Ahoy there.This is a blog about food and other things that pertain to what are for me elements of the good life. Mostly food and drink, and then probably also science and bitching about the way things are that oughtn't to be as they are. As a general rule I will try to adhere to the Joesky Rule when I get bent out of shape. You've all got better things to do than listen to my crap (as delightfully written as I assure you it will be.)
Here's the deal. I used to be a Romantic (capital R) back in the day, and I used to want to be a hippie in college, but I was an extraordinarily angry person. I wanted peace and love and tried to be them, but I could never make it fit. After continuing to see evidence of ignorance and cruelty and everybody-fucking-everything-up (I grew up in Fresno and went to college at UC Santa Cruz) I grew disillusioned with Romanticism, found greater meaning in deconstructing bullshit, and became more cynical and acid-tongued as time went by. I was disillusioned early on with the RC church, then with the Romantic disattachment, then the pseudo-science and pseudo-psychology of New Agers in Santa Cruz, and with politics of many kinds, the people that followed the Dead, Phish and Dave Matthews (in succession), and so on.
A bleak world presented itself to me in the late 1990s, thus. But amid all this antagonism for everything around me, its fakeness and faddishness and bullshit, I began to teach myself how to cook food I wanted, and began to learn how to make food I wanted to eat. The upside of living around all sorts of fad vegan/vegetarians is that there is at least a surface level of appreciation for the value of food, as politically indoctrined (as opposed to hedonistically driven) as their appreciation may be. And among such folks there is plenty of experimentation and willingness to circumvent mass food production to get fed. That can't be scoffed at, other than by assholes.
And so, as I kept working at my thing -- feeding myself, figuring out what I wanted and needed, the foods that made me HAPPY (to this day a difficult quality of life for me to accept), locking onto some classic cooks, and learning how to prepare food as if it didn't come from A Million Gallon Pot -- I eventually realized that of all the things I had become disillusioned of, good food and its growth and preparation was something I had not ever become cynical about. Yes, I understand and recognize the utter mechanization and redistribution of food that exists today. But, for whatever reason, foregoing the so-called "mangoes" imported to December North America -- as hard and starchy as could be -- doesn't bother me, and their availability (to suckers or the desperate) doesn't make me hate all produce. I turn to look for better food, and do the best with what I can find. Yes, I also know that the world is absolutely fucked. I've seen plenty of evidence that it is. I don't hold great hope for the world, but I do know that making good food and sharing it with others is about the best thing left in it.
And so, good food is a constant ally and friend to me, whatever else happens. No matter what you want to do you've got to feed yourself first.
On to the blog, folks.
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