Imagine What Jeffrey Dahmer Would Have Sent

Ok, so apparently this is a thing now.  At face value the idea of a foodie pen pal exchanging food products sounds quite pastoral and all, but why put another human (all fallible and all) in the chain of supply.  Ok, I get that you are sending items that are not typically available where the other lives, but I see something bad happening out of this someday: accidental food poisoning, intentional poisoning, unexpected items packed with the food.  Maybe I am just a little paranoid and overly cynical about my fellow humans, I'll blame it on my parents insistence on throwing out any homemade treats at halloween.  Still, I'm going to go ahead and forgo this trend.  Thanks.

Additionally, I was thinking, if it's bad for the food industry to ship food all over the place, why is ok for individuals?  I thought we were all supposed to eat locally to save the earth.  I bet the kilometres per kilogram ratio is pretty high on this type of distribution.

Happy as a Clam

Speaking of bivalves, here is a story about a new old trend developing in the States that I would love to see migrate north.  I am not a fan of food trends, I feel if something is good it is always good, so I hope that some of these trends stick around.

As a bonus, here is a pretty good Wikipedia article all about bivalves.  Fascinating.

A New Take On Corn Mazes

Let me know if these articles are depressing you.  Here is another story of the effect global warming is having on the food supply.  In this case, the poor corn crop will have an astounding impact on several consumer products, not just the corn itself.  Gas prices will be higher; milk and other dairy prices (which have already been climbing) will increase; beef, lamb, chicken and even pork will be more expensive.  In addition, other grains such as wheat, oats and barley will increase in price as farmers look to replace corn as their main winter feed.  As grains become scarcer in grocery stores, consumers will look to other staples to replace them, so expect increases in potatoes, rice and legumes.

These are the kinds of every day struggles humans will have to get used to in the uncertainty of a rapidly warming planet.  Mix in our ever expanding populations and our tenuous hold on civility could unravel as quickly as it has in the Arab and North African regions.  Our society needs a cultural make over; one that places less emphasis on the automobile, coal fired electricity, disposable everything and the belief that everything will always be there when we want it.  It seems to me that, in the story of the grasshopper and the ants, our generation has missed the moral.

Some of the ways to limit the impact of these uncertain times are already trendy amongst the hipster foodies, which is a shame because those trends always get lost when new ones take their place.  But, we need to start looking at food as less about pleasure and more about sustenance if we are to accomodate more of us.  The good news is, we can still find pleasure and enjoyment in this list:

1) Grow your own.  If you have access to some land that could be cleared and tilled and seeded you would do a lot to secure your food supply by planting a few basic crops to supplement your grocery list.  And it doesn't even take a lot of land to do it.
2) Share your seeds.  If you do start to grow your own food, the first thing you will notice is how expensive some seeds and seedlings can be.  But, learning to save your own seeds is easy enough and you can even trade with your friends and neighbours
3) Canning and Preserving.  This is where food and culture really meet.  Have a canning party; give preserves as gifts; exchange recipes.  It's fun for the whole family.  And, if you need a lesson, I will bet there is an Italian family within walking distance of you, if your live in Markham/Toronto/Anywhere, who would be happy to show you how easy it is.
4) Attend food swaps.  Here you can swap what you have too much of for items you are in need of.  Can't find a local swap?  Check our YYZ Food Swap on Facebook.

I hear you all saying that you can't fit that into your busy schedules.  Well, cut down on dinner parties and pot lucks and throw seed exchanges and food swaps instead.  Just as easy as a cookie swap at Christmas without all the annoying christians.  All of this, I am convinced, would be better for our health, our planet and our society.

The Future of Food - Introduction

What seems like a long time ago, I accepted the challenge of writing about organic versus modern farmed foods and whether, or not, organic was "better".  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I started by reading a book on the subject (Tomorrow's Table by Pamela C. Ronald and R.W. Adamchak).  The Authors are a married couple, Ronald is a Professor of Plant Biology at UC Davis and Adamchak manages the campus' organic farm.  This book led me to source after source on the subject, some very good sources and some very bad.  After picking my way through the maze of often times conflicting information, I settled on a few sources that seemed to offer balanced and rational views on the subject.

So, for the purposes of this blog, which is not a scholarly paper nor a claimed authority of any kind, I will list here my sources for the information that will appear in future posts in this series.  By doing so, I hope you will all track down these sources and read, listen and watch them yourself so that you can hold me accountable for my opinions and decide for yourself what methods seem to offer the best solutions for the problems facing humanity in the future.

