Photo by Flickr user stu_spivack. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Political blogger Ezra Klein, who sometimes moonlights about food on the weekends, wrote a cool point about cooking.

I like the basic idea behind this Grist article coaxing folks to incorporate the farmer’s market into their daily lives, but I don’t think it quite demystifies the task.

“Many of my friends want to shop at the farmers market, but they complain that they end up with drawers of rotting produce. It’s a common problem with an easy solution: a well-stocked pantry.” Sort of. Having staples is the first step. Most people who go to farmer’s markets, however, have some dry pasta at home. Even so, I know a lot of folks who walk by the produce stands and freeze: What the hell do you do with kale, anyway? Or with Swiss chard? And if you don’t come to the farmer’s market with a recipe in hand, won’t you then have to go back out later for more ingredients?

Here’s the thing: Just about nothing at the farmer’s market is specific to itself or its own recipes. Buy whatever. Buy anything. There are relatively few combinations of grain, vegetable, and protein that don’t work, and having a couple types of grains on hand will generally ensure you never have to face one of them down. That’s the point of the pantry. It lets you buy anything fresh, because you already have the basics at home.

He said it here.

I can’t say what a great point this is. My big breakthrough happened in college when, as always too broke to eat even in my college cafeteria I dashed home between classes to whip up a box of supermarket-brand macaroni and cheese only to discover the cupboard was… pretty much bare. In a bit of a panic to whip something up and still make it to class I boiled some dry spaghetti and then, at the last minute, decided to grate a bit of cheddar cheese from the fridge into the drained noodles. I sprinkled a bit of butter and then a splash of milk as the cheese melted in the residual heat, stirred, added a dash of salt and a twist of pepper from a pepper mill and… it was the best mac and cheese I’d ever eaten in my life. And incrementally quicker and cheaper than even the boxed stuff! I think I ate that stuff every day for lunch for the next five months. It was only several years later, when in a similar rush I discovered there was no cheddar or butter and tried… parmesan cheese and olive oil. If it took forever to try something besides cheddar it took only till the next day to try adding a few dried basil flakes to go with the parmesan and olive oil. A bit of cream instead of milk and more parmesan and I suddenly had a better-than-average-restaurant alfredo sauce! Again in as much time as it took to whip up a box of Kraft knockoff… and on a starving-student budget, schedule and skill level!

Which I think illustrates Klein’s point: sure, it might be nice to have a degree from Culinary Institute of America, a kitchen full of copper and chrome, Anthony Bourdan’s hair, and Rachel Ray’s travel budget… but if you look at what you actually need the list is a lot shorter: a little olive oil, chocolate, and maybe some wine, a few good utensils, somewhere to store things till you need them, clean surfaces to work on, something to heat things up and cool them down, something to keep things sanitary, a couple of simple how-to books, and a little unselfconscious willingness to fumble around a bit. Oh yeah, and someone to do it for or, no less important, with. (You’d think I’d add “enthusiasm” but I’ve found that tends to follow from positive results even when it doesn’t precede them.)

Now I could just stop there, and if this wasn’t a blog about relationships and sex I might. Instead I’ll add that my list for success applies in many aspects of life.

For instance I got an interesting comment on my post about flannel pajamas as “lingerie” from Texture612 who said, among other things

I know the fashionistas aren’t keen on it, but they don’t know this beauty since they’re all daisy-chaining each other.

...at least if the sentence means what I’m going to assume he or she meant then it’s a good point that popular culture sort of trains us to expect that “exotic” activities like “daisy-chain” group sex require that one wear “exotic” attire as well. In fact, however, my strong impression from various sources is that most people who regularly do “exotic” things tend more towards the practical… and easily laundered. Flannel pajamas being practical as well as comfortable and (especially important for folks in temperate climates) warm would work fine.

In fact it might be nice to have memorized all versions of The Joy of Sex, furnished your bedroom from JTStockroom, own a custom-fit leather corset or chaps, and have so much in-depth knowledge that vibrator manufacturers beg you to review their pre-release products, a Body by Jake, and any car that isn’t a minivan**. But really? All you need is…

...a little olive oil, chocolate, and maybe some wine, a few good utensils, somewhere to store things till you need them, clean surfaces to work on, something to heat things up and cool them down, something to keep things sanitary, a couple of simple how-to books, and a little unselfconscious willingness to fumble around a bit. Oh yeah, and someone to do it for or, no less important, with.

Flannel jammies optional.

[Two words for the wise: Minivans rock. —fl]