Work in progress

One week, two weeks... Time just slips past.

So I'm trying to tease out this "Surreal Food" concept. It's a work in progress. The mission/manifesto is coming together but it's not cohesive or even very coherent yet. You can see it come together over time at http://surrealmeal.com/mission-statement.html.

The bottom line is, I've been noticing that something's missing in our food. It seems to me that we're removing ourselves further and further away from what we eat, like it's some remote object out there instead of something integral to our very being. I want to reverse that trend. I want to bring the joy back into it. Not just the pleasure, but the joy. Food is nothing less than a celebration of life in all its messy glory.

So am I maybe making just a little too much of all this? I don't think so. Here in America we're becoming the unhealthiest people on the planet and it's in no small part due to the fact that a lot of our food is hardly recognizable as food. The food we derive from animals is from animals that are hardly recognizable as animals. The plants we eat are coming from ground that's being forced to do one thing, the same thing, over and over again without replenishing. It's as if our food is enslaved.

How can we live on that?

I'll stop my diatribe for the moment. I'm trying to pull together a thesis to explain the pathology in all of this so we can restore sanity and life to our cupboards and plates. A few years ago I started studying Integral Theory and the application of it. A few months ago I started looking for Integral Theory as it applies to food and -- I found nothing. Sure, there's a lot along those lines about the impact of diet on our bodies and the impact of factory farming and agribusiness on our environment and social structures but there's nothing -- nothing -- about our relationship with food. It's all right-quadrant It/Its, devoid of left-quadrant I/We. (See Wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AQAL and scroll down to the "Quadrants" section.) Left quadrant is about relating, whether it's our internal subjective experience of "me-ness" or our cultural expression of "us-ness", it has to do with the Whole and our place within it. Sure, there's an awakening of sorts along these lines, such as a call to reconnect with family over the dinner table. What I'm not seeing or hearing or finding is anything that's crying out how imperative it is that we relate to our food. This started to occur to me a while back when I watched a bit of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. (Disclaimer: I think I watched parts of only two episodes. I might not know what I'm talking about here.) Something bothered me about what he was doing. It wasn't the obvious criticism of his arrogance, thinking he was some white knight in shining armor coming to save the poor peasants from themselves. Actually, I don't think he's arrogant at all. My impression is that he's genuinely, deeply concerned for the people who are eating themselves to death. But that's just it: I found it to be a complete turnoff that he was focusing so desperately on death. Mothers, how can you feed your children this way when you know that it's bringing them decades prematurely to diabetes, heart disease and god-knows-what-else that will kill them. Can't you see that you must stop this madness??? I don't disagree with anything in this. I don't disagree with the power of his call to action, his earnest desire to exponentially raise the quality of life through healthful eating habits. But I think he's fundamentally doomed to failure. You can't teach people to love good food and embrace health by fearing death. People will love food -- truly, madly, deeply love food -- when they learn to love life.

As I wrote in the last post, something had gone missing from my experience of food and I realized it was me. It think this is true overall: What's missing in our food is us. What's missing is the desire to be with our food -- to be a part of it and one with it and all that New-Agey sounding stuff that I said I wouldn't get into. But there it is.

We are what we eat.

***

Enough of that. Let me get into something of the joy I'm talking about by mentioning my recent forays into beer. Actually what I'm doing right now is a repeat. I'm revisiting porters. I went through a the-bitterer-the-better mega-hops phase then was wooed over to sweeter fare. I'm not sure how it started but I think I asked someone at Whole Foods River Street to recommend a beer to pair with the Lake Champlain Five Star Peanut chocolate bar I'd just bought. To be honest, I can't remember what it was that he pointed me to but it was a porter and it was a fabulous pairing. (Three cheers for all those beer-foodies out there! You rock!) I'm not sure why I've gotten back into it but I started dabbling in the bitters again and now I'm back to the porters. Tonight I finished off part 2 of a bomber of Stone's Smoked Porter, yum! I love that beer. The beer guy at Whole Foods Legacy Place (I get 20% off at WFM -- damn straight I'm picking up my beer there!) recommended that I try the Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter. Damn cheap and a damn good beer, I'd say! It surprised me in that it wasn't at all sweet and was, in fact, a bit astringent and bitter but it was awesome. That was two nights ago and maybe it was just the mood I was in but I found it to be a tasty, tasty beverage. Maybe it's in part because I'm done for a while with the off-the-charts aged ABVs and I'm getting back to the basics. Maybe it's the anti-spring we're experiencing here in New England and I just want something not-quite-so-thick. Who knows. But I recommend it highly:

Samuel Smith's Taddy Porter. Cheers!

And on that note, Good Night.