This series of posts will be broken into 4 sections: Part 1 The Challenge; Part 2 The Organic Response; Part 3 The Case For Science; and Part 4 Protecting the Future.  If I feel any particular section is getting too long I will break it into sub-sections.  I sincerely thought that this issue would simply be a matter of finding out which foods were the most nutritious, finding some taste test results to determine what people preferred and moving on; boy was I wrong.  I think as you read you will come to realize, as I did, there are no easy answers when it comes to food, and it is especially hard to know who to trust when it comes to information about what we eat.  Hopefully, we will all find the questions we need to ask suppliers in order to provide the best nutrition for our families while maintaining the environment for future generations.

Sources for future posts:

Tomorrow's Table P.C. Ronald and R.W. Adamchak, Oxford University Press March 2008

The Open University- Genetic Modified Foods, The Issues (Multi-Media Podcast available free iTunes)

Yale School of Forestry- Food and Sustainable Agriculture (Lecture Series available free iTunes)

Oregon State University- Food for Thought (Lecture Series available free iTunes)

The Future of Food (Two part documentary available here)

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Dangour, A., Lock, K., Hayter, A., Aikenhead, A., Allen, E., & Uauy, R. (2010). Nutrition-related health effects of organic foods: a systematic reviewAmerican Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 92 (1), 203-210 DOI:10.3945/ajcn.2010.29269

Mader, P. (2002). Soil Fertility and Biodiversity in Organic FarmingScience, 296 (5573), 1694-1697 DOI: 10.1126/science.1071148

http://www.foodwithlegs.com/organic-food-taste-test/

http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/101/6/290.full

http://www.pewenvironment.org/

Trendy, Shmendy It's All Food To Me.

Larry Olmsted, of Forbes, has a new rant in which he examines what he considers America's 8 Worst Food Trends.  For the most part I agree with Olmsted, but I differ in his response to some.  Specifically, I don't think I am as snobby as he.

Let's start with food trucks.  Generally, I agree, they are mostly nothing new and offer nothing you could not get at a bricks and mortar kind of place.  Also, they do tend to steal customers from rent paying establishments. And, yes, they are hipster trendy.  But, so what?  Sometimes I don't want to sit and eat and just want something I can hold in my hand and eat while I walk or enjoy some quiet outdoor area.  Many of the foods that trucks serve are not as convenient to take out in restaurants simply because it is hard to do eat in and take out well simultaneously.  Also, I differ on the issue of what Olmsted calls the "wanna-be chefs".  Again, so what if they are?  Many trucks are run by people who are trained in culinary arts, have owned or worked in restaurants and wanted a change, or are following a passion in hopes of making the money needed to open a bricks and mortar establishment.  Like any free enterprise, either the product is worth paying for or it isn't.  If it isn't, they won't be around for long.

House cured meats: if it contains spices and fat then I want to try it. Period.  One of the best things about being an adventurous eater is that I never know what I will get in any given meal.  Some are not that great, but that just makes the good that much more enjoyable.  But, what really bothers me about his views here, is the implication that there is only one standard for cured meats and it's his (or some agreed-upon-by-food-critics-standard).  Either way, I usually resent being told what to like and not like by so called experts with 15 years experience.  Really, just 15? Dude, I've been stuffing my fat ass with great food for most of my 51 years!  And while I may not have travelled the world and eaten in all the fanciest "look-at-me" places, I have been exposed to some great cooks from various cultures all pushing out their own cured meats, preserved foods and even homemade wines.  I would have missed out on a lot of great food if my standards were set that high.

The rest of the article I agree wholeheartedly with, but especially Olmsted's view on TV Cooking Competitions, or any reality cooking show for that matter.  But, you all know my stand on that by now.

'via Blog this'

What Wine Goes With Mammoth?

So perhaps the Alkaline Diet wasn't for you and you are still looking for that perfect diet.  Well, perhaps this NPR piece on the Paleo Diet will steer you in the right direction.  This restrictive diet has all the right pseudo-science backing it up and has even managed to align itself with Darwinian Evolution to keep those pesky skeptical scientists off their backs.

But, of course, there are no real scientific studies to back them up and their claims that paleolithic hunter gathers never suffered from obesity and disease fall apart under the simplest of enquiries.  For instance, the fact they didn't live much past 35-40 years suggests they didn't live long enough to actually develop most diseases; the lack of a sedentary lifestyle (all that hunting and gathering, you know) meant they were physically more fit; going long stretches on very little calories due to failed hunts, drought conditions and competition from other species meant little chance of excess food; and, of course, not ever recording their health in journals might also account for the lack of evidence of their diseases.  This one quote stood out the most for me:

There's this tendency to want to find the normal human diet, Nesse says. But every single diet you pick as had advantage of some sort. Humans have lived in all kinds of places and we have adapted to all kinds of diets.

