Dear Tamar:
Should I use canned beans, or only beans cooked from scratch? How much of a cooking purist should I be?
-Brooklyn- (not Boston-) baked-beans-Barbie
Dear Barbie,
Nearly twenty years ago, I was in a bar in Turin the night of the Brazilian presidential election. It was during a Slow Food Conference supporting traditional food-ways like the Enkarterri Bean from Basque Country, Black Buckwheat Vinegar from Shanxi, China, the Bataati Sweet Potato from Somalia. The bar was full of Brazilians. When Lula won, one of them gave me his straw hat to wear as we danced around, celebrating—a bit of festive camaraderie that made a notch in my memory.
I also remember that night because I got caught eating cheeseballs.
I say “caught” semi-ironically. One of the two women who “caught” me had chosen me—chef of a seasonal, local restaurant in Athens, Georgia, as a delegate to the Slow Food Conference. There was irony to finding me at that very conference, hand in the proverbial, industrially-produced, chemical-laden, highly-processed cheeseball-jar.
But there was something else, too. When the women first saw me, they were shocked: Of all people—they said—you’re the last one I’d expect to be eating cheeseballs. (NB: I’m still friends with one of them. We’ve talked about this all. This friend has no beef with cheeseballs. As a matter of fact: they’re her son’s favorite food. If I time it right—like around a birthday or holiday—I can sometimes find some in her kitchen.)
The point wasn’t what either of the people who saw me with cheeseballs thought of cheeseballs. The point was a perceived purity, and a perceived violation. I was devoted to changing how people eat and grow and buy and cook their food. What was I doing eating cheeseballs?
A similar thing happened a few weeks ago. I showed up to a tennis match drinking one of those little cans of Diet Coke. My tennis partner affected the same shock the cheeseball detectives had: You’re the last person I could have imagined drinking a Diet Coke! A few weeks later, I was in Chicago for the James Beard Awards and impulsively bought a little, plush Kung Fu Panda keychain for my son. My agent, whom I was with, laughed: I was just thinking: Tamar must never ever buy plastic garbage for her son when she travels.
Your question about purity left me with my own: Why? Why—given how complicated, contradictory, occasionally hypocritical, messy, and flawed we all know ourselves to be—would I be any more consistent? I don’t even know if I try for consistency! (“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” and all that!) Or for purity. Why would I possess any more coherence than anyone else? Or, setting people aside: what even in nature could be so unmoving? Even a calm lake roils underneath.
This column isn’t about me—or it won’t be from here on. You didn’t ask about cheeseballs or Diet Coke. You asked how much of a purist you should be when it comes to beans. According to me, you should be none of one. Prohibitions have a way of heating up exactly what they seek to proscribe. There’s rarely much to gain by hard rules, other than a strong recoil in the opposite direction. Also, I don’t think attempts at purity succeed. It’s more rational to aspire to some other virtue. Balance, perhaps? Holding two things in one’s mind at a time. Compassion. Complexity. Astonishment.
Dear cook, use canned beans. Soak dried beans when you think of it, and cook them the next day, freezing some, so you have your own frozen cooked beans. Buy canned bean soup and jazz it up. If you love them, and there’s a party with straw hats and an excited electorate, might I recommend the cheeseballs? They’re not “good.” But there is usually some bad in there with any good, anyway. I can accept that. What I cannot accept is anyone, whether in Brooklyn or Boston or Brazil, feeling impure, or like a disappointment to ideals. The path forward, in my experience, includes both wrong turns and right ones.
Many years ago when I was a yoga teacher....I went to dinner with several other yoga teachers and students. I ordered something with chicken in it. One of the people at the table said "you're so honest". The assumption being that all yoga instructors are or should be vegetarians. I didn't say anything at the time. But later I said to my husband..."does that mean she lies about being a vegetarian?" "You're so honest" is one of our favorite phrases. Want another cookie? You're so honest. 😂. Regarding beans...I use both depending on my time and inclination. The freezing thing is key though. Sort of best of both worlds.
It is a great pleasure to read from The Kitchen Shrink! It is always intelligent with humor, charming ,entertaining anecdotes and packed with information. Many thanks for illuminating my day.