Nannies, foodies and the NY Times view of the Midwest
By Rex W. Huppke
I've always been fascinated with the lives of people who inhabit small islands off the northeast coast of America. That's why I occasionally read The New York Times.
A recent article in the Fashion & Style section (I read it to keep up on neckerchief trends) introduced me to a company that "teaches nannies of affluent parents how to prepare healthful, organic meals that don't come frozen or under plastic wrap."
I set the digital version of the paper down on my eco-friendly, fair-trade coffee table and shouted, "Hallelujah! At last, somebody is looking out for the dietary concerns of wealthy children!"
The story features one New York City couple who want their daughter to "adopt a more refined and global palate, whether it's a gluten-free kale salad or falafel made from organic chickpeas." The problem is that "their nanny, from Wisconsin, does not always know the difference between quinoa and couscous."
Now, Wisconsinites and Midwesterners in general shouldn't take offense at that characterization. The New York Times stylebook requires writers to describe people from the middle portions of the country as "thumb-twiddling bonobos who wouldn't know a plate of endive from a bucket of bacon grease."
And if we're being honest, quinoa is likely just a term foodies made up so they could laugh at us heathens as we try to pronounce it. (Kwin-oh-ahhhhh??)
Anyway, back to the story's main point. For the low price of $2,500, this company will come and teach your cheesehead nanny how to go to Whole Foods and spend enormous amounts of money buying food no reasonable American child would ever consider eating.
Some of the recipes taught to the family's nanny included: black rice and edamame; cinnamon ice cream with toasted almonds; and Tunisian couscous with braised carrots.
If I ever tried to feed any of that to my children, they would first roll their eyes so hard their heads would fall off, then they would flee the house barefoot, flag down the nearest police officer and have us arrested for crimes against their taste buds.
Braised carrots? I'm lucky if I can slip some pureed cauliflower into my kids' mac and cheese without them hurling accusations of culinary malfeasance.
And speaking of mac and cheese, one of the chefs quoted in the story said that "if a kid is in a mac-and-cheese phase, we also want to help them out of it."
Yes, because mac and cheese is for garbage people and nothing says fond childhood meal memories quite like the apricot-jalapeno-glazed cedar plank salmon with bok choy that nanny used to make.
I have nothing against promoting healthy eating. But I do wonder if the foodie culture isn't taking things a bit too far, leading some grown-ups to push their fine-dining obsession on their Doritos-deprived progeny.
The 5-year-old girl in the Times story has favorite foods that include quinoa, chickpeas and dried fruit. That's either a complete lie or that child will one day go to college, get a taste of regular-people breakfast cereal and proceed to eat 18 cubic tons of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch.
But, hey, if parents want to foodie-ize their children at a young age, who am I to get in the way? In fact, if people really want to go full foodie and not be looked down on by other parental gastronomes, I have a service that can help.
Training a nanny to cook your kid locally grown, gluten-free, hormone-free, dolphin-safe, hypoallergenic Vietnamese/Spanish-fusion tapas is fine, but if the kid doesn't know how to photograph his or her meal and then post it to a social media site, what's the point?
My company has social media experts who will come to your home and teach your children the finer points of Instagramming difficult-to-shoot dishes like macrobiotic miso soup and braised pork belly with garlic/lemon grass reduction. They'll teach youngsters to quickly upload appetizer photos to Facebook and attach appropriate commentary like "So delish!" and "A triumph!"
Never let a gourmet breakfast go by without your son or daughter tweeting a sumptuous plate picture that subtly tells friends and neighbors that you're superior to them in most, if not all, ways.
And what youth foodie training would be complete without teaching youngsters to speak at great length about their wonderful meals? I've assembled a team of professional bloviators who will work one-on-one with your kids to make sure they never miss a chance to expound — in painstaking detail — on the previous night's ham mousse in sherry aspic.
The cost for this service is only $3,000. And for an extra $1,500, I'll provide a bodyguard.
The last thing you want is to have your perfectly fed kids exposed to some Midwestern bonobo's mac-and-cheese slurping offspring. It could cause them to lose their taste for kwin-oh-ahhhhh.
The Nanny Recipes: Skip the Microwave
Michael Rubenstein for The New York Times
Mark Boquist, half of the marc&mark nanny-consulting team, passes tips along to Ashley Hofkens to help her cook healthful dishes.But her mother, Stephanie Johnson, 46, who lives in TriBeCa and runs a cosmetics-case and travel-accessories line, wanted her daughter to adopt a more refined and global palate, whether it’s a gluten-free kale salad or falafel made from organic chickpeas.
As working parents, she and her husband, Dan Yashiv, 42, a music producer, do not have time to prepare such fare. And their nanny, from Wisconsin, does not always know the difference between quinoa and couscous.
So they called marc&mark, a new nanny-consulting service, to teach their daughter’s nanny a thing or two. “We want to give Erela the advantage of having a palate diversified enough to enjoy all of the delicious food from around the world,” Ms. Johnson said.
Founded by two veterans of the private-chef world (Marc Leandro spent six years with the family of Mickey Drexler, the J. Crew chairman, while Mark Boquist cooked at the home of the footwear giant Steve Madden), marc&mark teaches nannies of affluent parents how to prepare healthful, organic meals that don’t come frozen or under plastic wrap.
“Some of these nannies already do the cooking in the family, but they’re throwing chicken fingers in the oven, or worse, the microwave — they’re doing the bare minimum,” Mr. Leandro said.
In today’s foodie culture, in which some fifth graders would rather feast on hand-delivered lunches of locally procured salmon over turkey on rye, the company is playing to moneyed, obsessive parents striving to tutor their children’s palate much the way they would their math skills.
“In our experience, so many city kids already eat an interesting diet, and we want to make it better,” Mr. Leandro said. “But if a kid is in a mac-and-cheese phase, we also want to help them out of it.”
The service, which costs $2,500, begins with a consultation, during which parents describe their child’s eating habits and areas for improvement. In the case of Erela, Ms. Johnson wants to introduce her to meals outside her comfort zone of roast chicken and rice and beans.
“We were too basic with her food in the beginning, so we want marc&mark to help us explore more sophisticated food that has some diversity and flavor,” she said. “I don’t want her growing up not liking curry because she never had it.”
The nanny counselors then create a cookbook featuring 20 to 30 customized recipes, divided into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. For Erela, they created menus based on her favorite foods, like quinoa, chickpeas and dried fruit, while also incorporating more green vegetables and soups.
“Every client is unique in how they want their kids to eat and the habits they want to reinforce,” Mr. Leandro said. “We don’t have set templates. We’re not going in and doing the same thing for everyone.”
Next is a two-day cooking demonstration, in which Mr. Leandro and Mr. Boquist prepare two-thirds of the cookbook with the nanny at her place of work. On a recent Tuesday, they met Erela’s caregiver, Ashley Hofkens, at a Whole Foods Market near her employers’ apartment. They taught her food-shopping tips. “It’s knowing how to pick a ripe avocado or peach, really simple stuff you might not think of,” Mr. Boquist said. “It’s making sure something is organic, or trying to find products that are local.”
Back at Ms. Johnson’s apartment, the chefs unloaded the day’s groceries as Erela twirled around in her new cowboy boots. Mr. Boquist began preparing the glaze for the citrus-glazed salmon while showing Ms. Hofkens how to debone the fish. In a span of eight hours, the group prepared several dishes, including black rice and edamame, cinnamon ice cream with toasted almonds, and Tunisian couscous with braised carrots.
Erela’s favorite (despite its speckled green color) was from the snack section of the recipe book: a lacinato kale chip. “Yummy,” she said, mid-twirl.
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