Cook What You Have

In September 1959, Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States, the first such visit by a Soviet leader. Beyond the usual stops such as the United Nations and Camp David, he also visited 20th Century Fox and met with Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe. His trip to Disneyland was canceled due to security issues, much to Khrushchev’s dismay.

From my point of view, his visit to a San Francisco supermarket was the highlight, and it was followed up years later when Boris Yeltsin visited a supermarket in Texas, Randalls, where he enjoyed free cheese samples and Jell-O Pudding Pops. Neither Khrushchev nor Yeltsin had ever been in a store with thousands of products for sale. It showcased the power of capitalism over communism but, as it turns out, there may be a dark side to this silver lining.

Back in the 1970s, a study was done of Russians who had emigrated to the borough of Queens in NYC. There was a problem: too many choices. In Russia, you stood in line for hours and bought whatever was available. There was only one make of car and it took years to get one. And you had to join a queue for an apartment which was often not available during your lifetime, or perhaps you shared a communal apartment with another family.

Contrary to what one might expect, this first big wave of Russian immigrants who encountered almost limitless choice were unhappy. Endless choice was disconcerting and exhausting. It made life worse, not better.

And that brings me to cooking. Having spent summers and many weekends on a small Vermont farm as a kid, I have seen limited choice up close. There was no supermarket nearby and the farmers cooked what they had: beef, milk, flour, butter, root vegetables (mostly potatoes), pickled cow’s tongue, and a few half-gone vegetables from the root cellar or purchased at the country store. I saw the same thing in Transylvania a year ago—large root cellars with pickled, fermented, and canned foods, more than enough to carry a family through the winter.

One emigrant to the USA, Elena Gorokhova, wrote about her introduction to the USA back in 2015: “Back home, Russia assaulted you in your nostrils: milk always on the verge of turning sour, the wet wool of winter coats we wore every day for at least five months of the year, rubber phone-booth tiles buckled with urine, exhaust from trucks that ran on leaded petrol, mothballs, yesterday’s soup.”

Life was extraordinarily difficult, yet, as she writes, “Back home, in the cradle of the first socialist revolution, everything was more understandable. Emotions were out in the open, from salespeople’s resentment to bureaucrats’ indifference.”

She sums up what she loves about Russia by saying, “Things were clearly delineated so we always knew what to expect.”

And this is where many home cooks get into trouble. Instead of focusing on a small repertoire of recipes as a starting point, we pinball from one cuisine to the next, never digging deep enough to master the art of cooking.

I remember my parents talking about the Great Depression and I was intrigued by the fondness they had for those hardscrabble times. I have seen first-hand what a life with limited choice is like in the Green Mountains of Vermont. I have traveled the world only to discover that most home cooks revel in repetition; using limited seasonal ingredients to prepare their family’s favorite dishes.

It is nothing new to suggest that the simple things in life produce the most happiness. One writer gave unlimited choice a name—“the tyranny of small decisions”—and goes on to suggest, “Learn to love constraints.”

I can imagine Boris Yeltsin’s first look at an American supermarket—it was a Shangri-la of choice—but choice, as it turns out, can be a burden. Living a life of constraints may be the road to happiness.

But, let’s be honest, We all buy strawberries in January. Creating a simple life is a lot more complicated than it looks.