So, if you really want to live the paleo lifestyle, get out and forage for your food, hunt some animals with your bare hands and really enjoy all the lifestyle has to offer.  And, that includes the occasional misidentified poisonous mushroom or berry.  This lower life expectancy would actually have some beneficial impact on the ecology by regulating human population. And it is for this reason that the Paleo Diet is receiving the Liver Rounds Seal of Approval.

Why Don't I Just Eat an Alkaline Battery?

From the "where does this shit come from" files I give you the Acid Alkaline Diet, a diet which promises to slim you down and protect you from all forms of disease while simultaneously elevating your energy levels.  Finally, the miracle cure to everything that humanity has long waited for; the only problem, of course, is that it is bullshit!

On Art And Artifice In Culinary Pursuits

Recently, I have been reacquainting myself with John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, a series of interlinking short stories that the author uses to discuss many of the characteristics of story telling, language, narrative and art in general.  The book does a masterful job of asking readers why it is we place so much trust in narrators of stories when we know that they are merely another creation of the mind of the author who we would view as fallible if we knew anything about their life. The book is a critique of the writing process and literature itself.

Additionally, Barth's book asks the deeper question: what is art?  (a question I have explored in conversation with several friends).  I believe that Barth would argue that art and artifice share the same root but only in the way chimps and humans share the same ancestor.  Both words have evolved separately in different directions which have muddied what the common meanings of the words are with the classical definitions.  But, that art and artifice have the pedigree to perform the function of differentiation. 

Art (as a word) was brought to the English language by the French who derived it from the Latin nominative form of artem which is ars meaning: practical skill; a business craft.  Both Latin words are derived from the root ar meaning: fit together; join.  The English used the word art to mean: skill as a result of learning or practice and used it to describe the work of artisans such as those who worked with stained glass.  Today, however, we seem to apply this to any creation we view as outside our own abilities or skills.  If we see a painting of flowers that is beyond our abilities as painters we tend to say "that's so artistic, the painter is such an artist."  But, if I, as a painter, was to make a painting that critics raved about and declared it a "a modern, contemporary commentary on traditional mores meant to question our ideas of human existence, blah, blah, blah" and everyone agrees this is the finest example of art in the history of the medium; and then someone recreates hundreds of copies, indistinguishable from the original and sells them for more than I made off my original, and you buy one and hang it in your living room, do you own a work of art from an artist?

By the traditional sense of the word I would have to concede that you do and they are.  However, academics in fine art wished to separate skillful craftsman from imaginative artists and needed a definition of the word which harkens back to the Latin ar and came up with this meaning: "those which appeal to the mind and the imagination" (fitting together in imaginative ways), I would argue a new word is needed to differentiate between my original and the very skillful reproductions.  This word I will use is not meant, in any way, to suggest a lack of esthetic appeal or talent, only a differentiation in the purpose for which the thing is created.  The word I use, and which Barth alludes to, is: artifice.

Arifice is a word that, also, came to the English from the French via the Latin.  In Middle French the meaning was: "skill; cunning" which, used as a noun, became " workmanship, anything made by craft or skill" but which has, today, come to mean: "device, trick".   This is unfortunate because the root of the word is a more useful and descriptive meaning: ars which we've discussed and facere "do"; doing craftsmanship.  This gives recognition to the talents of the artisan without stripping them of their due, while still distinguishing between the fine art definition of art: a creation of the mind and imagination.

I don't expect Messrs. Merriam and Webster to reconsider the definitions of these words on my say but, in future I will distinguish between them by referring to art: refitting one's environment, appealing to the mind and imagination for the purpose of creativity.  And artifice: the making of anything by skill or craft for the sole purpose of industry.  One does not need skill to create art and one does not need creativity to create artifice and there is no rule that says art can not be profitable but, its main purpose should not be profit.  Possessing both skill and imagination, however, would elevate an artistic creation.

So, what  has this to do with food and wine.  Well, it seems impossible, today, to read reviews of restaurants and wines without someone referring to the food or wine as art.  I take exception to the use of the word, as I hope I have made clear, not because I believe there is a lack of talent, but only because it lacks accountability for the creative process and the purpose for the thing's creation.  I will be the first to admit that there is a lot of talent that goes into conceiving and executing a dish in a restaurant, and striking the right balance between taste and presentation is a skill I admire with some envy. 

