Procrastadabbler

Eating simply doesn’t mean one has to eat poor quality food. A long long time ago a friend invited us to dinner. She was totally into mega complicated cooking. She asked what we liked and I said, simple foods. I don’t remember what she serve us but it was unremarkable.

30 years later I now have a better idea of what I meant then (but didn’t know it). Simple foods means cooking that keeps what you are consuming close to the source. If you use wonderful ingredients, you don’t need sauces and complicated techniques.

For example, tonight I made pan seared scallops on a bed of chard and a side of brown rice. For dessert we had red wine poached pears. It was a simple approach to cooking yet incredibly delicious. The flavors of the foods are what came through. The scallops were seared in great olive oil with a bit of browned butter. The chard had carmelized onions, pancetta, tomato, and garlic with a wee bit of tamari sauce. The poached pears just red wine, sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon. The food was the center piece, not my cooking. That’s the secret.

I think this way of thinking extends to multiple areas of our lives. I work in the field of education – teacher education to be precise. I am coming to believe that the art of teaching involves getting down to the simple. That doesn’t mean basic skills and drill. That means understanding what it is that people need. People need to be part of something, to do something important to them, to be loved. If we can do that in education we have concocted a powerful recipe for learning.