On Simplicity

White and Hemingway, sartorial and sundry, roast chicken and BLTs.

I’m always amazed at how doing a simple thing exceptionally well can elevate it far beyond the level you’d otherwise expect. This works in many ways. Take writing. Many of my favorite writers have shockingly simple prose. Hemingway, for example, and E.B. White. But their simple sentences punctuate the power behind their writing. They don’t distract with literary flourishes¹, allowing the reader to become emmeshed in the narrative².

Simplicity reigns, too, in style. As

David Coggins

writes, “the best dressed men… wear good clothes that announce themselves slowly.” Good, in this sense, means simple. Dressing well, more often than not, just requires dressing simply but sharply. In gear and equipment, simplicity is invaluable. I’d rather have a good knife that cuts well than a multi-tool which accomplishes many tasks but excels at none. Cutting with a well-made knife for the first time is a revelatory experience. And my phone takes decent enough pictures to document the spur of the moment antics of Kiddo and the Warthog, but I’m always blown away by the stark difference in quality when I use my “real” camera³ — a purpose built, if not simple, thing.

Nowhere more, however, is the value of quality in simple things more evident than in the kitchen. I was having a conversation recently with a guy, who, given his line of work as a retail developer, spends a lot of time thinking about restaurants and the restaurant experience. He mentioned his litmus test for a good restaurant is their roast chicken. If it’s on the menu, he’ll order that when testing a new spot. If it’s done well, he’s confident that the rest of the menu will be good, too. If it’s mediocre, he has some more diligence to do. And if it’s bad — well, good luck to the restauranteur.

I love this idea. There’s nowhere to hide in a roast chicken. You can add all the culinary smoke-and-mirrors you’d like — exotic sides, intriguing spices, weird presentations — but at the end of the day, a dried out chicken breast is a dried out chicken breast and it’s no fun to eat. Done well⁴, a chicken shines. The breast juicy, the thighs succulent, the skin crispy and seasoned like a potato chip. You can’t fake that. I’ve heard the same test applied to a Club Sandwich — a good one representative of a place that cares about the food they put out; a bad one, just lazy.

We’re at the point of the gardening season where simplicity shines. I’ve been assailing our daily harvest of cucumbers and zucchinis — making little progress, mind you⁵ — with simple salads each night., Diced vegetables, salt and pepper, good oil and better vinegar. I pickled a gallon of cucumbers the other day. Simple tactics to stem the tide. But this week added a new equation to the mix: our heirloom tomatoes have started to ripen.

Tomato season is my favorite. I’ve written odes on the splendor of a ripely picked tomato, still warm from the sun, lightly salted and eaten quickly. These late July harvests aren’t quite yet at their peak, so they require a slightly different tact — still simple, but augmented with fresh bread, great bacon, lively greens, and not much else. Paired together, the whole is greater than the sum of their (already superb) parts.

So here’s a BLT, which you can enjoy as I did for lunch the other day.

Pick a tomato from your garden — or get the freshest heirloom ones you can, grown locally, at the farmers’ market or grocery store — and slice it thickly. Grab a few leaves of lettuce — ideally also from your garden — and then slice into some fresh bread⁶. Fry up a few slices of bacon — jowl bacon, from your local farm if you can find it — and then layer the lettuce, tomato, and bacon on the bread⁷. Slice in half and enjoy.

There you go folks — simple meals for simple summer days. It’s worth reiterating: a meal this simple is ruined by bad ingredients. A mealy commercial tomato would make this borderline inedible. Bad bacon ruins your day. Wonder Bread, while perhaps nostalgic, might as well be Styrofoam. Even tasteless lettuce, while good for a crisp bite, can detract from the experience. If you’re going to make a sandwich into a meal, you owe it to yourself to make it the best you can.

With that, I’ll leave you to your weekends. Get outside a bit, really feel the weather.

Lawson Chapman

wrote recently how our disconnect from nature is leading people to think the world is more ferocious. Rather than stepping outside to feel the temperature, see if it’s raining, test the humidity, we instead open up our phones. Too hot, too humid, too oppressive — not going outside. Why don’t you be an outlier, instead?

Us, the Family CWD, we’re going to tease over the border into the Granite State and celebrate Tio and Tia CWD’s incoming addition⁸. Even though the Kiddos and I aren’t invited to the shower, you can guarantee, as long as it’s not lightning, we’ll be outside, soaking up our blessings.

We’ll see you here next week.

1. Like the footnotes you’re reading now.

2. I wish I could write like this, but instead rely on slights-of-pen to keep you all reading.

3. This is a good reminder to myself to keep it more accessible and handy.

4. And I mean well as in the qualitative well — done correctly — not in the cooking sense of “well-done.”

5. Even with the help of vine borers, who attacked our squash — as they’re wont to do. An early and often treatment with neem oil has seemed to salvage most of the plants — though they’re producing somewhat less plentifully than an entirely healthy plant.

6. It’s better if you make this, too.

7. And maybe some butter or mayonnaise if you’re a glutton.

8. I almost said “gremlin” here, but indubitably their children will be beatific angels — a stark contrast to our beaux sauvages.