But, in most restaurants today, cooks and chefs are simply reworking a series of recipes and techniques that have been the staple of the restaurant business for several decades now.  Escoffier, as Adam Gopnik pointed out, invented the whole premise of fine dining today:

Escoffier's  formula for food was, in essence, the same as Jasper Johns's formula for Dada art: take something; do something to it; then do something else to it. It was cooking that rested, above all, on the idea of the master sauce: a lump of protein was cooked in a pan, and what was left behind [...] was deglazed with wine and stock, ornamented with butter or cream, and then poured back over the lump of protein.

 Add to that a chef's approach to plating, which is simply a series of tried and tested ways of piling food on a plate in aesthetically appealing ways (skill, cunning, craft), and you have today's haute cuisine with tiny portions on oversize plates re-imagined in innumerable ways.

I once heard Anthony Bourdain suggest that "there are very few artists" amongst professional chefs.  I believe he said it in a manner meant to provoke, as is Bourdain's way.  I have no such motivation when I suggest that he is correct.  But, does this mean that we should not be in awe of the new generation of cooks and chefs and even foodies opening new and exciting restaurants that eschew the Escoffier model for a return to regional cuisine that celebrates instead the peasant dishes developed over centuries.  These restauranteurs, such as Morin and McMillan at Joe Beef in Montreal, are stripping their food of the artifice (in the contemporary definition of device or trick) and creating cuisine that is about flavour, tradition and sustainability.  After all, for millenia food was meant to nourish and sustain, both the body and the environment, out of necessity rather than fashion.
 
The presentation of this food and the interaction amongst the patrons and cooks (especially in venues that have taken to communal tables)  is helping to reconnect diners to the culture of food.  This participatory approach to dining is, in itself, an artistic endeavor where the mere act of dining becomes artistic expression through interactions between cooks and guests with a new experience with every seating; while the food itself may be artifice, the experience becomes an art. 

In addition, the movement known as "molecular gastronomy" - though not by its practitioners - is another exciting new trend that might offer a glimpse at true culinary art.  The manipulation of food to resemble anything but food provides the diner with a multi-sensory experience and a chance at a new way to taste and experience familiar foods.  But, to be clear, this only applies to those who are attempting new experiences and, in my opinion anyway, excludes those who attempt to perfect the way food is cooked.  Heston Blumenthal is an amazing cook but, in his efforts to perfect dishes he loses the very essence of what art is, namely an interaction between the artist's take on a subject and the patrons' response to it; a kind of manipulation of the senses by providing the unexpected.

In the area of wine and beer, I believe there is even less art being practiced as the processes become more bogged down in science and tradition and technique all focused on attaining a certain "standard" for a grape rather than an unexpected experience.  It is true that every wine maker and brewer is presenting consumers with their own take on a style or grape but, is there any new method or technique that hasn't already been attempted; is anyone trying to shock drinkers for the sake of amusement or bemusement alone.  Merely fiddling with the proportions and "cooking" times does not, again in my opinion, constitute art.  A skill? A craft? Absolutely.  But, the artists were the inventors of wine and beer that found the ways to turn fermenting, rotting fruit into a cultural icon and in most cases they did it with an eye on enjoying the product more than the potential sales.

And to me this is where the culinary arts have to concede:  no winery, brewery or restaurant is creating art solely for the sake of its creation; every bottle is filled and dish served in the hope of turning a profit - and usually a quite hefty one at that.   That is not to criticize, who amongst us isn't looking to find an enjoyable way to make a buck?  But this is the realm of artifice, in my definition, and we should enjoy it for what it is and admire the skill and talents used without feeling badly about calling it by its rightful name: craftsmanship!

Closed Door Dining

The latest fad in dining is something referred to as closed door dining.  The concept is simple: a restaurant provides food to a small group of patrons who will dine on a prix fixe tasting menu at a communal table.  There is only one seating, the building is closed to any other customers, the diners must know how to go about reserving a spot (it's not that difficult) and many places are BYOB. 

This looks like a lot of fun for the adventurous diner who is a ravenous foodie and enjoys talking about food as much as consuming it.  Seated at a table of strangers who might have nothing in common but their love of food and adventure may seem intimidating to many but, I would imagine this would be a great way to travel and meet people who could give you recommendations for places to see.  In addition, you may discover a hidden gem of a restaurant. 

Chefs, of course, have been doing this for years but, lets face it, most of us won't be receiving an invite to any of the those secret dining clubs anytime soon.  This may prove to be the next best thing.