they've taken my wife. I can see it by what she eats. Dark, French roast coffee used to be good enough for her. Now her coffee has to have vanilla flavoring. She used to drink grapefruit juice. Now she drinks something called "Rio Red Grapefruit Blend." Some of the ingredients of this are "Concentrated white grape, Rio Red Grapefruit, Lemon Juice and Red Cabbage Extract (for color)."

This is not one more piece on the evils of labelling. I don't give a damn if I can't pronounce the names of half of the ingredients on a label. The point, for me, is, does it work? If the unpronounceable components in Hellman's mayo can form a molecular bond with the unpronounceable components in a can of tuna and together make a great tunafish sandwich, then all is well. But coffee and hazelnuts are never going to do anything together other than give bored suburban housewives a mind-blowing idea of their own sophistication.

The low-gravy on this issue is that it speaks volumes about our fear of commitment. An adult must commit to a juice. Drinking a cran-apple-mango-berry concoction for breakfast is the palatal equivalent of getting blitzed on Harvey Wallbangers on prom night. A mature adult commits to the drink they get plastered on. You're either a Scotch person, a gin person or a vodka person. Only a 19-year-old wants every drink in the bar in one glass.

I realize that I'm being un-American. Here, we are incessantly told, more is better. A local eatery here in town thinks nothing of offering the following dessert: "Baby Sugar Pumpkin Bread-Pudding. Cider Sage Reduction. Persimmon Coulis." What the hell is this? The only touch I like is the word "coulis," but only in a retro-chic '70s way (that decade's fad was to dump anything solid into a blender, turning it into "coulis"). One thing I know is that Paul Bocuse's famous line describing his cooking style as "la cuisine du marché" (roughly translated as "what I found at the market") was never meant to look like this.

It's local, some will argue, so what can be wrong with that? Local-schmocal. Local ingredients are not a carte blanche for excess. The cardinal rule of cooking is not local or seasonal, it's simple. If you don't start with honest flavors, how can you possibly end up with honest results?

It's being experimental, others will say, as they take down a box of "Ginger Bread White-Chocolate Macadamia Biscotti." Sure this is an experiment, except it's an experiment for the market research department at General Foods. And in their experiment you're not wearing the lab coat, you're in the cage.

Back to my wife. She used to be confident, sure of who she was and what she liked. Olive oil, for her, used to mean the taste of olive oil, not the taste of added flavors such as garlic, basil or rosemary (the first time I saw her splash this on a salad, I thought it was something by Mennen).

I hate to see the toll this is taking on her. She lives in a confused daze. She'll put a jar of "chili pesto" on the table and I don't have the heart to ask her whether we're eating Mexican or Italian tonight. She'll sip her vanilla-coffee not knowing whether this is breakfast or dessert. She'll come home with some chocolate-chip-studded challah, unsure anymore whether her heritage is Jewish or mid-American. Give her back her taste buds. Give me back my wife!
March 5, 1997

A   R   C   H   I   V   E   S

Previous columns:
My Ireland (2/19/97)
An Afternoon in Chelsea (02/05/97)
"You Yelled, Madam?" (01/27/97)
Basic Instinct (01/13/97)
The Greatest Meal (12/23/96)

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