Kitchen and Food Envy

I’m a Food Network Junkie. Rarely do I miss Emeril Live or Giada’s Everyday Italian or Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa or grilling with Bobby Flay. If I can’t be home to watch them the recorder is set so not a minute is missed. I have CD’s packed with recipes, books filled with printouts of other recipes and they all go to good use. Every Christmas hours are spent in my kitchen preparing truffles, cookies, pies, cakes, and savory delights by the dozens which are packed in boxes and delivered to North Augusta Public Safety. Every night a new dish is prepared in my kitchen. But on occasion a recipe calls for something that no matter how many stores I visit I just can not find. Frustration and anger abound to think that I am going to have to go on line and order this one thing to make a dish complete. Frustration because it can’t be found in our area and anger because we live across the river from the second largest metropolitan area in the state of Georgia and there are no specialty shops for Italian items or good Mexican shops to find chilies or a decent store to buy kitchen utensils that are not the norm. One year at Christmas I had to drive from North Augusta to Fresh Market on Washington Road to buy one can of Almond Paste; that is frustrating. Our area has no real seafood market and only one market to get custom cut beef and pork but it is so far away it is hardly worth the trip and besides, you have to take out a loan just to afford great meat. The Mexican “markets” around the area have some minor things; I guess they cater to the Tex-Mex style of Mexican cuisine not the authentic and besides they pretend they can’t understand you and it’s for sure I can’t understand them even though I suspect they speak perfect English when we leave.
I rarely envy anyone anything that they have but I have to tell you I envy Atlanta with their multi-cultural food shops, their cutting edge kitchen stores, their fabulous Farmer’s Market where one can find almost any food item they have ever seen or imagined and locally grown produce. Our neighboring Farmer’s Markets are a joke. If the one down at the fairgrounds is still in operation most of the produce is shipped in from other states and that one on Augusta’s Square should call itself a boutique market not a Farmer’s Market. I also envy fabulous kitchens with four ovens and six burners that maintain temperatures and don’t have to think before they heat up and actually simmer when on simmer and not boil. I envy farmer’s sinks and Sub-Zero and Wolf and granite or marble counter tops for pastries, and great expanses of work space and water that gets hot in seconds not minutes and floors that are level and don’t squeak when you walk from sink to stove and storage for pots and pans instead of in the garage where every time you need to use them they have to be washed first. I envy Flor who makes fabulous coverings for kitchen floors and cabinets that can hold more than four items. Yes, I admit it, I have kitchen and food envy.
I want to be able to walk into a store and find baby artichokes or miniature cauliflower without having to drive twenty-five minutes there and back if there is somewhere around here that has them. I’d love to be able to find Mascarpone cheese in more than one size or other specialty cheeses that you don’t have to save up for four weeks to buy or a vegetable aisle with more that six choices of the standard fare or rice for Risotto that doesn’t take half a pay check or more than one kind of cornmeal or real grits. Or a better choice in breads; not just French or Cuban loaves, how about Italian Ciabatta bread or Foccacia or flat bread or brioche?
If I was living in NYC I’d expect to pay $19.00 or up to $25.00 for a lobster; the cost of living is higher there, but here, 100 miles from the coast, never. And why do we import Peruvian shrimp when we live so close to Florida and Savannah or the islands? Sea Bass has risen to around $21.00 a pound and there is nothing better than sea bass wrapped in proscuitto, sautéed in butter on both sides then finished in the oven. It wasn’t that long ago that proscuitto and pancetta were foreign words around here.
South Carolina and Georgia both have truck farms yet we import tomatoes from Isreal, corn from Mexico, and grits, a Southern staple, from the Northern states. As far as this area is concerned there is only one type of grits; instant. No stone ground original grits anywhere that I’ve been able to find. Two types of cornmeal, instant and medium ground, hard to do polenta with those. Masa flour? Until the influx of immigrants it was no where to be found.
Yes, I have kitchen and food envy. My mouth waters at the sight of Bobby grilling 2 inch prime porterhouses or Giada using those huge blocks of parmesean cheese, or Emeril being able to go down to Chelsea Market and find everything he wants or Ina whipping up her chocolate, white chocolate chunk cookies from huge blocks of chocolate and yes, at times even Paula Deen because she has access to that fabulous kitchen store in Savannah. If I had the means I’d open a shop for specialty foods, cheeses, wines, meats and veggies right in my neighborhood and if I could and did, I bet your neighborhood would be happy about it.