Back for a Minute...or More...or Not

Just popping back in - a year and a half after my self-imposed hiatus began - because I read this. 

That is an Atlantic piece by Taylor Lorenz, about Emma Chamberlain and her ilk - YouTubers and other young, Gen Z influencer types who have blown up over the past year or so.

These kids today (and they really are kids) are all about low production values (or, at least, the appearance of low production values) and embrace the kind of messy, casual aesthetic that was all the rage back when I was in high school. They're not on YouTube trying to be famous - or, at least, that's not the only reason they're there. They're just looking to share.

This is the key graf that got my attention:

While Chamberlain’s particular style may not feel accessible to all, the broader shift toward messier, less filtered content is bigger than one star or one look. “Millennials are so curated, and Gen Z is very not,” said [Abby] Adesanya [head of talent and influencers for Bustle Digital Media Group]. “Millennials used social media as a highlight reel … Gen Z is like, ‘Hey, this is what I’m doing right now, this is what I look like right now.’”

Sounds like blogging in the old days, doesn't it? Way back in 2005, when I started this blog, curating was far from my mind. Those were the days of Live Journal and MySpace. All I wanted to do was write a little about food and why and how it matters.

Over the next few years, as social media rose and internet culture evolved, I became much more conscious of how what I posted would or could be perceived and what it conveyed about me as a "brand." That's exhausting and, frankly, boring. The fact that it was on my mind all the time made blogging a chore and - in the end - it's a big part of why I stopped writing. I have a dozen half-written posts in my drafts folder. I'd have an idea, start to write about it, then start to worry about making it perfect and making sure it was an accurate reflection of "me" in a broad sense.

That was dumb. 

In the early days, I just wrote and quickly skimmed for horrific typos then hit post. I didn't worry about including images in every post or having Google-friendly headlines or anything related to the Brand Called Kit. I didn't worry about whether or not anybody was going to read what I wrote (I assumed that nobody would). I just thought about the topic and what I was learning and thinking and what questions I had.

These days, I've scaled back on my writing overall, but I'm still doing a decent amount of food writing - restaurant reviews and a weekly restaurant events column, both for Baltimore Fishbowl. That's different from the windy, never-really-sure-it-has-a-point writing I used to do about food as a big, broad, cultural subject.

I miss that writing, even if it was sometimes aimless. In the early days, it made me happy and - as a side benefit - I learned a lot about what others thought and what I think.

I might get back to it. I might not...but I might and I hope I do. And if - when - that happens, apparently I should thank Gen Z for the push.

Kevin Alexander Preaches to My Choir

Thrillist writer Kevin Alexander has written a big, intense essay that makes me want to stand up and cheer. It's called "Why the 'Hot New Food Town' Must Die" - and though "die" might be a stretch, I agree with pretty much everything he writes.

It appears that at some point, Alexander was planning to write about Pittsburgh's burgeoning food scene - the city is being hailed all over the place as the next big thing in dining. Instead, he applied what he observed about Pittsburgh - and other places - and wrote about a subject I find fascinating: the sameness of the culinary scenes in smaller cities named as hot new places to eat and the culture that has created that monster. (He admits he's part of that culture.)

He calls it the Good Food Revival Movement - a name that's just about perfect, given the religious zeal that people have adopted when it comes to food.

***

I've been thinking about the similarity between food and religion for quite some time now. In 2009, I wrote my first post about food as the new religion. My starting point was an old Tom Wolfe essay about art being the new opiate of the masses. Food, I suggested, had replaced art. In addition to his use of "revival" to describe the current food climate, Alexander calls food the "social currency" of millennials. We're speaking the same language.

In 2009, I expected that the spotlight would shift away from food and that something new would take its place as the social currency of our time. Maybe it still will. But for now, it looks like food is it.

***

Alexander's other big point, about the sameness of the Good Food Towns - and that they're all based on Portland, in one way or another - is also something I've written about a ton.

My first post on that topic was back in 2006, after my sister's college graduation dinner in Lexington, Virginia. At the time, I bemoaned what seemed to be a lack of regionally-specific dishes and flavors.

A couple years later, as the food world's collective gaze shifted to Charleston and southern flavors reigned supreme, I thought that regionalism was back. (This 2012 post summarizes my shift in thinking.)

If Alexander is correct - and I think he is - regionalism might have slightly returned, but it didn't manifest on a grand scale. He talks about cities "doing a 2007 Portland impression" - instead of digging into their own histories, figuring out their roots, and building unique food identities around what was already theirs.

