This isn’t food for fuel as much as it is fuel for fellowship. So while chefs are paid to open diners’ wallets, it is these real meals that are made to open the mouths of working people, to restock the energies of the production line, or simply to line the bellies of appreciative kin. While their produce provides for others, they too must provide for their own. Think about it for just a moment: every culinary supplier, from the butcher to the fisherman, the farmer to the forager, the cattleman to the cheesemaker can lay claim to their own signature gallimaufry, from soups and hashes to hotchpotches and stews. Nope, they - or rather what they tend, gather, hatch, or harvest - ARE the source. These are the folks not one-step-removed from the source. I’m referring to the the dishes recalled as real food memories, constructed by real food people. And yet, with that said, when it comes to eating - really and truly eating - I’m best sated with the poor man’s anything: those house-made assemblies resulting from the discarded remainders of the prime cuts destined for the show-and-tell crowd. With little protest, I should say that I am as pleased to fork an overly-mannered and fussy soufflé with the same enthusiasm as the next metro dandy. When discussing the layered egg casserole, my Cleveland-to-Portland-to-New Orleans-to-Cleveland (again) food pal and sometimes collaborator Lizzy Caston refers to strata as the poor man’s soufflé.
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