The Importance of Keeping it Simple

I was recently coaching an executive on simplicity. Whether it be simplifying his message, his strategy, his focus, or his communication, he seemed to want to make things far more difficult. It was as if he thought if he worked really hard to make things detailed, it would produce a better result.

Truth is, it's the simple things that stick with us. The best marketing slogans have been the ones that are easiest to remember. Got milk? Just Do It. Wassup? Where's the beef? We have the meats.

How about life lessons? The best things in life are free. You've got this. Do you. Love conquers all.

If you want your customers, team, friends and family to remember what's important to you, keep it simple.

Below is a humorous piece published by my aunt-an established chef and food writer-heralding my grandmother's simplicity. I think she sums up some of the simple things that made her so memorable. Admittedly, her simple potatoes (recipe below) are still my favorites.

So next time you want to recharge or reinvent your message or strategy, fold in some much appreciated simplicity.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IRISH  

by Jeannette Ferrary            

I consider myself fortunate indeed to be half Irish. For one thing, this background provided me, in one short childhood, with enough Irish cooking to last me the rest of my life. My mother made all our meals, day in and day out, morning, noon and night, week after week, year upon year. She never complained. We never complained. We never talked about it. What was the use?

She took inspiration from the fact that there were five of us, and we all had to eat every day, three times a day, no matter what. Her culinary style derived from an Irish childhood that included nine children, all of whom had also shown similar thrice-daily tendencies. Thanks to that background, she understood, in its most profound and urgent meanings, exactly what cooking was: it was her job. 

By some sort of Irish osmosis, we knew instinctively, my brothers and I, exactly what food was all about. Food was to eat. You felt hungry. You went into the kitchen. You expressed the fact that you were hungry and received the appropriate response: Go play outside until supper is ready. What do you think this is? A restaurant?

Life isn’t a restaurant. That was one of the Irish things we grew up knowing for sure. Even restaurants weren’t restaurants, at least the ones we went to. Usually they were a lot like Woolworth’s, with a few booths across from the counter, and they kept up the quality of their hot cheese sandwiches so you could think you were actually eating at home.

“They put out a good spread,” my mother would say to her sister Mildred across the table, and both of them nodded with equal expertise. “And you can’t beat the price,” Mildred added who, though economy-minded, was a stickler for quality. “I see they use the real Velveeta,” she’d remark approvingly, “and the thin-sliced baloney.”

Thanks to these family-wide standards of excellence, my mother knew what she needed to know without wasting time clipping recipes and searching through cookbooks. She didn’t need any advice on how to boil a cabbage to rags or to what degree of hardness one should bake a pork chop. This wisdom was inherent in the reality-based cookery which she’d inherited, and which protected her from being bamboozled into the culinary acrobatics of other taste-driven cuisines. She understood the benefits of non-intimidating presentation, never once making us feel that something was too beautiful to eat. A bowl of succotash, she knew, was a bowl of succotash; it wasn’t there to look at.

Nor was there any need for the unexpected; quite the contrary. The roast beef, the ham, the chicken, etc--once she’d organized the sequence of meals, it was immutable. And why not? Doesn’t the human soul yearn for the phases of the moon, the inexorable cycles of life: the spaghetti, and then the hot dogs, and then the hamburgers. Nor were our taste buds ever assaulted by the shock of a spice. There was no necessity for driedor powdered herbs and even less for fresh. 

She believed vegetables were essential, usually defrosting two different kinds per meal. We also had potatoes every night, except when we had sweet potatoes, which happened only twice a year. But even when we had sweet potatoes, we had real potatoes right alongside, just in case. After all, sometimes you’re not in the mood for exotic potatoes. My mother understood the importance of variety every once in a while, as long as it didn’t become a habit.

Mom’s refreshing emphasis on no-frills cooking was easy to learn. Anyone who could boil water was already qualified, if not over trained. But boiling water was just the beginning. Putting something into the water was the next hurdle; and the real test was leaving it in too long. When cooking in this style, knowing when to stop was a disadvantage. What’s done is done, we learned; and usually overdone.

Like all the other mothers in our Brooklyn neighborhood, my mother went to Bohacks, around the corner, for all her shopping needs. It was part and parcel of her belief in simplicity: you went to one store, you bought everything you needed in that store. If they didn’t have it in Bohacks, as she used to say, who could have it? What’s to have? Why drive halfway around the world for some crazy mustard that, when you find it, they charge you an arm and a leg? If you don’t have mustard at home, use some catsup for one day. What’s the difference? There was one admissible exception to one-stop shopping, however, and that was Ebinger’s Bakery. That was special partly because they wrapped everything up in a green box tied with red-striped string, and because they made Blackout Cake, but mostly because Ebinger’s wasn’t just around the corner. You had to go there on purpose. 

Finally, Mom’s cookery was a celebration of unrelenting naturalness. This was back to basics cooking, a return to original meanings. Perhaps nothing captures its nuances better than Archie Bunker’s haunting question, years later, “What could be more natural than baloney?”

 (Recipe)

Irish Potatoes

You don’t have to eat potatoes every day, but you could do worse. These are especially good when you’re cooking a big roast of something, which you’d also be doing every day if you were really Irish.

 Ingredients:

5 lbs russet potatoes (the oven’s on anyway; why stint?)

salt and pepper

a roast already cooking in the oven

Cut the potatoes into quarters and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Arrange them around the roast about 2 hours before you’re planning to take it out.

Baste the potatoes occasionally with the pan juices. Don’t bother rummaging around the drawers for the baster you got for the turkey. Just use a spoon.

If the potatoes stick to the pan, pry them loose and sprinkle them with the sticky stuff. It’s the best part.

 Jeannette Ferrary has published several books (cookbooks, memoirs, and poetry) and is also an accomplished street photographer based in the Bay area.