***

It's a good story - thoughtful and thought-provoking. But, of course, I don't live in Pittsburgh. I live in Baltimore. So I wonder...what does this mean for my city?

People in Baltimore complain sometimes because we've been overlooked, frequently in the past, as a food city. I've had a chip on my own shoulder about it. Why does Cleveland get the love, I asked in this 2008 post. Actually, apparently I couldn't shut up about that in 2008.

But maybe we've been overlooked because we haven't hewed so completely to the Portland 2007 model. Not that we've completely rejected it - there's plenty of charcuterie in town. But one of Alexander's points is that before its revival, Pittsburgh "was a crap food town" without a clear existing identity or even strong ethnic communities.

Without an established culinary sense of self, adopting the Portland model made sense. I'm sure Pittsburgh is home to some great food history and stories, but those things can be tough to dig up. Especially for chefs who want to, you know, make money.

Baltimore, on the other hand, has always had its own thing going. In recent years, we've been peddling the "more than crab cakes" message, but the reality is that we are crab cakes - and steamed crabs and muddy oysters and rockfish and Old Bay. We're more than that, but those things that come from the Chesapeake are at the core of who we are.

This is us. (At my house last summer.)

Plus, those roots have champions. Food innovation here is homegrown. Spike Gjerde has put massive amounts of time and energy into rediscovering and spotlighting the foodways of the Chesapeake region. (Related: Jane Marion's recent profile of him is a great read.)

He's not the only one, either. Winston Blick knows the region's farms and waterways - and the historic flavors that come from them - as well as anybody. Tony Conrad stocks his shop full of fish and crabs and oysters that come straight out of the Bay. And programs like True Blue do what they can to ensure that restaurants and diners stay connected to local products.

Not every restaurant has to be local, local, local, of course. Everybody can't be Woodberry. We also need Bottega and La Cuchara and Charleston and Petit Louis (and everybody else). But the dining community as a whole is better off if it includes places and people devoted to hometown food.

***

Alexander ends his article on a moderately upbeat note, saying that ultimately, raising the food game in smaller cities is a good thing, even if there's not as much individuality as he'd like to see. But he also does a little self-flagellating, reminding himself and other food writers that over-celebrating one particular type of food culture - even if it's good food! - discourages innovation, especially in smaller markets.

Based on all of this, here in Baltimore, I think we should just keep on doing what we're doing. Maybe  I could do a little less "why doesn't anybody in the national press love us" whining. But in the kitchen, on the farms, and on the water, as far as I can tell, we're doing it right.

Navruz Celebration at Silk Road

Something cool is happening this weekend at Silk Road Bistro in Pikesville. They're celebrating Spring, in a way that's both ancient and completely new to me.

One of my favorite dinners of all of last year was at Silk Road, which is an Uzbek restaurant on Reisterstown. We dined there on a Thursday, during a belly dancing show, and from start to finish, the meal was fun, festive and so delicious.

Uzbek cuisine is interesting - the country is at the crossroads of the East and West and it shows. The food feels both Russian and Middle Eastern - even Indian, sometimes - but really, it's its own thing. The country has a unique culture that comes from its double-landlocked position on the Silk Road, the ancient East-West trade route, and that's on display in its traditional dishes.

This coming Sunday, March 20th, eating at Silk Road will be even more exciting than usual, when the restaurant hosts its annual Navruz celebration.

Navruz, which is translated as "New Day," coincides with the first day of spring (this year, March 21st). Silk Road will celebrate with a special, traditional dish, halisa, served at 8 a.m. on Sunday the 20th.

"It's a meat porridge that is cooked for twelve to fifteen hours," explains Silk Road manager Shahboz Eshpulatov. "People start coming to the restaurant around 6 p.m. on Saturday. That's when all the meat will be placed in a giant pot, approximately 100 pounds, and cooked all night until about 3 a.m."

This video shows halisa being made, at Silk Road's 2012 celebration (in their old space):


Halisa is the centerpiece, but Navruz is mostly about people getting together to carry on traditions, says Eshpulatov. "Every neighborhood and family celebrates this holiday in Uzbekistan. In order for our people not to forget their traditions and for their children to be familiar with the traditions, we make this event at the restaurant free of charge for anyone who wishes to attend."

On Sunday morning, most of the Uzbek celebrants (and chefs) will likely be men, says Eshpulatov. "Women also have a dish they prepare during Navruz celebrations," he says. "It is called sumalak. Our wives are planning to cook it sometime during the month of March."

