With Agata Bachórz
What’s the value of time? How do we invest it in shopping, cooking, and eating? How do we balance convenience with comfort and pleasure? And how choices about time express who we feel we are as individuals and communities? At times, looking at different cultures may help us better understand our own behaviors and values.
In recent months, Agata Bachórz from Gdańsk University and I have been working on food media in Poland, trying to identify recurring themes and the light they can shed on how food culture is represented in that country. Looking at media production starting from the early 2010s, the dimension of time immediately emerges as a central topic. When telling stories about seasonality as a desirable guiding principle in shopping, cooking, and eating properly, the idea of a correct time to produce, buy, or cook specific ingredients is a key and widely visible category. It indirectly expresses other meanings and ideas regarding time as a scarce resource, often with class connotations.
The emphasis on seasonality – the attempt at convincing the audience to eat according to the changing seasons – is recognizable in a TV show like Jakubiak w sezonie (“Jakubiak in season”), as its very title suggests. In the series, which debuted in 2011, chef Tomasz Jakubiak traveled throughout Poland in search of local food products and artisanal food producers. The show not only explicitly made reference to seasonality, but also linked it to Polish culinary identity. In the show intro, which was featured in every episode, we hear the host declare: “I am going in search of Poland’s culinary identity, looking for seasonal products.” Time fuses with space when the seasonal becomes almost equivalent to the local, while the local itself, in turn, is identified with the nation, a notion that emerges clearly also in another Jakubiak’s show, Jakubiak lokalnie (“Jakubiak locally”), which started in 2013.
The focus on seasons becomes a communicative strategy to tell stories about people, especially the artisanal food producers whose work is presented as following the natural rhythm of time, in opposition to industrial food production. These shows also offer implicit narratives about ideal consumers and their knowledge about food, which allows them to recognize proper forms and times of food production and consumption. Understanding the temporal dimension of cuisine becomes part of culinary capital and is actually taught by the show and its host. Viewers are implicitly defined either as incompetent in this regard or assumed as sharing the host’s knowledge and its didactic attitude towards the less educated (there would be a lot to say about the role of the intelligentsia in Polish culture…).
It is noteworthy that seasonality as presented in Jakubiak’s shows is never questioned or criticized. It is an indisputable and naturalized ideal that avoids references to education, financial means, or other social dynamics. It is understood as a desirable form of food consumption which should be propagated by experts as easy, cheap, and healthy. At the same time, the idea of disseminating this ideal through the media implies that many people’s eating practices are by default framed negatively as “non-seasonal,” not proper enough to be consecrated by the seal of expertise. Such a notion implicitly omits the everyday experiences of vast segments of the Polish population: those who may not have the time or the resources to shop and cook seasonally, and those who already eat seasonally by default, without any need to be taught by experts or food professionals.
Deconstructing this transparent and unquestioned ideal reveals the class dimension hidden behind it. Seasonal food is presented as affordable and available, while storage difficulties, availability, actual costs, and the toil required to connect with or buy from producers, are never mentioned. For example, in the fifth episode of the first season Jakubiak underlined the fact that seasonal food is cheap, although in a previous episode he had recommended expensive beef from a rare breed found in a small farm and the edible flowers from another producer. Also, seasonality in Jakubiak’s shows rarely goes beyond spring and summer dish ideas, with the exception of meat, cheese and fish options. Finally, the proclaimed and preferred seasonality is at times disrupted by the introduction of foreign products (for instance, Jakubiak featured products like avocado). Seasonality ceases to be a deeply rooted bond with nature and local tradition, and turns into one of many kaleidoscopic options for those who can afford it.
While in Jakubiak’s shows and upscale food magazines like Kuchnia (subtitled magazyn dla smakorzy, “a magazine for gourmets”) eating according to the season is unquestionable, more matter-of-fact types of magazines present it differently, which only reveals the didacticism and classist approach in the “foodie” media productions even more starkly. When it comes to the food column in the women’s monthly Przyjaciółka (“woman friend”), for instance, seasonality is understood as the neutral recognition of the matter-of-fact association between particular food products and the seasons when they appear in markets and stores, with no value judgment about the readers’ refinement or knowledge. A repetition of culinary topics year after year is visible: strawberries in the summer, apples and preserves made from wild berries in autumn, etc. However, these texts do not go beyond the most obvious associations with seasons, holidays, and typical activities in given months.
The very popular weekly magazine Prześlij przepis (“submit a recipe”), which publishes recipes received from readers, goes even further by neglecting the topic of seasonality. The magazines that praise private, home- and family-oriented types of inexpensive cooking, seem to exist in an almost timeless dimension. The temporal references are mostly linked to the religious holidays calendar (Christmas, Valentine Day, Easter) rather than to the natural cycle. It is true that each issue of Prześlij przepis has a “seasonal column;” however in it one may find recipes like “toasts with yellow cheese, canned peas, and frankfurters.” This approach appears to have slightly changed over time, with recent issues presenting more “seasonal” themes. For instance, one may find the title “Spring on the plate” on the cover of the Przyślij przepis May 2018 issue, which includes a short article about wild garlic as a seasonal delicacy and some recipes with spring greens. Nevertheless, “hunting” for seasonal products is not a priority – it is more about noticing the slight and evident differences between the food available and eaten in spring or winter than about holding to the idea of seasonality as a guiding principle and as an indication of culinary refinement.
