Chef-ing or Feed-ing

I’ve been puzzling over this for months as I read blogs and articles that go into detail — sometimes excrutiating detail — about how to cook something.  How to cook a hamburger, using six different fats and 10 different cooking methods. How to sear a steak, how to make a barbecue sauce. Most of them reference cooking chemist Harold McGee, and most of them make cooking sound like a long and arduous journey that’s worth it only if the discovery at the end is perfection.

I don’t cook that way; although I experiment, I’m not that exact. I never even practice a dish before I serve it to guests. Hopefully, it works out, usually it does, and there’s always homemade bread to fall back on (German lore insists on good bread) if something flops.

Nora Ephron

But the other day, I read a profile of Nora Ephron, whose famously combined food and literature (”Heartburn”, the screen play for “When Harry Met Sally.”) In it, she serves a meal with a medley of food and opines that she’s not a serious cook, she’s a “feeder.”

That’s it. I’m a feeder. And proud of it.