Accidental Hedonist
Food, Travel, and other Irrelevant Irreverence
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8 hours 6 min agoFebruary 6, 2012
18:11
Some Lessons From an 8 Year-Old Food Blog
I have been writing and ruminating on food now for just over eight years. That would be, if I live an average life span, over 10% of my life. That's a fair bit of thinking on a topic that everyone in the world deals with on a daily basis, and yet for whom many, it is given little more consideration beyond looking for an answer to "What's for breakfast/lunch/dinner?" As I passed my eight year blogging anniversary, I struck by several things. First and foremost, that I am still here. Typically, I have the attention span of a goldfish on cocaine, but for some reason, thinking about food has stuck with me, far longer than I would have guessed back when I started this here blog back in 2004(!). I'm also amazed that I keep learning things that affect my worldview in both cynical and/or wondrous ways. I have been taught a lot over the past years, and all of the lessons learned have enriched my life in some manner or another. For example: Patience: The best example of this? Making coffee and/or tea. The instant versions of these products never seem to live up to the 8-12 minutes of time that they save. I now have no problem in waiting ten minutes (five to let the water boil, five to let the tea steep) for a good cup of tea. Rituals are Important: Related to the above, my morning routine seems lost if I don't set aside time to make the tea. When there are days when the morning tea ritual is disrupted, the rest of the day seems off. Quality is as Quality does: There's a huge difference between talking about quality versus actually thinking about quality from start to finish. I've seen examples of this in brewing, candy making and restaurants. The best example I can give is the quality of White Dog, the un-aged whiskey that can either be consumed or put in a barrel to age. While the barrel imparts some measure of flavor (depending upon several variables), if the base spirit is poor, inevitably the final spirit will be less than perfect. The best producers of food know this and pay attention to every detail. Politics: A dollar spent on any given product is a vote for that product and a tacit approval of the practices used to get that food to market. This fact has given me more fits in the food world than any other lessons learned. Money: Tom Douglas told me once that, in the end, it's all about if you can make money at it. Restaurant owners, chefs, and entrepreneurs are all dependent upon one simple question: can they make a living at what they do? Moderation: In the end, moderation is always the safest bet. This is the hardest lesson for me to learn, for a variety of reasons (although not with alcohol, oddly enough). Taste is variable: What I like differs from what other people like. There is no "World's best beer" or "The ultimate dish". People, even those who have extensive experience in exploring food or drink, rarely agree on anything. Therefore every opinion is relevant - even those to which I vehemently disagree. "Taste" as a signifier of "class" is rarely anything more than extended experience. Food Culture does not mean Food Lifestyle: Anyone who has had a food blog for longer than three months could tell you about the amount of PR e-mails sent to them on a daily basis. The PR machinery that goes on behind the scenes of many of your favorite books, magazines, and television shows is both vast and scary. And what many of them are trying to sell to people simply doesn't exist. One doesn't need to go to Scotland to enjoy Scotch. The best chefs in the world aren't necessarily in New York, and the only thing that I can see that differentiates the skills of a Tyler Florence or Bobby Flay versus Seattle's own Ethan Stowell is the PR machinery behind them. Yet this Lifestyle they're selling rarely take into account things such as the supermarkets where the majority of us buy our foods, the supply chain that gets food from farm to shelf, or the thousands of local restaurants who survive from year to year without nary a peep from the national press. That diner down that street that sells breakfast burritos and homemade pie, or the immigrant (legal or otherwise) working at the industrial farm speaks more to who we are than anything a PR firm can fathom. Food is a medium, not a message: Obsessing over recipes, food history, collectible whiskey bottles, or whether you've hit every local restaurant with a Zagat rating above 25 is fine and all. But sharing these moments with your friends is far more valuable. Over the past eight years, I've had many memorable experiences. What made these moments memorable wasn't the quality of the food or drink consumed, but where I was at, and who I was with.
Categories: Food Blogs in English
January 31, 2012
15:53
Two Related News Items
See if you can find the connection. Story #1: (Reuters) - The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday. As the world's population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially. Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water, according to U.N. estimates, at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply Story #2: Indian Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has lashed out at Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s dream project, namely the National Food Security Bill, which the government introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22. Pawar went on record as saying that there are insufficient funds to implement the Food Security Bill in its present form. However, he said “This is not a question of [an] individual. This is a question of investment in agriculture.” The bill, if it became law and was fully implemented, would cost the national exchequer Rs 1.1 lakh crore ($22 billion) annually in agriculture liabilities alone, but would provide subsidized food grain to more than 60 percent of the country’s population. I'm not a gambler, but I'm more than willing to bet we see more and more issues like this appear upon the world stage. How much they affect us here at home or in Western Europe is the only variable that I believe is truly in play.
Categories: Food Blogs in English
January 26, 2012
18:50
Love and Memories In the Oddest of Places
There is a conflict within me. My head is all for scientific rationalization. I love the questioning various aspects of things we take for granted, and trying to find a coherent truth. But in my heart? I am a romantic. Beauty can't be quantified or qualified. Things move us, emotionally, for many different reasons, and trying to find out their hows & whys only seem to destroy our reactions to such things. All of this is my way of introducing my love for the American fish shop, where deep frying is the order of the day, and cole slaw, french fries, and slices of lemon are the only nod to fruits and vegetables. We now know that deep fried items are, generally speaking, bad for us. Over the course of the past generation or two, this has changed the landscape of this particular type of restaurant. Deep fried clams, beer-battered halibut, or your standard fish and chips are things that "should be avoided". And so people have. And so, over the course of the past generation or two, the fried seafood shop has lost its popularity. Even here in Seattle, home of Ivar's and a handful of other similar places that take advantage of their place next to the Sound that is part of the Pacific Ocean, these restaurants have faded from their heights. Looking it the local newspapers and phone books from the 60's and 70's, one could get the impression that deep fried seafood could be found on every corner. Yet now? Now these places have taken a back seat to teriyaki places and Thai restaurants. I'm not going to lament this culinary shift in tastes and preferences. Time marches on, after all, and who am I to stop it? But I do admit to a feeling of comfort and joy when I walk into these places that I get in no other restaurant. These places feel like home to me, what with the aroma of malt vinegar, spicy cocktail sauces, and oil that is just about to break down. Here's the thing: I know exactly why these places speak to me. The first restaurant my father took me to, without my brother and sisters, was an Arthur Treacher's. It was there that he treated me to the joys of deep fried clams and the taste of malt vinegar. For an 8 year old who was growing up on baloney sandwiches, Kool-aid, and Quisp and Quake, Arthur Treacher's was equivalent to a fine dining experience. And I know that every time that I have sprinkled malt vinegar on my french fries, or have ordered deep fried clams, it is a nod to that moment in time back in the mid-70's. I look at this now and reflect upon the wonder of that. That this moment still affects me in restaurants to this day is astounding to me. Over the course of the past eight years, I've eaten in some of the top restaurants of the world, have eaten new dishes that were exotic, exquisite, or both, and have shared drinks with remarkable locations. And yet none of these moments, not one, have made me feel like I do when I walk into fried fish shop. No other place in the world can make me feel so tied to my past or to my father. I could try to psycho-analyse this to the nth degree, and figure out the hows and whys of the emotive response. But the romantic in me says this is unnecessary. Some people go to the cemetery to connect with those who have passed on. Me? I think I'll keep the fish stand.
Categories: Food Blogs in English
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