Navruz celebrations will happen up and down the East Coast this week and people will travel from one city to another - it's a tight knit community on a national scale. On Sunday at Silk road, there will be some Uzbek-Americans from Philadelphia, New York and Florida in attendance and Monday, a small group of Uzbekis from Baltimore will head up to Philadelphia for a party there.

Here in Baltimore, the Uzbek community is small, but part of what I loved so much about eating at Silk Road is that you could feel its strength. These are people who love each other, and the traditions of their home country, so much.

When we dined at Silk Road, back in June of last year, the restaurant was packed and every table around us was filled with multi-generational families talking and laughing and drinking vodka and generally enjoying the food, the belly dancing, and each other. Their spirit was infectious.

If they approach the new spring season with anything near the zest they had for a random Thursday night in June, then 1004 Reisterstown Road is sure to be the most fun place in the Baltimore area next Sunday morning.

Peak Food

This New Yorker article, by British writer John Lanchester, is so good. It's personal and thoughtful and - most importantly for me - touches on something I find myself thinking about a lot. That something is the way food culture has saturated every other part of culture.

It's not a new subject - I blogged about my own fatigue with "foodie" culture way back in 2007. Reading that post, in retrospect, is interesting - especially since at that point, I was just starting to dip my toe in the game of for-real food journalism. And because in 2007, the overwhelming "everyone's a critic" movement was in its infancy.

Fortunately, seven years ago, when I was wondering if I was over food...well, I wasn't. And that's because, of course, food, as a subject, is full of depth. I love this quote from Lanchester:

The apparent silliness and superficiality of food fashions and trends touches on something deep: our ability to choose who we want to be.

I'd go further, of course. Lanchester talks a lot about what food used to be (where we come from) and what it is now (where we're going) - and I agree with him. I think he's correct, both on a personal and societal level. When I write about restaurants, I'm also writing about Baltimore, and cities in general. Now, when I sit down to write a review, I'm not so full of myself (usually?) that I think in grandiose terms. I'm more like "what do people want to know about the service." But underneath all that, especially looking across articles, over time, there's more.

But, as Lanchester points out, food is, ultimately, just food. I love this:

Imagine that you die and go to Heaven and stand in front of a jury made up of Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Your task would be to compose yourself, look them in the eye, and say, “I was all about fresh, local, and seasonal.”

That made me nod and also laugh a little.

Anyway, read the article. It's so worth the couple minutes it'll take.

P.S. The title of this post comes from the article. Lanchester notes that he thought that culturally, we'd reached "peak food" way back in the mid-90s. He was, as he notes, wrong.

Mapping McDonalds

This map is getting a lot of buzz, and rightly so. Creator Stephen Von Worley was inspired by a trip down California's I-5, when he was startled (back into consciousness?) by the appearance of a strip mall out in the middle of nowhere. His goal - and I think he achieved it - was to answer the question, "Just how far can you get from a generic convenience?"

Using McDonalds as the handy stand-in for "generic convenience," he gets an answer: 145 miles. That's in the contiguous US, of course.

Cool on so many levels. First - pretty. I'm all about the visual representation of this data. It's fantastic. But I'm even more about the cultural statement that this makes. There's a lot of talk about the homogenization of America (which has both its good and bad points) - this is fantastic fodder. Food availability is an excellent way to talk about culture and behavior.

I wish there was a simple way to create a partner map - something that shows the concentration of family-owned, non-chain casual dining establishments in the U.S. That would be nearly impossible to create, and certainly impossible to keep current, but it would offer a great contrast to this map - it would really add to the discussion.

(via Strange Maps)

Michael Pollan on Class, Glamour, Food TV & Lots of Other Stuff

DC Jason just sent me a link to Michael Pollan's NYT manifesto that hits just about every big point that relates to Americans current relationship with food and cooking. It's a brilliant article, really, starting with Pollan's childhood memories (from Julia to Swanson and back, without missing a beat) and closing with the most simple, yet unlikely to materialize, solution to America's obesity problem.

It's long, but well worth a full read. But in the meantime, a few quotes:

Cooking for her was so much more than a means to a meal. It was a gratifying, even ennobling sort of work, engaging both the mind and the muscles. You didn’t do it to please a husband or impress guests; you did it to please yourself. No one cooking on television today gives the impression that they enjoy the actual work quite as much as Julia Child did. In this, she strikes me as a more liberated figure than many of the women who have followed her on television.

So-called fancy food has always served as a form of cultural capital, and cooking programs help you acquire it, now without so much as lifting a spatula.

