Author didn’t always realize that eating simply also meant eating well

Eating well means different things to different people. Or as Elissa Altman's experience, it means different things at different times

When Altman was little, eating well meant driving from Queens into Manhattan for secret lunches in French restaurants with her father. A quick meal at a Jewish deli served in a pinch.

Later, eating well meant preparing elaborate brunches and dinner for her friends.

Now, eating well means eating simply, embracing the minimalist preparations she snubbed for so long.

“We know that with some cuts of meat and fish, the less we do to them, the better,” says Altman, the author of “Poor Man's Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking,” (Chronicle Books; March 5, 2013), in a recent phone interview. “I understood that as a cook. I knew that, in my head, but it was never really practical for me.”

Then she met Susan Turner, the woman from Connecticut who would shatter Altman's gastronomic expectations.

When you are a foodie living in New York City, the best way to impress your also-culinary-obsessed girlfriend is to arrive at her home with food she can't buy at her small-town grocery store. That was the approach Altman took early in her relationship with Turner, but she was continuously refuted.

Rather than be amazed, Turner was amused at the efforts Altman took in the kitchen. Turner rebuffed Altman's attempts to cook impressively. She favored humble meals. Turner's food was neither tall nor fancy, and she expected the same from Altman.

“I had to relearn how to live,” Altman says. “I had to relearn how to cook. It really forced me to be aware when I'm cooking.”

She had to let go of the trappings from her previous culinary expectations and approach cooking with a calm and quiet demeanor. She had to realize that making dinner wasn't supposed to be a challenge, a daylong effort resulting in a meal made purely for adulation, but an act of love resulting in a meal that reflects that emotion.

As Altman embraced this new philosophy, she was eager to share her knowledge with others. In late 2008, she launched her food blog: Poor Man's Feast. The title, she says, is an idiomatic expression.

“Anything, in the right circumstances, can be elevated to a high, emotional quality,” Altman says.

A bowl of soup on a winter day or a poached egg on a piece of toast can become the best meal of your life with the right company. As Altman's love for the woman who would become her wife evolved, so did her expectations of food.

Altman has written dozens of articles that tout the financial and medical benefits of simple cooking. Her blog, which won the 2012 James Beard Award for Individual Food Blog, shares her personal experience, but her memoir focuses on the emotional benefits of pure ingredients, pure intent.

“Life is complicated enough,” Altman says. “We're bombarded by food messages and health messages constantly. What I want people to know is that cooking with simple ingredients, with ingredients you can afford, means you will eat well. Your family will eat well.”

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Elissa Altman will read from her book, “Poor Man's Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking” (Chronicle Books; March 5, 2013), at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 29, at Prairie Lights Bookstore, 15 South Dubuque St. in Iowa City.