Category: Ruminations

Crikey, this is frightening.  Our economy seems like such a gullible, brittle-boned old lady right now.  After reading my latest installment of The Omnivore's Dilemma and articles like these, I'm beginning to cast a leery eye on all corn.  I know it's not the bi-color sweet corn's fault that the catfish farms are going out of business, but still -- knowing that I'm only adding to the corn isotopes in my body doesn't make me feel better about the less processable members of the species.

If this were a horror film, the downfall of the American economy could be karmic retribution, some manifestation of maize vengeance brought down by patient Native American spirits.

Anyway, I'm thrilled to report two things:

This is a statue of Jao Mae Guan Im, known to the Chinese as Guan Yin which, according to this site, means "Who Contemplates the [Supplicating] Sound of the World".  She's apparently a bodhisattva, the female incarnation of Avalokitesvara, embodiment of compassion.

Growing up, I only knew her as "that statue of a woman in my aunts' houses."  Jao Mae Guan Im was not part of our standard issue Sunday school Buddhism.  First of all, she was a she, and for all the wonderful things Buddhism is, it is not a culture of the feminine divine.  Secondly, she was often distinctly Chinese-looking, standing among swirls of water or curling lotus petals in a sort of Venus on the half-shell tilt into the wind so her long robes and pretty beehive/Crystal Gayle hair combo were permanently aflutter.

Not everyone had shrines to her in their houses,  which made her seem that much more mystical to me.  Those who did worship her had to give up beef.  (This was the only thing I knew about her because, go figure, I only ever seem to remember details about food.) Depending on where you google, her followers believe her cruel father was reincarnated as a cow; since they don't want to eat him, they don't touch beef; the other story is that Guan Im was so compassionate that she was always a vegetarian, even in utero.

Interesting too that it's beef her believers give up, as the cow so often represents matriarchy.  Even the word cow (as opposed to bull or the neutral food term cattle) refers to the female -- how many other animals do we call primarily by the female gender's title?  Not sows, not ewes, not hens, not mares, not bitches.

Here's a fun page on cross-cultural cow lore. 

And in case you've forgotten why corned beef and pastrami got kosher clearance (except when applied in a Swiss-cheesed Reuben): it's the Leviticus-approved combo of cloven hoof + chews the cud.

CHARLIE: I don't want to go to this party.  I always wind up talking to the same girl.

ME: Well, is she cool?

CHARLIE: She's Korean, from Minnesota.  And she's a vegetarian.  It's so unattractive.

ME: ...

CHARLIE: The first two are interesting, but vegetarians...I guess it depends on your relationship with meat. 

I like the Rain Man-style review in the middle of this Pinkberry lawsuit article:

In a class-action lawsuit filed last year, Pinkberry -- which operates roughly 50 stores in California and New York -- was accused of misrepresenting its product as "frozen yogurt" and making bogus health claims, including that the dessert (which comes in three flavors: plain, which is very sour; green tea, which is chalky; and coffee, uncommonly delicious) was "all-natural."

Number of search results in Google news for downer cows: 462

Many of you may wonder, what happened to the Ganda we once knew and loved?  Has she been lobotomized?  Is she a frakking Cylon?  Has she been listening to too much NPR? 

The answers to those questions are: I'm right here, no, I wouldn't tell you if I were, and probably.

None of that can explain this sort of sea change I've been feeling lately. A confluence of events has conspired to unseat me  -- an election year/leap year, the tanking economy, the rising cost of food, turning 30, hormonal shifts, pollen counts, star alignments, tight underwear, god knows what else.  This hiatus has been an incubation period for a new experiment I've been thinking about for a while.  I know it's not going to make sense. It's sort of antithetical to everything this blog was always about.  It's probably going to alienate my core readership, if my total neglect over the last few months didn't already do that.  But it's an idea that I'm finally ready to get cracking on.

It's called The Abstain Project.  It's just what you might imagine.  Every so often, I will abstain from something, and I'll report on the effect of the abstinence.  I'll keep abstaining until I can't take it anymore.  It's really about setting up a parameter and seeing where I come up against obstacles, and finding out whether or not the obstacles are too much for me.  Like a rolling permaLent.

The point is not to become someone who abstains completely from all things; the point is more to see what I can live without and what I can't live without.  And to find out what life is like for someone who chooses, or has no choice but, to live without.

What really clinched it for me was probably this episode of This American Life, which chronicles the realities of modern pig farming.  (Extra bonus which made me never want to go to another wiener house -- the disgusting choads in Act Two who are probably the same dumbass mfs who think race is not an issue in this country anymore.)

I know, I know, I spent the last four years pushing reckless gluttony and guilt-free hedonism.  But I'm wondering if a different kind of pleasure can be gleaned from life, one that comes not through consumption but through abstinence.  And hey, if I try veganism and decide it's a crock, I can denounce it from the high horse of experience.  But what if it isn't?

