TEACHER

Kit often teaches classes on the art of living alone; also on cooking and eating, as in “feed yourself and others.” Please use the contact form if you’d like her to come speak with your group or organization. Some examples of her courses:

The Culture of Solitude (for the University of Minnesota’s college of continuing and professional studies)

The Art of Living Alone (for the University of Minnesota’s Compleat Scholar)

Almost everyone has or will experience a portion of their lives living alone. How do we balance quiet time with our hunger for human contact? How do we learn to live and/or work alone? How do we feed ourselves and others? Learn how to view living alone as a gift and develop your own strategies for making the most out of solitude.

Instructor(s): Kit Naylor

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the proportion of households consisting of one person living alone increased from 17 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2000—and the number of householders living alone in 2000 was 27,230,075—or 25.8 percent of the population. Those numbers will undoubtedly be higher with the 2010 census. If you are recently divorced or widowed, the transition to living alone can be challenging and painful. For those of us coming to terms with the possibility that we may never find Mr. or Ms. Right, accepting the reality of solitude may not be quite so wrenching, but does push against societal expectations and norms. Others may by nature be solitary creatures, but often we find it difficult to detach from our busy lives and go into a room and close the door. How do we balance quiet time with our hunger for human contact? How do we learn to live and/or work alone? How do we feed ourselves and others? In this course you will gain answers to these questions and learn how to view living alone as a gift. Through discussion and numerous exercises and exploratory writing you will develop your own strategies for making the most out of solitude. You will identify your greatest fears about loneliness, create a plan for confronting those uneasy feelings, and develop techniques to quiet them. The capstone session will feature recipes and advice on cooking for one, and you will discuss ways to eat well, alone or not.

Kit Naylor earned a B.A. at Carleton College and is principal of the Minneapolis-based writing and consulting firm Kittridge Communications. She is author of Get Results with Practical PR (Paget Press, 1993), and is one of the founding mothers of Algonquin Hotdish, an informal organization of Minnesota artists, writers, designers, and photographers. In September of 2007, she and fellow writer John Rosengren co-taught a workshop at The Loft on The Art of Networking. Presently she is working on a book about how to live happily alone.

The Tao of Chow (Adult Education class at St. John the Baptist Episcopal ChurcH, Minneapolis)

Food as sustenance

Do you live to eat or eat to live?

Celebrity bad-boy chef Anthony Bourdain used to say, “Nobody’s having sex any more, so food is the new pornography.” L. M. Boyd said, "Anyone who eats three meals a day should understand why cookbooks outsell sex books three to one."

Bourdain also observed that the best meals occur in a context that frequently has little to do with the food itself — what meal do you most remember? Moments when I was perfectly happy and — realized it at the time rather than in retrospect — tend to be those when eating a meal al fresco, with friends, drinking some nice wine. I fondly remember eating Mexican food and swilling margaritas 35 years ago in California.

“What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?”  ~Lin Yutang

What did you eat growing up? What was your favorite food when you were a child? What is comfort food to you now (what do you want to eat when you’re sick or depressed)? To me, it’s nursery food – hard-boiled eggs mashed with butter and salt and pepper, with buttered toast and hot chocolate. What would you want for your last meal (this is a favorite chefs’ question)? For me, it’s cassoulet or crab cakes, depending on the season.

My mother was a resentful cook, and no wonder: she had to come with supper for six every night on the week. One of her standby meals was creamed tuna on toast; if feeling particularly festive, she’d toss in a handful of frozen green peas for color. I knew I was a foodie when I could taste the difference between a buerre blanc sauce and canned cream of mushroom soup.

Our household was much like that of Calvin Trillin, who says, “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”  

Trillin says thank God for immigrants or we’d still be eating English food — the awful kind served before the English learned how to cook. British chefs used to believe in the motto, “Boil until no further changes occur.” Even today, he says, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth.

Trillin was first in print with the discovery that the tastelessness of the food offered in American clubs varies in direct proportion to the exclusiveness of the club. The food in such places is bland because the members associate spices and garlic with just the sort of people they're trying to keep out.

Then I went to study in France, where, according to Julia Child, ”Cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.” 

