Food Snobbery

I pride myself on being myself because it took a lot of time and effort to get there. As a teenager I used to be obsessed with the latest trends, until my best friend one day decided that I was not quite cool enough to remain her best friend. As so many other teenagers, I was bullied every single day at school. This lasted for about a year. When I regained my composure after that year, I had some new goals in life. One, to graduate high school ASAP so that I could flee Almelo. First to Utrecht, and eventually even farther away to Los Angeles. Second, to remain as invisible as possible during my time still left there. For several years, I was dressed in black.

I believe this is when my lack of interest in trends started, and it has really taken off during the last couple of years. What's left is me, a person who, I believe, is truly herself. This manifests itself in a number of ways. For example: I don't like fashion. I wear reasonable clothes that are comfortable and practical. I like to dress up in natural colors like black, white, brown and blue. I have never understood those women who like lacy underwear (it itches!) or stiletto heels - I mean, they're uncomfortable, excuciatingly painful, and cold because so much of your foot is exposed to the unmerciful Dutch weather. When will you EVER wear them?! At parties? When you have to spend hours standing on them? No, thank you. I wear flip flops in summer, sneakers in the spring and fall, and high boots with thick socks in winter. Ergo: I am never influenced by what some rich designers that I don't know have decided is 'in' this season.

Nor do I care about reviews about the latest things to watch, listen to or adore. I listen to John Mayer (why does everyone hate John Mayer?), I watch Bride Wars three times in one week and I still like to watch reruns of Dawson's Creek. Why, you may ask. Because they're comfortable. They literally comfort me because I know what I can expect, and that gives me solace in a cruel world. I used to watch, what I refer to as, politically correct movies, like Hotel Rwanda. It left me deeply depressed with the world. Even though I still think it's important to know what's going on in the world, I have stopped watching such movies because they make me feel terrible about things I cannot change. And who has the energy to keep up with the reviews? I have some really intelligent friends but I always wonder how they have the energy to watch this movie, download that CD, look up that website. They always seem to know everything about everyone and it makes me feel so not-up-to-date. Then again, I can barely muster the strength to update my Facebook account every week. Twitter is lost on me.

I also don't care about gossip. Why do other people care? So Britney Spears has a new boyfriend whom she takes to the park with her kids - SO WHAT?! Why is that necessary information, or even entertaining? I must say, though, that my dislike of the currect media circus sometimes goes too far. For years I have been telling myself to watch the news more often, and I just don't. I really think I should. But I don't. Sometimes I get into it and I watch the news for two days in a row, but then I stop again. It's not that I don't want to see the news (even though it's usually depressing) or that I don't find it interesting, but when it's 8 PM and my boyfriend and I finally finished making dinner and crash onto the couch with a beer and a glass of wine, I'd much rather watch a predicatable episode of Bones than the news. And God, what hassle are newspapers! They're too big and they leave smelly black stains on your fingers. I'll pass, thanks.

Anyway, so this is me. Someone who is herself despite what other people think: someone who wears, watches, listens to and reads whatever she wants without adhering to social standards. Or at least so I thought till now.

It turns out that I have one weakness in this protective harness. I think I am a food snob. I am one of those annoying, self-righteous, Jamie Oliver-reading snobs who now tells other people what good food really is. I never go to fast food restaurants anymore (late night drunken aftermaths not included), because, let's face it, that food is crap. Supermarkets are the enemy, with their over-priced, bad quality production food. Local, organic food is the only food worth eating, so I buy most of my supplies at local vegetable and fruit suppliers and organic butchers. Only free-range eggs come into my house. If this means charging my friends more money because I insist on cooking organic food only, I will just do it. I also preach to other people about the holiness of organic food (mostly to my family, since they can't really disown me in any way). Whenever I cook some of the recipes that I used to cook before, I feel like a cheater, because only the recipes from one of Jamie Oliver's books is really worth cooking. Also, diet products are the work of the devil. People are so obsessed with being thin these days that these Frankenstein producers remove everything that is to like about a product, replace it with chemicals, and call it diet. Seriously, what's the point in eating something like a low fat brownie?! It tastes like crap! If you're really worried about your health (health, not weight) you'd be much wiser to eat less brownies, but when you do eat a brownie, please get a decent one filled with real chocolate and real butter. It makes the sin that much more pleasurable. With the exception of diet Coke (which I like because it's watery) I only eat REAL food.

Plus, every celebration is immersed in food. Every major holiday is celebrated by cooking food for other people. Tomorrow I will cook a six-course meal for eleven (!) colleagues. At Jochem's family I will cook Italian crostini and a Jamie Oliver (of course) salad. At my family I will cook risotto. Is it my birthday? Let's cook Thai curry! Is it our anniversary? Let's go to Fifteen in Amsterdam! Do we have some money left to spare? Let's go to the Italian store and buy truffel at €10 per 10 grams.

Of course I love food. But I've also noticed that everybody loves the person doing the cooking. And... we've come full circle.