On Monday, I went to my friend Laura’s house for lunch, and she served spicy beans, barbecued sausage, and seaweed salad. What a lunch! Much different from my usual yogurt and crackers or peanut butter on English muffin. (Sometimes I get really crazy and have an egg.) I also got to meet Shari Burke, who writes a snappy blog called Craftivist in the Kitchen.

We talked of many things, but because Laura, Shari, and I are all extremely interested in food—some might call it obsessed, and they wouldn’t be too far off the mark—the conversation quite naturally turned to cooking and eating. I told them how I was reading Cooked by Michael Pollan and Maine Home Cooking by Sandra Oliver and how the two books both agreed and disagreed with each other.

Michael Pollan thinks that home-cooked meals are the way to go—as does Sandra Oliver—-but Pollan believes that there is too little cooking happening in most American homes. Sandra Oliver, on the other hand, thinks that there is, in fact, a lot of cooking happening in many households but that it is simple, unfussy cooking far removed from the fancy techniques touted in many books and magazines and on some of the cooking shows.

What Sandra Oliver wrote in her introduction to Maine Home Cooking is so worthwhile that I’m going to share it here, even though when I was talking to Laura and Shari, I could only paraphrase Oliver’s sentiment: “I hear a lot about how no one cooks any more. Some of my friends even tell me they don’t cook, but I notice they are feeding their families and they look reasonably healthy to me. When I ask them how they do it, they say, ‘Well, I just roast a chicken and boil some potatoes and make a salad.’ Lots more people cook in a modest, daily, simple fashion than the professionals give us credit for.”

I totally agree with Oliver’s take on American cooking. One only has to go into a supermarket, those hum-drum places where most Americans shop, to realize that Oliver is completely right. I know there is a lot of junky, processed food in the supermarket. I’ll even confess that I like some of that junky food, and I have a stash of Twizzlers in my food closet. However, along with all the junky food that isn’t good for you, there is plenty of fresh, nutritious food. To name just some of the many choices: Lettuce, broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots. Cheese, yogurt, chicken, and tofu. Flour, oil, salt, and baking powder. Peanuts, walnuts, and cashews. Black beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans. Garlic. Onions. Apples. Bananas. Oranges. (I’m essentially going through my own shopping list, and I’ll stop here.)

All the food I listed plus many other healthy choices are in abundant profusion, and if people were only buying Hamburger Helper and boxed macaroni and cheese, then the selection of healthy food would be much smaller than it is in most grocery stores. The abundance suggests that many people—indeed most, I would posit—are often buying simple but healthy food to cook for themselves and their families. (And sure, they also throw in a bag or two of chips.)

And why don’t people think they are cooking? I suppose it’s because, as Oliver suggests, they are not using “twenty-seven fancy ingredients and spending half the day in the kitchen.” I do want to make it clear that I think there is a place for “fancy” cooks and for chefs who have elevated cooking to an art. I admire them, but it does a disservice to everyday cooks to look down on simple ingredients and to not consider it cooking to serve chicken, potatoes, and salad for supper. I hope we can, at some point, move beyond this either/or attitude to acknowledge that both simple and complex cooking have their place in our culture.

Anyway, how wonderful it was to talk to Shari and Laura and then to use the conversation as a springing point for something that has been on my mind for quite a while. I look forward to our next get together.