Even the most ordinary dish follows a similar arc of transformation, magically becoming something greater than the sum of its parts. Every dish contains not just culinary ingredients but also the ingredients of narrative: a beginning, a middle and an end. Bring in the element of fire — cooking’s deus ex machina — and you’ve got a tasty little drama right there...

Artsy: Food in the Arts Blog

I am, quite obviously, a big huge geek when it comes to anything that combines food, social history and art. Much to Cooper's chagrin, my basement walls are covered with a timeline charting major events in food, art and regular history from the start of civilization until today. My bookshelves are filled with books - both fiction and non - related to food and art and culture. My internet bookmarks include a category called "social history of food."

So imagine my great, great interest when I first clicked on Bill Moore's blog, Food in the Arts. Moore is a retired professor of art history and on his blog, he examines the literal inclusion of food in art, and what it means in the larger context of society.

Swoon. Seriously.

Moore's project, which he dubs "Artists at the Table," has been underway since 2003 and in that time he has collected around 1600 images of art that includes food. On the blog, they're categorized into 25 thematic chapters, and he does have possible plans to publish the content one day.

Manolo the Allergic

At the insistence of Manolo the Shoeblogger, I read this Financial Times article about Manolo the Shoemaker. And look what I learned about the Maestro:

He is allergic to acetic acid, so can’t stomach wine or vinegar.

Quelle horreur! I mean that seriously. No wine or vinegar? I'm not sure what I'd do.

Bloggers Are Cool

LoveFeast Table, which is one of my favorite local (OK, half-local) food blogs, has started doing something so cool I almost can't handle it. They call it "love bombing" and this is how they define it:

It’s the act of making, serving and sharing a meal for unsuspecting people. Especially people not in your typical circle of friends.

They actually started doing it last fall, but the linked post is to a recent expedition. The experience is amazing to read about and I bet it's even better in real life.

Dictionary Friday: Potato

Such a long definition for such a simple food item.

I've been thinking about potatoes a lot lately. I'm working on a little food history sort of project (it mostly involves me highlighting things and making timelines - I'm still not sure where it's going yet) and I've become fascinated with the way the potato demonstrates cultural norms and what shapes them.

In continental Europe, it generally took a combination of hardcore famine and purposeful, public acceptance by the nobility before the rank and file were willing to eat potatoes. This story varies a bit from culture to culture, of course, but the core pieces are the same. Economics and social and class structure drive everything else.

And isn't that always the case?

potato
The ancient Incas were cultivating this humble tuber thousands of years ago. The potato was not readily accepted in Europe, however, because it was known to be a member of the nightshade family (as are the tomato and eggplant) and therefore thought to be poisonous.

In the 16th century, Sir Walter Raleigh was instrumental in debunking the poisonous potato superstition when he planted them on property he owned in Ireland. The Irish knew a good thing when they saw it and a hundred years later were growing and consuming the potato in great quantities.

Today, hundreds of varieties of this popular vegetable are grown around the world. In America, the potato can be divided into four basic categories: russet, long white, round white and round red. The russet Burbank potato (also simply called russet and Idaho ) is long, slightly rounded and has a brown, rough skin and numerous eyes. Its low moisture and high starch content not only give it superior baking qualities but also make it excellent for FRENCH FRIES. The russet Burbank was named for its developer, horticulturalist Luther Burbank of Idaho. Although grown throughout the Midwest, the russet is also commonly called IDAHO POTATO (whether or not it's grown there). Long white potatoes have a similar shape as the russet but they have thin, pale gray-brown skins with almost imperceptible eyes. They're sometimes called white rose or California long whites , after the state in which they were developed. Long whites can be baked, boiled or fried. The thumb-sized baby long whites are called finger potatoes. The medium-size round white and round red potatoes are also commonly referred to as boiling potatoes . They're almost identical except that the round white has a freckled brown skin and the round red a reddish-brown coat. They both have a waxy flesh that contains less starch and more moisture than the russet and long white. This makes them better suited for boiling (they're both commonly used to make mashed potatoes) than for baking. They're also good for roasting and frying. The round white is grown mainly in the Northeast where it's sometimes referred to by one of its variety names, Katahdin . The round red is cultivated mainly in the Northwest. Yukon gold potatoes have a skin and flesh that ranges from buttery yellow to golden. These boiling potatoes have a moist, almost succulent texture and make excellent mashed potatoes.

