Tag: food

Your Favorite: a stand-up round

June 14, 2019

Where I’m working, we have morning stand-ups: a quick meeting where 10 -/+ of us round the room explaining yesterday’s and today’s tasks. Everyone takes a monthly turn at leading. June is my month. So, first off, I built a spinner to pick who goes first:

Spinner

Then, I provided a list of topics that each person could volunteer their favorite. Each day a different topic:

Favorite…

  • Media
    • Movies
    • Books, stories, games
    • Media star or fictional character – hero, villain or
    • Fictional location – in what fictional land would you care to live or visit
    • Meme/genre: sci-fi, fantasy, time shift, horror, dystopia, CSI, medical, cops/crime
  • Food
    • A meal or food you’d eat every day for the rest of your life
    • Beverage
    • Sweet or treat: childhood or now
    • Least favorite food
    • Haven’t tried but would like to
  • Travel
    • Prior vacation spot
    • Desired vacation spot
    • Live the rest of your life
    • Would never travel to, worst placed you’ve lived
    • Where would you take the entire team?
  • Misc
    • Favorite science meme: fusion, space elevator, Moon/Mars colony, robots, AI, etc.
    • Music, do you play an instrument, can you dance, are you in a band?
    • Unknown skills (art, maker, cooking, crafts, etc.)
    • Pet, childhood memory, hobby, best/worst job
    • Bucket list: anything

So far the answers have been fun, strange and entertaining.

(Who knew that some folks don’t like shrimp, sushi, liver & onions, cilantro, bean sprouts? Odd people, these.)

Sex.Food.Rush.Chill

April 3, 2019

Sex.Food.Rush.Chill.

What else is there? Really?

Epicurus — that devil-dog from 300BCE — would have stepped back from such a statement. He would have shaken his head like a dog, olive oil and bits of sardine flying, his wang hanging out of his toga and said with authority — let’s party!

Sex: If you’re not driven by your hormones to procreate — then why are you even here? (Even it no progeny could ever come of your libidinous acts.)

Food: There are so many flavors, textures, and culinary sensations that obesity should be a badge of honor, not a shroud of shame. Oh, and Al-Ko-Hall – straight up!

Rush: The need for speed, death defying feats, an adrenaline high and risk — it’s all about the risk baby.

Chill: You need time, we all need time to pontificate. Sit back, puff a doobie, gaze at the sunset, the stars, or each other and just contemplate all of it — or none of it.

Sex.Food.Rush.Chill

 

 

Why so many flavors?

March 16, 2019

Buffet

[Flickr: Commons Image]

Humans, in fact most animals, could survive given the bare essentials of nutrition: Some grains, some beans, some earthy greens and maybe a few eggs. Pretty basic, nearly tasteless stuff. So, why do we have such refined sensibilities with regards to taste (and smells)?

There are literally millions of ingredients, spices, recipes, mixtures, and cooking methods all producing exotic, intoxicating, alluring odors and flavors. It seems overkill. Thousands of culinary media stars (over the years) continue to entice us with the promise of just one more umami taste, one more Maillard enhanced sensation. Sheesh! Talk about the absurdity of The Excess.

If I were designing a brand new biological creature I’d focus on a binary eating process:

  • Will this kill me (or make me ill), or not?
  • Will this enhance my nutritional energy quotient, or not?

There, done.

With such a process, a vast swath of beneficial food stuffs now opens up for such a creature to leverage. Think: super goat. The whole concept of “squeamishness” would vanish.

“Oooh, I can’t eat that.”

“Well, sure you can. It won’t kill you, or make you sick, and it will keep you alive for another day and a half.”

Does today’s food culture seem excessive and absurd to you?

King’s Kitchen

March 12, 2016

Here’s an idea…

Create a culinary show focusing on the cooking methods, foods and locations of the royalty of the world.

How did the king’s cook prepare and feed hundreds of people throughout history?

What foods and utensils and methods were employed to feed the kings and queens and their retinue during the Middle Ages? The age of enlightenment? Ancient Rome? Ancient Egypt? Ancient Africa? What of the Asian kings?

How do you cook for dozens and dozens in those stone kitchens using those primitive tools. What secrets did they employ? What spices the they leverage? What unsavory bits did they sneak in or die from?

The current culinary scene is all good and well, filled with sus-vide meats, nitrogen foams, exotic presentations and weird combinations. But I think the cooking done in bygone days might be more interesting.

I think there are hundreds of venues, subjects, techniques and ingredients that would be fascinating to learn about. And… actually performing the foraging, the market going, the preparation, the cooking and the serving — IN THESE LOCATIONS… Well, I think that would be a captivating show. Imagine if one would be allowed to enter and use kitchens within the castles of Britain? Or France or anywhere in Europe? Imagine cooking for the kings of Mayan or Incan culture, or at least simulating it, but on the steps of Coba or Telume. How about preparing a feast in the deserts of Egypt? Or Tanzania?

I think if one could start small, local, a few castles in England say, then build an audience…

What’s needed however is someone with an obvious robust nature. Good butchering skills. Not afraid of uncommon foods and their preparation. Someone with a fair amount of experience but not caught up in haught-cuisine. Someone down to earth and able to explain, learn, flub-up now and then and open to giving-it-a-go.

King’s Kitchen sounds like a fun project no?