Welcome to Food World Building Part 1: An Introduction

When I started writing this, I honestly thought that it would be one post. Then it started to get longer and longer. I quickly realized there were a lot more topics I wanted to talk about and things I wanted to expand on. So, here's to my latest blog series, food.

I haven't recently talked about food on this blog. Probably because I have another blog where I can talk endlessly about my latest kitchen experiment (click here to see Cooking with Spirits - updates Mondays at 13:00).

Crock pots for the win!

We all have some type of relationship with food. The act of eating give us the energy we need to live. Food gives us the nutrients to live healthy lives. The kinds of foods we eat often help to identify our cultural background. Experimenting with different recipes shows our creative and adventurous side (especially if it involves whatever I find at the back of my pantry).

Food has a big social impact on our lives. It's recommended that families sit down and eat dinner together to help with child development. Friends go out for lunch to catch up with each other. A romantic date likely starts off with a fancy dinner. Parents pass down family recipes to their children.

There are entire industries built around food. There are dozens of cooking shows and at least two networks I know of in the US that are totally dedicated to food. Celebrity chiefs have created empires around their cooking. There are travel shows dedicated to showing off a new city or country's best places or most unusual places to find a bite to eat.

Many communities have distinct foods that they identify with.

Roasted marshmallows - a summer time staple

The United States has a lot of these subcultures entirely based around food, occasionally leading to food wars. New Jersey, New York, and Chicago all claim to have the best pizza. The city of Chicago once sent the comedian Jon Stewart a Chicago Deep Dish Pizza after he insulted it on his show to prove that their pizza was truly the best. The southern part of the United States will never agree on who has the best BBQ. An argument that I won't touch with a ten foot pole (but I'm partial to Eastern North Carolina's style). And Old Bay seasoning and blue crabs is probably it's own food group in Maryland.

Food is also how we connect with cultural heritage. In many cities in the US you'll find a Little Italy, Chinatown, or Latin Quarter. These neighborhoods were where newly arrived immigrants from one country could live and be close to other people who were from the same country. People brought their favorite foods with them and would open restaurants.

I grew up eating a lot of different types of food. Between my family and my friends' parents, there were tons of home cooked dishes I got to try from many different cultures. I had friends whose mother's cook make samosas from scratch. I grew up eating a lot of traditional Japanese and Guyanese food (that I rarely find in restaurants). And I swear that nothing beats my mom's goulash or her homemade humus and tabbouleh.

One of the strangest back handed compliments I ever received was that I grew up eating "a lot of weird food". The person I was with claimed to have grown up eating "normal food"- whatever that means. Needless to say that relationship didn't last. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as "normal food". There's just food.

So it stands to reason that with food being such an important part of everyone's culture, it would be easy to write about. Right?

Well, sort of. Much like portraying food visually is an art (one that usually involves a lot of fake food), writing about food can be equally challenging. There are only so many times I can write the word delicious in my blog and not think I'm just being overly dramatic about my own cooking.

There's an entire vocabulary around food, one that is as vast and rich as any delicacy.

Not only does a writer have to think about the vocabulary, but the culture surrounding that food. What kind of food does a dessert community have that would be very different than a community on a tropical island? What goes into preserving food when there isn't a fridge to be found? There's a lot of research that needs to go into writing about food.

As this introduction has concluded: FOOD IS IMPORTANT.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.