There are a variety of relatively new potatoes in the marketplace, most of which aren't new at all but rather heritage vegetables that date back centuries. Among the more distinctive examples are the all blue potatoes, which range in color from bluish purple to purple-black. These small potatoes have a dense texture and are good for boiling. Other purple potatoes have skin colors that range from lavender to dark blue and flesh that can be from white to beige with purple streaking. Among the red-fleshed potatoes are the huckleberry (red skin and flesh) and the blossom (pinkish-red skin and flesh). New potatoes are simply young potatoes (any variety). They haven't had time to convert their sugar fully into starch and consequently have a crisp, waxy texture and thin, undeveloped wispy skins. New potatoes are small enough to cook whole and are excellent boiled or pan-roasted. Because they retain their shape after being cooked and cut, new potatoes are particularly suited for use in potato salad.

The season for new potatoes is spring to early summer. Potatoes of one variety or another are available year-round. Choose potatoes that are suitable for the desired method of cooking. All potatoes should be firm, well-shaped (for their type) and blemish-free. New potatoes may be missing some of their feathery skin but other types should not have any bald spots. Avoid potatoes that are wrinkled, sprouted or cracked. A green tinge — indicative of prolonged light exposure — is caused by the alkaloid solanine, which can be toxic if eaten in quantity. This bitter green portion can be cut or scraped off and the potato used in the normal fashion.

Store potatoes in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place for up to 2 weeks. New potatoes should be used within 3 days of purchase. Refrigerating potatoes causes them to become quite sweet and to turn dark when cooked. Warm temperatures encourage sprouting and shriveling.

Potatoes are probably the most versatile vegetable in the world and can be cooked in any way imaginable. They're available in a wide selection of commercial products including POTATO CHIPS, instant mashed potatoes (dehydrated cooked potatoes), canned new potatoes and a plethora of frozen products including HASH BROWNS, FRENCH FRIES and stuffed baked potatoes. Potatoes are not at all hard on the waistline (a 6-ounce potato contains only about 120 calories) and pack a nutritional punch. They're low in sodium, high in potassium and an important source of complex carbohydrates and vitamins C and B-6, as well as a storehouse of minerals. Neither SWEET POTATOES nor YAMS are botanically related to the potato.

© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst.

Artsy Wednesday: Frigidaire Sheer Look Appliances

I've been linking to Deep Glamour a lot lately, I know. Their posts are just so interesting to me.

Like this one, on Frigidaire's 1957 ad campaign rolling out a complete redesign of their kitchen appliances. The name of the line, Sheer Look, is a less apt description of the appliances themselves and more an overt attempt to lend some glamour to the new look of the stuff.

The appliances themselves look familiar to us - they're boxy and white and look like, well, kitchen appliances (in the days before stainless was everything, at least) - but they must have looked very futuristic to housewives back in the day.

The ad shows off the new line via a couple dancing through the appliances:



Old school glamour? I suppose so, of course my new school self couldn't help but think that we see much, much better dancing on So You Think You Can Dance. Proof of evolution, I guess.

Overall, what an interesting time capsule piece. There's the dancing, the design, the assumption of the consumer mindset. All of this takes place in the years just before the creative revolution - in the days that immediately precede the world of Mad Men. It's as foreign to me as if it was 100 years ago, not just 50. Fascinating.

Forming Opinions: Experience vs. Information

It's been a while since I've written a real "and how, exactly, is this about food?" sort of post. Blame it on the combination of work and vacation - I haven't had much time lately to randomly read the internet for inspiration.

Fortunately, last night, during a much-needed break from pharmaceutical research analysis, I came across this Freakonomics post. Dubner's reading David McCollough's The Great Bridge, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, and was caught by this sentence (comparing Brooklyn and Manhattan in the 1860s):

People then were still inclined to form opinions more from experience than information and it was the experience of most Brooklyn people that between their city and the other one, there was no comparison.

Dubner asks some questions about the validity of this phemonenon as it relates to the public as a whole. I'm more interested, of course, in how it relates to me and my life (if I wasn't self-involved, would I blog? Doubtful.)

The quote suggests that Americans moved, or are moving, from a state of experiential opinion-forming to one of informational opinion-forming. There's no value judgment in the quote regarding which is the better alternative, though some of the commenters (who sound pretty condescending, if you ask me) clearly believe that information-based opinions are more valuable and "right" than experience-based ones. (To be fair, there are also a number of commenters who note that experience is essentially the same thing as information, it just comes from a different source.)

