In order to make the blog easier to navigate, I am organizing all the entries into the following categories. Below is a description of what the categories entail. Enjoy!
‘Food-Story’:
All of my memories are inexorably intertwined with tastes and smells. With just a single taste different foods allow me to transport through time and recall moments that have passed. As a chronophobic, the ability to halt or at the very least travel back to moments in the past is a beautiful and much appreciated ability. Having just graduated college, I am eager to press pause and utterly fearful that no matter what I do the wrinkles on my parents’ faces are deepening and I am being forced to grow-up. Due to my tenacity I have not allowed time to get the best of me and have discovered that food serves like a time machine to simpler times. I am not the first nor will I be the last to see the bridge between memories and food but I think it’s a personal discovery that in spite of it unoriginality never fails to be an important epiphany in an individual’s life. The “Food-Story” category is a collection of memories, both my own and other individuals’, which are enriched by or entirely centered upon food.
‘Galloping Gastronomic Escapades’:
I am currently working and living in Southern Spain and thus have the opportunity to travel and taste Europe during the weekends and holiday breaks that as a teacher I enjoy in great quantity. The “Galloping Gastronomic Escapades” category will highlight any particular restaurants or regional dishes that I taste while on the road. Ultimately, I am a Bay Area native and will be heading back to California at the end of June 2009, at that point the category will continue but simply concentrate on Bay Area food finds. In short, wherever life takes me I will be eating and I will be writing about it in this blog.
“The Kitchen and I”:
Like anyone that loves food I am also very interested in making my own food and not simply eating out at restaurants. I love trying out new recipes but more than anything I like cooking meals for people. In “The Kitchen and I” category I will provide recipes as well as share my experiences preparing certain dishes in my tiny kitchen in Vera, Almería. As with the “Galloping Gastronomic Escapades” category, I will continue to write about my cooking experiences regardless of the locations and conditions of my future kitchens.
“Odes”:
Food is art. It is a beautiful and creative aspect of human life that not only sustains us but also serves to enrich our cultures and communities. Food is beautiful and deserves to be celebrated and appreciated. The “Odes” category will provide a space for the celebration of food through poems, paintings or other creative forms. However, sometimes it will just be about how much I love a certain food and why and what it is…i.e. a place to sprout out my latest food and drink obsessions.
“Food Consciousness”:
While it is important to enjoy food, it is also necessary to be conscious of where our food comes from and how we eat it. In capitalist society food is seen as a profitable commodity and thus many of the widely available food products are not ‘prepared’ but rather ‘produced’ as quickly, cheaply, and efficiently as possible. The result is that many of the foods that are highly accessible are processed foods that bare little resemblance to the home-cooked meals of vegetables, proteins, and fruits upon which traditional diets were founded upon. Fortunately, there has been a movement towards combating these food trends with more sustainable and healthful alternatives such as eating local, the Slow Movement, buying organic products etc. Of course, these alternative (or rather more natural and traditional) ways of thinking and consuming food are not going to solve all the food issues that persist in our society. These movements still have to democratize and become accessible to lower-income communities while simultaneously combating savvy corporations that have begun to advertise their products using the same rhetoric as these progressive food movements. I am by no means a savant in past, current, or future food issues but I am very interested in learning more and will share anything I learn in this “Food Consciousness” category of my blog.
Random updates will just be listed under the category named 1.