Julia Child, unlike her husband Paul, had never been to Europe, spoke no French and had no experience of French cuisine. But on their first day in France, in November 1948, as they drove their imported sky-blue Buick station wagon from Le Havre to Paris, they lunched at a restaurant in Rouen and there Julia's life changed. She recalls the "epiphany" in mouth-watering detail — 

"We began our lunch with a half-dozen oysters on the half shell. Rouen is famous for its duck dishes, but after consulting the waiter Paul had decided to order Sole Meunière... perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. Then came the salade verte with a slightly acidic vinaigrette. We followed our meal with a leisurely dessert of fromage... Paul and I floated out the door into the brilliant sunshine and cool air. Our first lunch together in France had been absolute perfection. It was the most exciting meal of my life." ~ Julia Child

When I lived there I noticed that French women don’t eat all courses presented to them as part of a prix fixe meal. They don’t wolf the bread down the way we American students did. They might order a small salad with some tuna.

The French eat all sorts of supposedly unhealthy foods, but they do it according to a strict and subtle set of rules: they eat small portions and don’t go back for seconds; they don’t snack; they seldom eat alone; and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. In other words, the French culture of food successfully negotiates the omnivore’s dilemma, allowing the French to enjoy their meals without ruining their health. ~ Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Food as communion

“I think that to sit down with friends, have a glass or two of wine, and talk… is one of the great human experiences.” ~ R. W. Apple, New York Times

"If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony." ~ Fernand Point

"Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power, has that ability to comfort.” ~ Norman Kolpas

"It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one." ~ M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating 

People don’t entertain any more because it’s so much damn work and they’re afraid everything has to be perfect — that the house must be immaculate and you have to get out the silver and the good china. That is hogwash. People love to come to my dinner parties and most of the guests get pressed into service either sous-cheffing or setting the table. It’s all about the company and the communion. You can serve Simek’s frozen lasagne for all anybody really cares.  

"Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all." ~Harriet Van Horne

“Cooking is giving… maybe the purist expression of love.” ~ Jacques Pepin

"A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness." ~ Elsa Schiaparelli

"Americans are just beginning to regard food the way the French always have. Dinner is not what you do in the evening before something else. Dinner is the evening." ~ Art Buchwald

“The art of cooking is among the most intimate things that we can do for another.” ~ Charlie Trotter

What are your responsibilities as a guest? First of all, RSVP. Nothing drives a hostess so crazy as having to beg people to let her know whether or not they’re coming to dinner. If you accept and then don’t show up, the only possible excuse would be if somebody has died or you’re in the hospital.

Bring a bottle of wine whether you plan to drink it or not. A small gift is lovely but not really necessary. Candles are nice. If you bring flowers, bring them already arranged and in a vase. When I’m trying to get dinner for 12 on the table the last thing I have time for is cutting and arranging flowers.

You simply must be charming, and that doesn’t mean holding forth and boring everybody to tears. The secret to being charming is simply this: make the other guests feel like they’re charming.  Also, no hissy fits. I’ve had guests who picked fights with others at the table and then expected me to adjudicate after the fact. Such unpleasant people are rarely invited back.

"Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes. It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt." ~ Judith Olney

"After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives." ~ Oscar Wilde

 Food as a moral statement

When you make a buying choice, you are casting a ballot for the type of food system you want. 

 “Every time you go into a grocery store you are voting with your dollars, and what goes into your cart has real repercussions on the future of the earth. ”~ Ruth Reichl        

What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.

“The reality of our politics is to be found not in what Americans do in the voting booth every four years but in what we do in the supermarket every day.” ~ Mark Danner, author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror

Why Buy Local? It’s good for you:

·      Locally grown products taste fabulous and are packed with nutrition. Since these foods do not travel very far, farmers can choose varieties based on flavor rather than on their ability to withstand a long journey to the market.

·      Local farmers can offer you more choices, such as heirloom vegetables, heritage breeds of livestock, and other specialty products that are not likely to be mass marketed.

·      Knowing who’s growing your food is a powerful thing. It allows you to ask questions, and to make your own choices about how the products you purchase are grown or raised.

Good for the community:

·      Purchasing products from local farmers and artisan producers keeps more money in the community.

And good for the environment:

·      The average American dinner travels 1,500 miles before reaching the dinner plate. Eating local food greatly reduces the consumption of fossil fuels and wasteful packing materials.

 And, finally:   "Life itself is the proper binge."  ~ Julia Child