs and thin, crispy mushrooms. Or a slice of a ripe heirloom tomato, sprinkled with salt and pepper, on a fresh bagel with cream cheese. For now, take pleasure in the small things – because those are largely the few items that normal people can afford.
Sean Beckwith is the Food Editor at The Durango Herald. Reach him at sbeckwith@durangoherald.com.