Here's what's so interesting to me: if the hypothesis that Americans tend to be experiential opinion-formers, I think I am the opposite of most Americans. Growing up, I was definitely on the bookish, academic side (I mean, I had friends, but I definitely read a lot). My opinions were absolutely based on what I read in books and learned in school, or on the discussions we had around our dinner table. I'd go so far as to say that most of my friendships were formed on conversations I had with people, not just on time I spent with them or parties we went to. We all talked a lot. We still do.

It wasn't until I went to Europe for the first time - I was 25 and in business school - that I realized the value of experience on its own. Somewhere between watching the sunrise at Sacre Coeur and the Scotch tasting at the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society in Edinburgh, I developed a crazy intense bond with the people I was with. Of course, we did have long, involved talks while we sat on trains or in airports, but the bond was definitely a result of sharing experiences, not just words.

(As an aside, I took hundreds of pages of notes on that trip - it's kind of what I do - and very few of them were about conversations.)

So there it was, my personal revelation: information's not everything. Experience is valuable.

And how is this about food? Well, for one thing, what's more experiential than food? Why are business meetings over dinner so much more personal and effective than ones held around a conference room table? Why do we go out to eat on dates? Because that experience is so important to helping us form opinions about the most personal things.

Also, bringing it back to me again (surprise)...it was less than a year after the trip that I learned to cook - also a totally experiential activity. And one that really helps me relive pieces of trips I've taken and experiences I've had.

Finally, all of this reminds me of an interesting discussion over at the Design Public Hatch blog. Becky started out writing about the Yestermorrow Design/Build School and she ended up on one of my hot topics - the ability of thinkers/critics to become actual creators. It happens to be something I think about all the time, and in a roundabout way, I think it's why I like to cook. After years of art history and history classes, I am a pretty good analyst of culture (if I do say so myself). But I have absolutely no artistic or musical or architectural or whatever ability myself - and that's so frustrating.

As Becky pointed out to me in the comments, it is possible to actually learn how to design - it's not just a talent you're born with - and I've seen that confirmed as my sister has taken drawing classes as a part of her undergrad art history degree and now in architecture school.

But, for me, cooking seems to be the creative outlet I turn to.

Cooking and blogging, of course.

Food & Gender

Ann Althouse wrote a post this morning about cold soup, starting by mentioning Bourdain and his childhood experience with vichyssoise (he loved it). Reading a couple of other blogs, she notices a comment made by a female blogger, saying that "chilled soups seem to be a tough sell for men."

Althouse references Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, and asks how her readers feel about gendered foods. I think about the fact that I'm making quiche Lorraine for dinner tonight, and Cooper will be perfectly happy with that. He is also very masculine.

I think I do have some preconceived notions about gender and food, but they're not borne out of widespread stereotypes. Instead, they come from my immediate experiences with the guys around me. For instance, I think of rice served without Asian food as somehow feminine, but only because my dad and brother and Cooper don't like it. But quiche, especially the kind that's full of bacon? Totally gender neutral.

I was also wondering if I'd written anything about this subject before. I hadn't exactly, but last summer I did write about an article exploring the differences between the way men and women cook.

One last thought - English is a gender-neutral language, but I wonder how gendered speech connects to connotations about food in other countries. I'm most familiar with French, and somehow I doubt that French men have many hangups about the gender of their food. But I wonder about other cultures...

Quotable Tuesday: James Beard

Food is our common ground, a universal experience. - James Beard

I just wrote an entire post about this quote, only to have Blogger somehow devour it.

Here's the quick gist: I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about the role of food in our lives and how that's evolved over time. I think Beard is right - food is a universal experience and it has the potential to bring together even people with absolutely nothing in common.

At the same time, differences between cultures - I was thinking of the French and Americans to start - are even more readily apparent, or are well summarized, by looking at the role food plays in those cultures.

Not a major surprising insight, but a reminder that as both a basic physical human need and a captor of emotional state, food is such a complex subject.

But What Do YOU Want to See Before You Die?

I'm finding this Althouse post and its comments sort of mesmerizing. As a general rule, I enjoy glancing through books like 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Obviously, I'll never see all those places, but I never would've heard of some of them, either, if not for the book.

Althouse links to an article about the publishing trend toward these types of books, and mentions the oft-forgotten second half of the title: "Before You Die". The half I tend to ignore when I'm flipping through the pages.

In the comments, the discussion turns to the many ways it's possible to fully experience life without visiting your travel agent, book in hand. Several commenters get spiritual in a sort of "eastern" way, basically saying that life is an internal journey, not necessarily a global one. That people who sit still and reflect will learn more than those who jetset without stopping. They're not suggesting that travel is bad, but that blindly following a book's checklist without thought is not exactly the path to enlightenment.

