Today's Musical Selection: "America the Beautiful" by Ray Charles
Hello, all. I hope it was a pleasant weekend for everybody. For me, the weekend was colored by the death of Jeff Smith. The name is probably not familiar to most of you. It might become more familiar if I tell you that he was the Frugal Gourmet. For many of you, he might still not be familiar, or familiar only in a "I wonder what ever happened to...?" sense. Well, buckle in and listen to my story. I miss the Frug, and if no one else is going to mourn his passing, I will.
The Frugal Gourmet sparked my love of cooking. As a kid, I used to watch his show religiously on TV. This was back in the old days, when cooking shows were the domain of PBS, and were actually focused on teaching people to cook, rather than a venue for egomaniacal celebrity chefs to preen and pimp their cookbooks and talk about truffles as if anyone who doesn't keep them on hand is a hopeless clod.
Once upon a time, cooking shows were a much friendlier venture. I watched Nathalie Dupree, the sweet Southern woman with the impeccably clean apron, and Martin Yan, the exciteable Chinese fellow who told bad puns and flashed a mean cleaver, and Justin Wilson, the drunken Cajun who tossed ingredients around in between antic Louisiana folktales told in his molasses-thick dialect, and of course Julia Child. But the Frugal Gourmet was my favorite of the whole bunch.
The show didn't have a gimmick. The Frugal Gourmet never cooked a chicken in the dishwasher. He didn't pretend that caviar was a staple of the average pantry. He didn't lecture everyone on the proper Italian pronunciation of his dishes. He didn't have a studio audience of zombies that shouted "Bam!" He simply showed the average person how to make delicious dishes simply and inexpensively. That was it. And in the pre-Food Network days, that was enough.
What made it work was the Frug himself. Smith was a warm, gentle man (encompassed in his end-of-show benediction, "I bid you peace") with an easy sense of humor. He was like an old patriarch, passing down family stories and recipes and techniques to the next generations. His philosophy was based on the idea, lost on the celebrity chefs, that cooking should be fun, not intimidating. Rather than "Let me show you how amazing I am," Smith sent the message, "Let me show you that you can do this too."
He saw cooking, too, as part of a larger vision, as something that ties our nation together. Some of our proudest moments, Smith believed, were achieved over the kitchen stove. Getting Americans out of the McDonald's and into the home again would help to make us a greater nation.
Let me share a passage from the introduction to one of his cookbooks, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American, so you can see what I'm talking about. Try to imagine manic Emeril Lagasse, frosty Martha Stewart or smirking Bobby Flay saying this:
We Americans have had a bad image of ourselves and our food for a long time, and I am done with it. I am so tired of people from the New World bowing to Europe, particularly France, when it comes to fine eating. We seem to think that if it comes from Europe it will be good, and if it comes from America it will be inferior. Enough! We really do not understand our own food history, and I think that means we do not actualy understand our own culture.
Most Americans do not think of themselves as an ethnic group, but we are an ethnic body, all of us put together. The word ethnic comes from the Greek ethnos, meaning "nation." It refers not necessarily to a bloodline but to a group of persons distinguished by singular customs, characteristics, and language. While we are a nation populated for the most part by immigrants, we are nevertheless an ethnic group, a strange mixture, perhaps, but an ethnic group. We share a common language, but more importantly, we share a common memory. And there certainly is such a thing as American ethnic cooking. It is cooking that helps us remember and restore that common cultural memory.
Writing like that blows me away. It's accessible, engaging, and encouraging (calling on us Americans to reclaim our culinary legacy), but more than that, it's a clarion call. A Declaration of Independence for cooking! He reminds us that what binds us together as a nation is more than some distant symbols and yellowing documents locked away in museums. We are a nation of chefs! And our national cuisine is a living thing, the perfect example of the metaphorical "melting pot" that gets harder and harder to believe in. It seems implausible that cooking together could heal our national fragmentation, sure, but Smith makes it sound possible. And you could tell it wasn't just rhetoric. He believed every word of it.
He also encouraged families to cook together, a message that my family took to heart. As in most families, I suppose, my mom did most of the cooking. But my dad got into it as well, thanks to the Frugal Gourmet. Inspired by my interest, my parents bought the Frug's cookbooks. And my dad started looking through them, and preparing some of the recipes. You must understand about my dad: during his childhood, mealtime was something to be endured, not enjoyed. Over the years, he has regaled us with tales of childhood dishes such as Shake-'n'-Bake squirrel, ham in orange sauce, and meatloaf made with Lucky Charms (marshmallows included). Based on his stories, it's a wonder that Dad wasn't put off eating altogether in his youth.
