Besides food...

In relationships cooking is my secret weapon, which I use for evil much more than I do for good.  I don’t have a problem misleading men into believing that should we date, I would be cooking up a storm to prepare meals for us at home.  My discussion of farmers markets seems to bring out my maternal side.  Men love my restaurant kitchen tales, which never fail to elicit the question “So do you watch Top Chef?”  And my fading oven scars along my arm validates my time spent in a kitchen.  This sets the stage rather nicely for the first several dates, and if I’m lucky, even going into the relationship.

The real stellar men get smart and quickly settle into the gender stereotypes, only to come say hello to me while I’m cooking en route to the fridge for a beer.  “You don’t need any help, right?” he’ll say as he walks away.  Luckily for me the television has a higher priority, because the food cools way too fast as I carry dishes out one by one.  No news is good news, since my complacency implies that things are perfect.

    Weeks pass and it’s a fairy tale story, though soon enough, I begin to get antsy and start probing.  “I haven’t been to a musical since I’ve been here in New York.  Can we go to one?”  The manly men I prefer to date never fail to cock their eyebrow at such an obscene question.  “Uh…I’m not really into musicals,” they blurt out, not to miss a single word of “Scrubs.”  It’s good thing it’s Tivo-ed.  “So…would you like to go to the farmers market with me sometime? It’s really fun.”  “Sure, I guess.” 

    After a few more of those rounds and to no avail, I begin to get irritated. No, I get really pissed.  And begin my plan to not plan any more home cooked meals.  When 8pm approaches 8pm the next evening, he’ll ask, “So, what are we eating for dinner?”  I refuse to look up from my computer.  “I’m tired today, I’m not making anything,” That blows over peacefully, since I don’t get more than an “Okay.”  And then he rummages through the freezer looking for the Costco burritos.  Sometimes when I do make something to eat (starving myself is self-destructive and would mean that I have major issues), I’ll take my plate to the table and say, “Yours is in the kitchen.”
  
    A few days like this go by and one day he’ll say to me, “Is there something wrong?” I inhale, opening up my diaphragm.  And then it begins. “Yes there’s something wrong!”  I preface.  What usually follows is a  “Just so you know, although I do enjoy cooking, it doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing I want to do!  Especially for your ass!”  His eyes widen.  And they should because there’s a lot more of that where that just came from.
 
  So I’m excited to say that I’m going to see “Passing Strange” in the next month or so.  And I’m also back in the restaurant-dining scene with a somewhat reliable eating partner.  Moving forward my cooked meals evolve, becoming more strategic, sharper I would say, over time.  Call me psychotic.  Or them, assholes.  But everyone eventually gets what they want.

I'm a woman and I like cute things, small things specifically. So can food be cute and small? Yes they can!

Baby pringles

This came in my American Airlines snack pack when I traveled to Europe this past summer. I loved it so much that I decided to save it (for no real reason) until now. So if you choose AA, you can look forward to these goodies inside:

AA snack pack

AA snack inside

One thing about me is that I can never get enough of food that is free. I really think it tastes better than food I have to pay for. I go berserk and hoard mounds of it, whatever it is, good or bad, usually without having tasted it first. This might have stemmed my adolescence years when my parents and I used to attack the sample tables at Costco. But I have graduated from Costco samples and my tastes have now changed. I'm able to abstain from not-so-great food and my hoarding abilities are quite advanced. Now I take the good stuff - local, sometimes organic, and just-picked produce. Although I might have gone overboard this one time:

Freshplums

Fresh peppers

Baby eggplants

Of course, then I started to stress out about what to do with all of this food. And when cooking tasks become reminiscent of my years in the restaurant, I cringe. But I persevere and decided to attack the peppers first: I roasted every single one and turned them into this:

Roasted peppers

But then I couldn't eat them fast enough, so then I pureed them and turned them into this:

Pepper puree

Roasted pepper puree. The container was full when I originally made it (it was that good).

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the rest...

For anybody who reads The Economist, you might have come across the essay, “Sex, Shopping, and Thinking Pink.” This essay discusses a study conducted by Joshua New and his colleagues at Yale University in which they pose a biological justification for the hunter-gatherer relationship; men hunted and women gathered.  The site that was chosen for this study was one that, in theory, replicated a primordial natural environment – the Farmers Market.

A short synopsis: Roughly forty men and forty women were asked to peruse the market, but only visit six of the ninety stalls.  There they tasted samples of the food and discussed their individual preferences.  After, the volunteers relocated in the center of the market where they were individually asked to point to each stall using an arrow on a dial. 

The results: Women scored higher when remembering the location of the stalls especially when the food possessed a higher calorific value, regardless of navigational ability (they were also asked to rate their own navigational skills: men rated theirs higher).  The essay even qualified that certain attributes such as individual preferences and frequency of specific foods in one’s diet were independent in the results of study.  

Conclusion: The study suggests a gender based biological, and not a cultural, element to the task of procuring food resources. 

Heir-tomatoes

Having not read the original study, a few questions and thoughts came to mind:

1)    How accurate is it to make a biological conclusion about humans based on a study that relies on a culturally constructed, and gender biased, environment such as the farmers markets?

2)    How does the study account for, or rather separate, the cultural background of each individual volunteer? If in fact the women in that study sample came from cultures where gender roles prevailed, wouldn’t that advantageously affect their memory skills at the market.

3)    Depending on how the study was constructed, I’m curious how they concluded that foods higher in calories were best remembered.  In most larger farmers markets today, the majority of stalls tend to be produce heavy resulting in a homogenous perception of all produce stands.  The few stalls that sell meat, cheese, and breads would mostly like stick out and therefore be remembered.

Dr. New makes an interesting argument, like others before him, placing food at the nexus of gender based societal roles.  What I’m interested in are his reasons for choosing farmers markets as the primary study site.  It doesn’t seem appropriate for the hypotheses he’s exploring since the markets tend to be tailored toward women to begin with. Nonetheless the results of this study are provocative.  I guess I’ll just stick to shopping, grocery shopping, no less; whether shopping is a skill is something I’ll argue ‘til the day I die.

What I wouldn't give to have a butt like this...

Butterbutbutt

Since it's summer and the fall semester is creeping closer, my brain has been on hiatus and I've  been doing things like creating a Simpsons Me (see the last post).  For this period I will post some of the interesting foods I came across in my travels in Italy and France.  Like this, for instance:

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Sardines from a can. My aunt and uncle prepared this when I stayed with them in France.   The last time I remember eating this was when I was about ten-ish to twelve-ish:

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(The far left picture is probably the most accurate)  Except then it was the low brau version of just fish and baguette.  It wasn't as fancy as the way my aunt prepared it in France.  She added shallots briefly marinated in balsamic and some fresh scissor-cut thai chiles that the Hue (central Vietnam, known for spicier foods) in her dictated.  Since my return to the states I have been on the hunt for canned sardines that are similar to these:

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The sardines in tomato sauce is my preferred choice. The tomatoes bridge the fish and bread together quite well.  And the best part is sopping up pieces of broken baguette in the leftover sauce on the plate.

I was inspired by my friend, Wes. 

Some people leave their professions to be a cook.  I, on the other hand, couldn't wait to throw down my knives and get my life back: to wake up and see the sunrise and then the sun set - I hadn't realized how much had time has passed when every day was spent in front of a stove.  Don't get me wrong, as I still love food and appreciate the craft, but I know there is much more to inquire about, particularly along the outer fringes of food and foodways.  What creates these food movements?  What binds the culture of kitchen cooks? These are topics I'm interested in....

And of course, any other random thoughts and inquiries that don't wax nostalgia or poetics....