In the middle of the comments, Althouse chimes in with a suggestion:

Maybe everyone should a list of 1000 things that you've found worth seeing within 20 miles of your home. And it's not a list for other people to do and check off. It's an exercise to teach yourself that you are completely in the fascinating world wherever you happen to be. (Excluding some disastrous places.)

Regular commenter Pogo starts listing right away with a couple of powerful (in the emotional way, not, like, the political way) people and places within a block or two of his house. Another regular commenter, Beth, who lives in New Orleans, relates this idea to her post-Katrina experience, watching well-loved institutions immediately or gradually disappear from her life. Both offer a pretty meaningful lesson in appreciation and not taking things for granted.

Obviously, this is about something bigger than food. But food has to be a part of it. For one thing, my list of 1,000 places to see about my home would certainly involve the inside of a lot of restaurants. Not necessarily the Petit Louises (what is the plural of Louis?) either. My list would say things like "See the deck of Carroll's Creek Cafe from a table with a bowl of cream of crab soup in front of you. Preferably on a Wednesday night so you can watch the races. Do this in May or June of 1996."

Beyond my own personal experiences, these days, you can't separate food from travel. It's everywhere you look. Between Bourdain and Zimmern and Samantha Brown and, well, everybody else on the Travel Channel, food and travel are increasingly tied together in the public mind - not just the minds of foodies who have been searching for the most "authentic" of whatever for a handful of years. It can't be long before we see a book called "1,000 Things to Eat Before You Die".

And these are those forces that drive me crazy - the ones that have led to "the insidious rise of cosmo-cuisine", to steal the Abdelnour title. I won't go off on my rant again, though. I've already said enough on that subject.

Finally, because this post is feeling a little heavy (and long) to me...here's the "Stuff White People Like" take on it. It's funny. Because it's true.

Ed Levine (and commenters) on Authenticity

This morning's Serious Eats newsletter brought my attention to an Ed Levine post I'd missed last week (there's so much content at SE that I often miss things). Levine parses a Fred Feretti NYT Op-Ed lamenting the lack of "authentic" Chinese food in America.

Levine makes two general points:
1. There's plenty of authentic Chinese food in America, if you just know where to look.
2. Don't knock "inauthentic" (aka Chinese-American) food. It can be perfectly delicious. And after all, isn't delicious why we eat?

Actually, I think it's that second question that I find most interesting. Isn't delicious why we eat?

The answer, according to the commenters (and I think they're right) is: sometimes. Mostly, even. But sometimes we want the "authentic" experience because sometimes we eat for our brains, not just our stomachs. Eating authentically opens us up to a new world of understanding other cultures and it even helps us understand and appreciate culinary adaptations more.

It's a good discussion, thought-provoking and rational. I occasionally take issue with the authenticity nazis and with people who trade in authenticity for the wrong reasons (namely, to one-up other foodies around them). Those undesirables don't seem to make too much of a splash in this discussion, which is nice.

I'll close with Levine quoting commenter Mongoose, who sums up the way I feel pretty nicely:

Authentic ingredients are wonderful things, but when this becomes THE central focus, it's easy to lose track of what makes food deeply enjoyable, and it instead becomes a museum piece.

Well said.

Revolution Trickles Over

Today's Washington Post Style section includes a thought-provoking artile on the debatable success of the Cubism Revolution. "Debatable" because both the objectives and the outcome of the revolution in question are, apparently, up for grabs. The article's author, Blake Gopnik, talks to numerous experts, most of whom fall firmly in the "rousing success" camp. Gopnik has a more complex view, which I won't rehash here because a) if you're into this sort of thing, the article is really worth reading in its entirety and b) Gopnik's a good writer and trying to summarize would be futile and, likely, embarrassing.

I will make one comment, though: nobody in the article talks about Cubism's influence outside of "art-art" - namely, sculpture and painting. There's nothing about jazz, nothing about any type of architecture and, obviously, nothing about food. But to me, the tenets of Cubism directly influenced molecular gastronomy, at the very least, and probably a lot more.

Regardless, good article, even if its not all inclusive.

Conflicted

On one hand, Mr. Henry's post about style ideology summarizes some of my own feelings, ones that express here in various, fairly incoherent, ways. Style ideology is very real and it is clearly at the root of this philosophical thing I try to figure out by blogging (and is at least partially responsible for all of my pseudo-food posts that end with "and this is how I'm going to make this about food"). Mr. Henry's affinity for Art Deco and minimalist, super-functional design could explain my distinct aversion to all things Rococo, as well as my obsession with the luxurious functionality of the Eames family.

