Food

I am a recalcitrant foodie.
I say recalcitrant because foodieism has become annoyingly commercialized, about absurd excess, obsession with style over substance, and/or dominated by personalities, rather than simply being a celebration of food being the best that it can be, even if that best is glorious simplicity.

I blame The Food Network and its copycats for a lot of the silliness -- don't get me wrong; in its beginnings, TFN was a wonderful thing and a worthy successor to the "highbrow" cooking shows on PBS -- Julia Child, The Frugal Gourmet, and such like. However, in recent years, a lot of it has spun out of control to the extent that there are foodies adopting cult-like obsessions about things like gourmet salt, and cast iron upkeep methodologies, and bread. Ghu help me, the idiocy that's out there about bread...

Well. Clearly, I'm going to be tilting at a lot of windmills here. I love food, from elevated haute cuisine to solid, dependable, pub food; I love it all -- and I cook a lot of it, and eat most of it. There are very few things I won't cook or eat. I'll be sharing favorite recipes and pertinent commentary here.

Oh, and tearing apart a lot of silliness.