In Cheap Vino Veritas...

"Don't cook with wine you wouldn't drink."

pot roast made with $1.99 shiraz cab that didn't
make for the best drinking, but made a
damned fine pot roast...

How many times have I watched a cooking show where the host tells you to cook *only* with wine you would drink? If they meant not to use that stuff actually labeled *cooking wine* which really is the nastiest swill ever, and salty to boot, I would heartily agree. But since *wine you would drink* is a pretty subjective thing, I think the implication is fairly clear:

Don't buy wine, either for drinking or cooking, that doesn't cost at least as much as whatever arbitrary minimum pricepoint makes you feel or look like you're not being cheap.

Now, how much do I wanna bet that most of those same tv "chefs" couldn't taste a qualitative difference between coq au vin using a five to seven dollar bottle of red and a twenty or even fifty dollar bottle?

This is not to say that there aren't people out there who can taste the difference. But it is to say that I think we are often discouraged from trying to make a great meal, or from feeling our meals are great, because a lot of network-anointed foodpundits have decided that we need to use "only" and "of course" extra virgin olive oil (which often doesn't even go with the food they prescribe it for), "good" wine, organic produce, free-range meat, and the list goes on... without any real philosophical or technical integrity to back it up.

It's a kind of snobbery that, at the very least, serves to tell people who can't or won't shop for the *best* (read: *most expensive*) their money can buy that their food choices are inferior. I'll even take it a step further and say it's a cynical marketing tactic that encourages us to make icons to be emulated out of shills who can chop, talk, and smile at the same time, so we'll spend money on whatever gadget, ingredient or lifestyle they're shilling.

I'm not saying we shouldn't opt for locally and/or organically grown food if the option is a reasonable one for us given our constraints. I'm not saying extra virgin olive oil should never be used, just that we shouldn't be ashamed of using corn oil because Rachael Ray can't seem to make anything without her beloved *EE-VEE-OH-OH-EXTRA-VIRGIN-AHHLIV-OIL*. I'm not saying that we shouldn't enjoy more expensive wine, either cooked or drunk, if it really brings us pleasure. And I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't try to make conscious and conscientious decisions about the origins of the food we choose to eat.

I am saying that we can and should make healthful and delicious food choices that work for us and our families without being subliminally browbeaten into aspirational consumerism. It's more than ok to make your coq au vin with 2 Buck Chuck and non-organic produce from a big box chain, and it's ok to cook it in an old RevereWare Dutch oven you bought at a thrift store instead of an aubergine colored Le Creuset from Williams-Sonoma.

I'm saying that it is totally ok to make the best of what we have and what we can reasonably afford without regard for what they're trying to sell us, and to feel good about it.

And I will also say this - if you give me a case of Barolo, you can be sure that every last drop of that shizz is going straight down my gullet and not into a pot of marinara.

shinae