Suffice to say, cooking was not part of his repertoire. But the Frugal Gourmet changed that. He started doing some cooking. He made Shrimp Louie and Oysters Alvin and peanut soup. And I was his trusted assistant, loyally retrieving ingredients, mixing and measuring. This was just one of the ways that my dad took time out of his busy schedule to spend with me (a subject for another post), but it's one of the ones I remember best. Together, my dad and I came to enjoy cooking.
Some of my favorite college moments involved cooking. In particular, I remember one morning that four of us spent the entire morning making the biggest breakfast ever served. Waffles, omelets, bacon, multiple sauces and syrups, etc., etc. We were just playing "Can You Top This?", culinarily, for three hours. Or the time when one of our apartment-mates had a crush on the RA, so we invited her over and cooked up an Italian feast for the two of them. (It didn't work, alas.) Cooking wasn't a dread undertaking; it was fun, like improvisational jazz in the garage.
So what happened to the Frugal Gourmet? Why isn't he remembered as fondly as Julia Child (whom he may have been, for a time, more popular than)? Well, that's where the scandal comes in. In 1997, a former assistant of Smith's accused the chef of sexually abusing him. Once the first allegation was lodged, many other young men came forward accusing Smith of abuse. Smith settled out of court for millions of dollars, and the case faded away. But so did Smith's career. His show was cancelled, and he produced no new books or shows after the scandal. His health declined significantly in the aftermath, and he was only 65 at the time of his death.
I don't know what to say about the allegations. Nothing was formally found in court, though the payoff was awfully large for someone innocent. It's hard to square the allegations with Smith's image as a man of God (he was an ordained Methodist minister), although the recent Catholic Church scandals have perhaps made us less capable of surprise in this area. If Smith did what he was accused of, then he will have to deal with that in the hereafter. If he did not do what he was accused of, then I can't imagine a more awful fate than what befell him. He lost his career, his good name, and quite possibly years off his life.
Either way, I do not choose to remember the man for the scandal. I prefer to remember the sweet, gentle Frug, encouraging us all to follow is example, demystifying cooking for the average person. Especially nowadays, when the Food Network chefs seem to think that cooking is all about them, it's refreshing to remember someone who kept the focus on the cooking. I keep the old Frugal Gourmet cookbooks on my kitchen shelf and refer to them often, not necessatily for the recipes themselves (I'm not a by-the-book cook), but for the inspiration and the stories. I bid you peace, Jeff. Godspeed.
Another moment of silence for Isabel Sanford, whom you should remember as Weezy from The Jeffersons, who died at age 86. Weezy's patient, loving, take-no-crap persona was the perfect foil for vainglorious blowhard George. And I'll never forget the time that she dropped the N-word on the air. I loved The Jeffersons, one of the few shows to deal openly and honestly with race, and Isabel will be much missed.
I was all set to resume the Joe Morgan Watch this week, but he didn't make too many memorable flubs last night (at least not during the part of the game that I watched). One moment did, however, stick in my craw. He and Jon Miller were plugging the All-Star Game, and Jon mentions the game's slogan, "This One Counts." Bear in mind that MLB has been flogging this slogan relentlessly for two years, that it's part of all the All-Star advertisements, and it's basically been drummed into the brain of the average baseball fan as if we were the Manchurian Candidate. So Joe says, "Yeah, I think I heard that idea somewhere before." Dios mio, friends. I think I've heard it somewhere before too, Joe.
Here's a link that has provided me with endless amusement: Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About. It is exactly what it sounds like, only better. Mil Millington, author of the page, has a wonderfully British sense of humor and a well-honed sense of injustice, both of which make his page a hoot and a half. You'll thank me later.
This just in: My main man Frinklin has nominated me for Mu Nu-dom, or something. I'm not entirely sure what this means, but Frinklin thinks I'm "super-groovy"! How about that! I am honored by the nomination, and we'll see how it goes.
Finally, The Smart Lady takes a few whacks at one of her favorite targets, Tim Noah. She said it all, and much better than I would have, so just go over and read it.
Posted by Fred at July 12, 2004 05:02 PM