I don't think I'll be able to give up all meat, but I might try to, just to see how long I can go without.  Dairy and eggs?  Soy and all soy products?  Certainly would be a challenge.  Alcohol?  Well, that probably wouldn't be too hard, but I don't think I'd enjoy it much.  Fruits and vegetables?  Now there's a real challenge.  Refined sugar?  Seems horrifying, but maybe it clears the head. Eating out? E-mail?  Cell phone?  Lots of possibilities.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.   First things first -- I'm going to cut out beef for now.  Too easy, I know, but I feel like I need to ease myself into the project if I'm going to sustain it.   I'm sure I'll fall off the wagon with certain things; I don't expect refined sugar to be off the table for more than 2 days.  But it should be a wacky little ride.  And at least now I'll have something to talk about.

Where have I been?  Well, out trying to actually have analog-style human contact.  And working out.  And going to the opera.  And, sadly, still eating a lot of Korean takeout on the subway.  I've been suffering from a bit of internet fatigue.  My job and its distance from my home have conspired to keep me out of the kitchen.  As much as I love food, I don't have the energy to chase obscure outer boro restos or cheflebrities anymore.

I started blogging in 2004 to try and get legit food writing gigs.  Once I got the legit food writing gigs, the dream started fraying.  I started eating crap in service of reviews I had to write.  I felt the need to quantify every food experience I had because I knew I'd be expected to voice an opinion.  Even my friends started worrying about what I'd think of their cooking. 

And then there were the odd relationships I began to have with the people in the tiny food world. You know how it goes: a P.R. rep invites you to an event where you will be leaned upon to write about whatever is being pushed.  You see all the familiar faces -- the food editors, the freelance writers, the bloggers, everyone smiling and chummy over their cocktails.  This is the village it takes to create the content people want.  I'm sure that the majority of those writers are able to navigate the murky waters with honor and dignity.  (And I mean it -- there are lots of writers whose opinions I trust precisely because they're not scenesters and they've got the cojones to say whatever they want to say -- Robert Sietsema, Regina Schrambling and Adam Platt are just a few.)  But without the protection of complete obscurity, I can't.  I'm ultimately someone who wants to make other people happy.  I may not have the stomach for this kind of work.  While I've never been a fan of Amanda Hesser's writing, these days I can't really participate in the schadenfreude surrounding the fallout of her now infamous Spice Market review.  I don't live with the illusion that writers are sequestered from the people or things they write about. 

Anyway, there are so many people blogging with the kind of stamina I used to have when I had a less rigorous schedule.  I can't keep up the pace, and I'm not going to try to anymore. I don't want to sell myself as an expert.  I want to participate in my life more and observe less.

I've put out my fair share of negative energy over the years -- after all, the tag line for this blog was "eating and complaining in nyc".  But I'm not interested in being a critic anymore.  And I'm realizing that a sister just has to blog for herself, or there won't be anything to talk about.

So for starters, I finally upgraded to Movable Type 4.1.  We'll see how this goes.  The old system was just weighing my build time down.  Of course, I really only half know what I'm doing with the tech stuff, so posting this post may entirely break my site. 

And I've gone with one of MT's stable out-of-the-box templates, which I will be tweaking some as the weeks go by and I have a little more time. Again, I'm going to go at my glacial pace because I want this to be fun again.

You Are What You Eat will return sporadically, whenever I can get people to participate.

And I'll still talk about my life through my food.  Maybe I just need spring to give birth to green things so I can get back into it.  But I may talk about music.  Or the election.  Or puppies, rainbows and unicorns.  I guess we'll see. 

Or, as my friend Jeanne calls it, "Singles Awareness Day".

In case you missed my squeaky WNYC debut this morning:

And for the lovers:

[from La Doug.]

Damn. Gourmet.com's shmancy party made me feel like a gauche-ass freeloader. The fete was thrown at Bar Boulud, with Daniel Boulud himself holding court for a gathering of chefs, writers, editors, and buttoned up bloggers. Patés galore (my favorite being the guinea hen), a line snaking through the stainless steel kitchen, a succulent boudin noir, and enough chefs to program PBS for five straight Sundays. By the end of the night, they were practically pouring the syrah down our throats. The blond wood and fish-scale covered railroad space was quite comf and roomy. I'll have to check out Bar Boulud for pre-Met nosh.

As someone who's worked in online for almost ten years now (yikes), I've lived through the days of Aeron chairs for all to being treated like the flowers in the attic. These days, attention is being paid to dotcom, and this party seemed to say, quite clearly, Gourmet.com is Gourmet. Obvs we are not enjoying the same economic boom we were during the first internet bubble, but the bloggers are being taken very seriously. By now, I see a lot of familiar faces at these things and I wonder -- if I started this blog in 2007 instead of 2004, would I still be able to get my name on this guest list? Ten years from now (hell, three years from now), will I be supplanted by the pepper sprouts in some uncharted new medium?

Meanwhile, they kept running these clips of David Pasternack pulling the foreskin off a giant penis.

Here are some pics before I go to bed.

My friend Janet's going to pinch hit for me while I've got my nose to the grindstone at work. Please be kind to her.

Lemon out.