Pepper Made Me Learn To Cook

I was raised on processed food, most people in North America are. Dried pasta, tinned meat, powdered milk, the whole nine yards of preservatives, colouring and flavour. No blame placed, it was what we could afford and mom did her best. For the longest time moms were told that the vitamin enriched, nutritionally balanced food like products were better for us anyway, they were told this by guys wearing lab coats who looked very serious and played convincing scientists. Today, we know that fresh vegetables are better, than whole foods are better for us. It's a long, slow climb out of the all you can eat industrialized buffet but we're learning. 



I'd already been a vegetarian for years by the time I moved to Toronto in the early 90's. A Nature of Things special called "the ultimate slavery" saw to that but I still didn't really understand food and cooking. Noodles were easy and I've always loved bread of any description but this doesn't exactly inspire anyone to get out a pan and some cookbooks.


What did inspire me was tasting fresh ground pepper for the first time. I'd never had it, and the difference in flavour between the pre-ground dried stuff opened my eyes to the possibility that there was a different sort of food out there, a less processed and better tasting food. My first pepper grinder was kind of sketchy and beat up, from a yard sale. It had one setting, would frequently stall and I'd hit it on the door frame in such a way that it didn't burst open and spray pepper pellets everywhere. That was a learning process in and of itself. Over the years it's been replaced by a new model from the Bay and augmented by a tiny hand held pepper grinder I'd put in my husbands lunch when he was going to school. Or my purse, if we were going out. Ever broken out your own pepper mill in a restaurant? At first, people look at you like a freak, which you are, because who does that. But then - just sometimes - someone would ask to borrow it. Good times. 


Our plastic Hudsons Bay pepper mill was showing it's age by the time we sold our house to invest in film equipment and make a zombie movie (a decisions which I'm sure makes the pocket pepper mill seem sane) and so we got a new mill. We went with PEUGEOT, because it was made in France and I thought there was a better chance that the people who made it wanted to make it. Then we used it. It was almost like going from powder pepper to the fresh stuff all over again. What I didn't know at the time was this is pretty much the best mill you can buy. It will be the last one we buy and likely left to someone special in our will, they last that long. PEUGEOT has been ruling the pepper pulverizing world since 1874, based on superior coffee smashing tech. The one in the photo is being given away as a present, it's from The Inspired Cook on Queen East. 


Learning to cook real food is, I think, the second most revolutionary thing a person can do these days. The first would be growing our own food, a noble pursuit in which the squirrels presently thwart me. There have been people in my life whose mad cooking prowess have inspired me - Ian, Dana, Jim, Veronica, Victoria, Ron and Marni bring a lot of love to their tables. They each, I'm sure, had experiences that led them to their delicious ways. But for myself it was grinding a pepper mill that liberated me into real food prep, which is gradually becoming a joy in hosting and path to better health.