TED. And thoughts.

I've really been enjoying TED. It's brain candy, I don't agree with everything, and it isn't addictive. It's perfect.

Some ideas people have been throwing out:

1. Authenticity is a consumerist phenomenon, and therefore our desire for it has been both manufactured and the result of cultural evolution.

2. One guy sampled some of the world's finest delicacies (including a ride in an expensive car, Kobe beef, and staggeringly expensive rotten grape juice)

3. Another man spoke about what sort of revolution came about when a smart man first developed variety among spaghetti sauces. He contends that rather than having one superlative product, a rainbow of superlative products can better answer American preferences.

So, here are the thoughts.

The search for authenticity led spaghetti producers to offer a thin sauce that doesn't stick to noodles, because that's what real Italians in Italy make to put over their pasta. However, they later found that consumers truly desire a chunky spaghetti sauce that sticks to pasta, and then they had to make it seem as if that were the truly authentic version. They made it appear as if the inferior sauce were simply a failed American machination and that the chunky stuff was actually the real thing and therefore superior, rather than allowing the superior virtues to speak for themselves.

The guy who tried the Kobe beef also said that a lot of these things that the super rich pay for end up being largely anticlimactic, but that some things might be worth experiencing once or twice in your life "just for the experience." And another man goes on to say that there is no such thing as a truly authentic experience. Even if you're going for a hike in the woods, you drove a car to the bottom of the mountain, you're hiking in man-made boots, and you're eating food that you either brought or was carefully preserved in a national park setting so it would be safe to eat. There are so few places in this world that aren't touched by man and even searching for or finding them and then arriving at them nullifies their virginity.

So let's talk about hipness. Being hip is such an interesting idea. You can only be truly hip if you like truly good music that few people have heard of, or have read truly good books not so many people have read, or gone on vacations to truly enjoyable places that seem novel. The hipsters search for the unknown or little known experience but as soon as its known and appreciated in general, it is no longer hip. Thus hipness is ever elusive and vastly individual because part of hipness is having a fascinating and aesthetic personal style. In our search for the perfect spaghetti sauce, we have forgotten that you can start with a tomato and work your way from there. We moved on to starting with a jar of tomatoes, or a can of tomatoes, and then we moved on to jars of tomato sauce which became jars of spaghetti sauce which became Lucini Italia Sicilian Olive and Wild Caper Sauce.

Someone once told me that American grocery stores are simply overwhelming because there was too much variety. But isn't freedom to choose and the availability of choices part of what makes this country great? This person said she ended up not choosing at all because she was too overwhelmed by the variety. Go into any large grocery store and you will be greeted by at least 20 different kinds of pasta sauce (Alfredo, tomato, pesto, pink) and yet, Man points out that some people will still leave the store without finding that which they sought.

Some would argue that choices are both a skill and an acquired taste. I agree. But at what point are we really satisfied that we have found precisely what we want? At what point have we achieved a superlative experience?

I like Prego. We just get the traditional flavor and I'll add some ground meat, or olives, or mushrooms as I have the whim. I think that a great solution to the choice issue is to have basic platforms from which to work. This scenario works for me because we happen to cook from scratch about 95% of the time. I walk out of the grocery store with potatoes, tomatoes, flour, salt, and milk. I do buy salad dressings and other condiments, but my menues consist of plain ingredients that need preparation. How many households consistently consume food prepared from scratch in their own homes?

I figure, by the time you find your perfect spaghetti sauce (Prego Mushroom), your perfect pasta (Barilla wheat angel hair), your perfect garlic bread (Swanson something or other), get your bagged salad, bagged croutons, and some steamed corn, it has taken you more time and money to research, acquire, and get things out of their packaging than to just throw ingredients into your bread maker, rinse some lettuce, and toss some mushrooms into your basic sauce.

Man pointed out to me that as much "scratch" cooking as we do, we still get pasta from the store, and we like to get a loaf of Italian bread that I slice up, freeze, and use for garlic toast. We also get canned mushrooms (low sodium) to keep in the cupboard rather than risk fresh going bad.

But the question remains: have we become too busy for our food, or has our food allowed us to become too busy for it?

Also: what would we be willing to sacrifice in order to have what we're told is a superlative experience? Remember that you have to work long, hard hours for 10 minutes of Kobe beef. Unless the work itself is a joy and the beef can be considered a further perk, those hours of your life would be far better spent enjoying some underblade chuck used for French dip sandwiches while sitting at a table and cultivating the most important relationships you'll ever develop.

If you really want to solve the American dilemma, let us cook and find a way to make the dishes do themselves, or make them easily disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. I don't think that Americans don't have time to cook for themselves, I just think they don't have time to clean up after themselves.