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Helen
Nearing: An advocate for the simple life
November 11, 04
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
I’m an advocate of cooking from scratch in lieu of relying
on packaged foods. It’s cheaper, and home-cooked meals
can be better for you because you control the ingredients.
But there’s a key to pulling off home cooking these
days when most of us are chronically short on time. The essential
factor: Simplicity.
One champion of simplicity in the kitchen was Helen Nearing,
a woman I met in 1995, shortly before she was killed in a
car accident at the age of 91. She was a legend in some circles,
having been – with her husband, Scott – a pioneering
homesteader in New England since the 1930s.
Nearing gave me a copy of one of her books, Simple Food for
the Good Life: An Alternative Cook Book, first published in
1980 and reissued by Chelsea Green Publishing Company in 1999.
A phrase on the front cover of the book tickled me and captured
the attitude of Nearing that I so admired. It said, “Intended
for the use of people of moderate fortune who do not affect
magnificence in their style of living.”
Later in the book, she stated that her objective was to “write
on simple food for simple-living people” and to pass
on her ideas about cooking “which call for little experience,
little time, little money, few ingredients and a minimum of
complication.”
This pragmatic approach to food was in keeping with the impression
I had of Nearing as a tough, no-nonsense woman who met no
challenge she couldn’t master.
Nearing subscribed to the no-recipe approach to cooking. “I
rarely read or consult a cookbook,” she said. “I’m
a spur-of-the-moment cook and make do with what materials
are at hand ….”
Many of the lessons Nearing shared have value for those of
us who want to eat well but have to work within the constraints
of complicated, busy lives. Among her gems:
* Eat simply. Nearing recommended “hearty, harmless
food, simple and sustaining: simple foods for simple-living
people, not complicated food for complex sophisticates.”
According to Nearing, “If a recipe cannot be written
on the face of a 3x5 card, off with its head.”
* Eat as well as you want to live. Nearing’s motto:
“Live hard not soft; eat hard not soft; seek fiber in
foods and in life.”
* Don’t stress over meals. Nearing geared her book “for
simple-living people who have other things paramount on their
minds rather than culinary concerns” and “who
eat to nourish their bodies and leave self-indulgent delicacies
to the gourmets.”
* Enjoy food, but guard against excess. She wrote: “Cookbooks
are usually designed for people who are overfed and oversupplied
with food and who are looking for tasty additions to stimulate
their worn-out appetites.” She counseled simplicity,
in part, to ward off cravings for unhealthy foods: “If
you eat twice as much popcorn when it is heavily buttered
and salted, why butter and salt it? Eat a moderate amount
of plain popcorn and then stop.”
* Be creative in preparing meals. Nearing experimented with
whatever ingredients were on hand. She thought that keeping
a modest amount of food in the house was preferable to an
overflowing pantry. Having less “fosters more ingenuity,”
she said.
* Eat foods as close to their natural state as possible. Among
the advantages: it’s easier, better for your health,
and you’ll use fewer dishes, pans, and utensils.
Simple words … for the good life.
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