What I wish I had known 30 years ago about food

Things might have been different, had I felt differently about eating good food and cooking for myself in my 20s and 30s.

I was simply too lazy and, at times, too pampered to care enough to learn to cook.

Besides, my writing life as a sports reporter in Boulder, Colorado, starting in 1983 — followed by another 10 years as a free-wheeling, fast-moving freelance writer around the world, plus more years as a magazine editor in three different countries — put me face-to-face with more than my share of incredible and free food.

Fabulous party buffets, elegant sit-down dinners, enormous catered events and fancy restaurant meals paid for by others was a fine life back then. Thanks for the memories.

There were leaner times, too, of course. I mean, I wasn’t always traveling to the 43 countries that I got to, largely as a guest of big-city marathon committees or national tourism boards or seriously-sized public relations firms.

I didn’t always have a VIP-tag hanging on my neck. But when I did, I was living the dream.

Five times to Hawaii, four times to Puerto Rico, three times to Berlin, twice to both Brazil and India, twice also to Morocco, twice to Yugoslavia when there still was a Yugoslavia. Plus a zillion more trips, Australia and New Zealand and Borneo included, all separately. About 20 years ago, I reckoned that I had already flown into Europe some 26 times.

When I went places, I was lodged in fancy hotels for a week at a time, and never saw the bill. Even better, there seemed to be unlimited finger food at every turn, or even the next meal.

I was spoiled as a freelance writer and heady guest, entrusted to return home and produce articles in the American running and triathlon magazines for the international events I was covering in exotic places.

If there was a spread of food in the room, I was likely first in line. Then when a few moments had passed, I was back for more.

There were never too many bacon-wrapped scallops on toothpicks for me. Eat, repeat. Eat, repeat.

My comeuppance came when, at 41, I met the man I would marry.

“I can’t cook,” I told him up front. “That’s okay,” he said. And off we went, for what would be 10 years together.

What happened next, was this: Frank was a meat-and-potatoes man. He had raised two sons, so he could put a meal on the table, more or less. Or, at least better than I could, so that never happened.

We ate tons of chicken, pork and hamburger. Hot dogs, too, as if they were on sale every week. Hardly any fish, because it cost too much. Cheese like it was going out of style. But rarely any green veggies or salads, either, because we were filling up on the meat and mashed potatoes, and cheese. Did I mention cheese?

At our house, for 10 years, when he served pork chops, there were never any tiny strips of fat cut away from the meat and left on either plate. We ate it all up, him and me both.

Unfortunately, even when Frank’s life depended on better meals, I couldn’t respond well. Regular readers know my story. Frank became sick with pancreatic cancer in late 2010, and died 14 months later.

Early in his treatment, there were social workers and the occasional nutritionist assigned to guide us (“Do you have any questions?”, they’d ask). But Frank liked his food fatty and fried, and he was stubborn to the end.

“What should we be eating?”, I remember asking one doctor after another. But we never got helpful answers. “Just eat what you like,” they all seemed to say.

So we did. And beyond the fabulous hot meals that a rotation of friends lovingly hand-delivered to us five nights a week, for the six weeks when we drove 85 miles each way daily to the treatment center in January 2011, Frank’s eating habits didn’t change much.

Toward the end, after finally reading up on what to eat when you have cancer (having never cared much to read about food at all before), I realized that sugar is cancer’s favorite friend.

Eat less sugar, I told Frank. Unlikely, he told me back. He continued putting three heaping spoonfuls in his coffee each morning.

Then came the time when his dying was a matter of months or weeks away. I stopped telling him what to eat, or not eat. He was free to eat whatever he wanted. But also by then, his interest in any food, his favorites or otherwise, was diminished.

Today, as you know, I have taken more interest in food for myself than ever before. How I wish I had gone into the marriage as an able, competent cook — for both his sake and mine.

Not sure that I could have helped Frank change directions with his diet soon enough to make a difference. I do feel deep-down that Frank’s cancer was probably caused by his lifelong preference for far too much fried foods, hot dogs and sugar.

Especially after his best friend of 20 years, also aged 61, died just months after him of a heart attack.

These two men’s fates — having eaten exactly as they wished, unchecked through their 40s and 50s — suddenly made sense to me as very much a guy-thing of their generation. Except, with consequences.

All of which is why I have at last changed the way I care more about my own food habits. It’s about time. It’s also about the time we have left.

Katherine Cassidy

About Katherine Cassidy

Making meals is an everyday occurrence for everyone else, yet this writer has gone years without making much of anything in the kitchen. On the verge of turning 56, she is committing herself to learning to cook at last -- both late in life and in public. Watch her as she ventures beyond boiling an egg,