Another dimension showing how time is a precious and not equally distributed resource is the focus on craft and home productions from scratch as almost the only allowed and appreciated form of food preparation. According to “foodie” media content, the pleasure of food requires a certain amount of time, no matter if you need it to prepare dishes on your own, to build up your knowledge, or to find a way to secure “proper” products manufactured from scratch by the other people. Such prescriptions ignore how time has become a resource largely available to the upper classes, while working class people are often too busy or too tired to spend vast amounts of time in the kitchen. Looking at media representations, it would appear that the aspirational expressions do not consider time as a precious asset, which may be more the manifestation of a particular ideal than a description of reality. Interestingly, during the nineties post-socialist transformation in Poland, time used to be a resource that belonged to the working class rather than the upper classes. “Being too busy” was then an identification slogan of the newly emerging middle classes, while nowadays free time availability for leisure activities – including spending a lot of time getting good food – has become the hallmark of professionals, freelancers, and other members of the new middle class.
A good example of these ambivalences about time as a resource can be recognized in the general viewpoint presented by Polska na patelni (“Poland in the pan”) TV show, in which almost everything consumed by the protagonists is either homemade or obtained through exchange with neighbors or family members. Presenting this unrealistic self-sufficiency leads to the impression – just as with the seasonality – of ease and availability of hand-crafted food, completely ignoring the oppressiveness or exclusiveness of such an approach. The TV show also focuses on the process of honing and reproducing cooking and food production skills: each episode is built around learning and teaching how to prepare a certain dish or product (like cheese or sausage), sometimes as an answer to the break in intergenerational transmission of culinary knowledge and as a solution to overcome the oppressiveness of kitchen work in the eyes of the younger generations (especially women). Lengthy cooking processes are treated as worthy – it is good to know how to prepare things from scratch, regardless of the fact the activity may be very time consuming and not particularly fitting contemporary lifestyles. Nobody in the Polska na patelni show seems concerned about time as a limited resource, indirectly reinforcing traditional notions according to which women always have time to cook and feed, while men and children may not be or pretend to not be skillful enough.
This focus on “homemade,” “handmade,” and “from scratch” can also be observed in various printed magazines, especially those with a prevalence of “foodie” type content, reinforcing the thesis of “surplus time” as a class privilege. For example, in the magazine Moje gotowanie (“my cooking”) a broth recipe (called klasyk, “classic”) is presented in the January 2015 issue with a remark that “it is a sin to serve such a broth with noodles bought in the shop – you have to use home-made ones”. The more upscale Kuchnia excels here. It not only consistently promotes craft, non-industrial food production “as if at home” by small entrepreneurs-enthusiasts as valuable, but goes even further by focusing on home food production rather than store-bought products. For instance, in the July 2013 issue we read: “Creating beer at home for centuries was just as natural as cooking soup. Today, we let industrial breweries do it for us. But it may be time to get back to basics”. And in March 2013: “A few more weeks until Easter. Use this time to make something special: sourdough for bread, your own cheese, homemade ham. Prepare everything from scratch”. In September 2014 home-made preserve making is presented as a “fashionable” way of spending free time with friends.
In the beginning of 2019, Kuchnia announced “home food production” (together with flexitarianism and food beautification) as one of “the most interesting culinary trends projected for 2019 by world research agencies and food industry companies.” The process of producing food at home, labeled as “new,” appears borrowed from cosmopolitan trends rather than linked to intra-family traditions or, for instances, Eastern European necessities and habits. At the same time, reflections on the possibility of reducing time spent on preparing food are difficult to find – this topic is hidden behind descriptions of the pleasures and value of food preparation, also expressed indirectly through aestheticized pictures of products and dishes.
“Foodies” cook from scratch and do not measure time. Readymade, industrial products are only acceptable in advertisements on “foodie” magazines (whose poetics and functions are obviously different). Instead, they appear in the more practical approach of many recipes in Prześlij przepis. For example, it is possible to find recommendations to serve dishes prepared with broth cubes or other similar additives, which are completely unacceptable in “foodie” type content. Although the authors of the recipes published in the magazine declare their “passion” for cooking, readymade ingredients are not so rare (e.g. casserole made of packaged industrial dumplings) and very few references to home-made production of what can be bought in store (bread, cold cuts) can be found. Home-made is, obviously, presented as good, but its definition is expanded, including also industrial food products that support the household and turn familiar and domestic through the intervention, the practical skills, and the creativity of the cook.
For example, when reading the recipes for Christmas buns dipped in the poppy seeds paste in the December 2018 issue, one may find a piece of advice that “instead of preparing the poppy seeds paste, you can use the readymade one from the shop” (in more upscale magazines its presence would be acceptable only in commercial advertisements). In Prześlij przepis neither artisanality as a mode of production appears, nor mentions about food quality are frequent. The pleasure of food does not depend on finding or producing the “proper” products, and therefore does not depend the amount of time needed to achieve those goals. It is rather derived from the appreciation by family and friends of what is prepared. Pleasure is found in the relationships that food fosters, rather than in displaying refined techniques or fancy ingredients.