Food

There is one topic that has been put off far too long on our blog: food.  We’ve had so many adventures with food over the course of 2016, its lack of coverage on this blog is nothing short of derelict.  Sure, our faithful readers know that we domesticated some wild yeasts to make sourdough bread and some bacteria to make yogurt.  We have spoken only in the most indirect of terms regarding our motivations and thoughts inspiring these activities. 

Our Netflix subscription had a tremendous impact on us.  Over the past year, “Cooked”, “The Chef’s Table”, “For Grace”, and other documentaries opened a previously unknown world to us.  In our sterilized world, the idea that humans have utilized microscopic organisms for millennia, organisms we had didn’t even know existed until about 300 years ago, for food preparation and preservation is simply astonishing.  

Food says so much about a region.  Colder climate dwellers had to figure out how to preserve food to last beyond the growing season; here comes sauerkraut, kimchi, and lutefisk.   Regions with ample grazing grounds developed techniques for open fire cooking and preserving milk; now we have cheese and yogurt.  Areas without the rich grazing where their animals were held on to much longer utilized brazing and pot cooking.  Warmer climates with food was available year round rely less on microbes for food preservation; they are more like to incorporate spicier mixes to help kill microbes.

So much from this year fascinated me.  Fivethirtyeight, a news/statistics website I frequent, had a series of stories regarding the growing science of probiotics.  The symbiotic relationship thriving between myself and the bacteria wriggling around in my gut just fascinates me, and inspires me to eat differently.  While I still drink far too much soda, the destruction such food perpetrates on my microbiome is the most effective mental image I have to quell the urge.  Understanding the microbes that make certain foods sour has expanded my palate; I now enjoy pickles on my hamburger and sauerkraut with corned beef. 

I was always an adventurous eater, at least relative to the rest of my family; these documentaries have only made me more inquisitive.  Alex and I have gone to a sushi bar before but neither of us were adventurous enough to try the actual raw fish.  That changed this past year; the spicy red snapper was particularly delicious.  I look forward to trying some of the more interesting restaurants and dishes going into the future.

Food brings with it many political, economic, and moral considerations.  As a citizen of a state where agriculture is the major driving force of the economy, what will be the outcome of the legal, cultural, and market driven forces all determining what, where, and how our food will be grown in the future?  How do we best distribute food to a world where so we have such easy access and others starve?  May our love for our fellow man compel us to find just solutions, so that in this world it may be said, that Omnai Vincit Amor.