But. And there is a "but" here. Something about the absoluteness of Mr. Henry's decree on decoration doesn't sit well with me. I mean, what about Gaudi? Does Mr. Henry dislike the look of Barcelona just because some of the walls look a bit anthropomorphic? And I wouldn't be my sister's, well, sister if I failed to mention how much Guimard's metro entrances dress up the romance of Paris. Yes (as Erin quite ably demonstrated in her senior thesis), those entrances, and Art Nouveau as a movement, do harken back to a more natural time when, as Mr. Henry might say, Luddites ruled the Continent. But does everything have to be a purely functional reference? When I see that architectural sculpture, I'm captured by the emotions it invokes. I don't see a shout out to the good ol' days; I see fluidity and drama. Relationships.

So I have some issues Mr. Henry's particular style ideology, I guess (plus, after a couple of years of reading his blog, I don't believe that he'd buy his own hype on the subject).

At the same time, I would take Mr. H's entire thesis a step further. Style isn't just about your taste in chairs and toasters; it's also about your attitude about food. How you cook, shop, travel and, most importantly, eat. It's about experimentation and all five senses and, again, relationships.

Of course, exactly how it's about all those things is still under consideration in my mind. I've only been writing here for two years, after all. Not nearly long enough to solidify my own ideology...

UPDATE: I'm overcome with relief! In his comments, Mr. Henry let me know that he does, in fact, appreciate the finer iterations of Art Nouveau - that he was making some blanket statements to "watch the feathers fly", as it were...

Geeky

Ever since I was a kid - maybe around twelve or thirteen - I've had a little bit of an obsession with the glamorous and elite world of international super spies, jewel and art thieves, crazy computer hackers, that sort of thing. A world full of uber-smart, casually unethical and ridiculously beautiful people that does not exist, but that fuels the plots for countless movies, TV shows and books.

At one point during college, I seriously considered trying to work for the NSA - I mean, I do have a degree in international relations and I did grow up 20 minutes from the agency and I do know tons of people who have worked there (they actually have an internship program with my high school -it's that close). A few years later, I thought about applying, just to see if I could put my qualitative research analysis skills to use doing something other than assessing consumers' needs for new and improved toothpaste or whatever. In the end, of course, I did not apply, as I realized that I don't actually want a life of drama and intrigue. I just want to wish I had that life.

Which is exactly why, right now, I have a mind-blowing crush on Chuck Bartowski (seriously, I think he might be my new Jim Halpert) and why I spent last night reading a book about a boarding school that secretly trains super smart girls to be spies for the CIA. (Also, I really love young adult books. In part because I like to finish books in one sitting.)

And here's how this is about food: Last night, I'm reading this book (it's called Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy) and thinking, "If only I could be both a chef AND a spy."

Seriously. Of course I don't really want to be either, and I also don't have nearly the right skills or talent to be either, but that didn't stop my visions of working in the kitchen at an American embassy someplace in eastern Europe - Prague, maybe - creating amazing food while I also somehow protect state secrets. Glamorous, right?

So I'm thinking this, then I come to a part in the book in which the heroine is running through the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian (a museum I've been to a million times). In an offhand comment she says she's in a hurry, so she won't have time to look at Julia Child's kitchen - her real kitchen from her show, which has been moved to the Smithsonian - but that it's OK because the kitchen exhibit doesn't even mention that Julia used to pass along coded messages in the recipes she created on TV.

I know, I know, it's fiction. But it could've happened. I mean, Julia Child was in the military before she was a famous chef. So I'm going to choose to believe that not only was she a revolutionary cook, she was also an international super spy.

Because I am 13.

DaVinci the Composer?

This is unspeakably cool. An Italian musician has uncovered what he believes to be a piece of music encoded in Leonardo DaVinci's Last Supper. He suggests that it's a requiem, meant to convey the somber mood of the last supper as an event.

I absolutely love - and am not at all surprised - by the idea that Leonardo would have created complementary works of art to touch multiple senses.

It does make me think, though, that the one thing that sort of sucks about food is its ephemeral nature. Maybe the artist also recreated the meal itself - the smells and tastes (and sights) - but unless he wrote about it, we really wouldn't know.

Reading this does make me want to recreate some old menus, though, and go hunting for symbolism in every dish.