Vinegar and Vulnerable

Disclaimer: Ugh…as a writer I’ve always made it a goal NOT to explain myself or my writing…but I suppose the circumstances here are a little different…I’ve been giving you tastes and tidbits of what I do creatively…I write from experience and dreams…things that have happened to me and things I have a hard time differentiating from dream or reality…When something inspires me I write..fragmented or whole…true or spindles of truth blowing about in a sky of ambiguity…I’m still unsure of what this Blog will be…it has no pattern or structure…its my thoughts shared with anyone who wants to share them with me…as if we are sitting across a polished oak table with two spoons submerged in a bowl of bouillabaisse…I guess that’s what this is…what it all is…my life centered around the table...food memoir…and I’ve made myself wholey vulnerable to you all..bon appétit

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Possible Symptoms of Only Child Syndrome: your parents become your best friends. Our travels became focused around dinner when we tasted new possibilities on our palates, let our taste buds roam the nooks and crannies of the places we travel. In the moments between dusk and Merlot stained lips where I feel a tug of war between my adolescence against my adulthood. The friction made itself known this past August, heavy and abrasive

It was twilight in the city. We finished dinner, the silkiness of rich sauces and brine of poached fish still on my tongue. Cool and musky air churned at my ankles, heels clicking awkwardly from misplaced steps from glasses of Riesling and a desert of ice-wine and Camembert. I held their hands as we tried to hail a cab, both warm and malleable. Despite the two-inch heels, I can peer over the crown of my mother’s head and look into my father’s eyes yet I still felt protected, safe, home. I held on tighter than I should have.

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Food memoir is best ingested through the eyes. A sub genre of autobiography, it has become known to be a form of autobiography, intertwining narratives of family life, travel, growth and the author's representation of an evolving 
self through ones palate. The Shared Table is a haven for self-revelation. Shared implies you are not alone in the experience of eating. Eating is an act that, at time, requires others to provide a context for laughter, tears, and arguments and even silences-punctuated by the chorus of utensils and music of consumption. Life is passed by at such a fast pace as society becomes more focused on progression, innovation and material consumption.

Yes, the importance of educations and labor is important but we never seem to slow down anymore. Something we should share and experience with each other. Less and less do we stop and regard what life what life has to offer us in the form of food and drink, a part of my daily living. A shared meal reiterates and supports generosity. It strengthens relationships and reminds us of the basics of life, of human nature. Sensuality can be found in roasted pork loin, love in apple torts, temper in chili powder. The kitchen and dining room are classrooms, battlefield, ballrooms, bedrooms and libraries. They are places for round-tables, philosophies, debates, confessions and interrogation. Food provides us something to quest for and talk about afterward, giving rise to literature itself. All writers have the ability to bring to life, experiences and ideas that other people cannot. They can make the reader feel connected to a story about a stranger, or a place they have never been. “Food writers make explicit what native eaters know in their hearts, minds, palates.” I have forgotten where I read this but it says everything my words cannot say.

Dining, food, eating, the culinary experience allows us to come together, appreciate what others have experienced and relate those experiences to our own lives. One can revive a past experience with family or friends. Food keeps memories intact. We can almost taste a childhood dish and remember where we were, how we felt, what we were wearing, and whom we were with. We remember barely being able to reach the top drawer just below the edge of the counter but wanting, begging to help an adult prepare a meal. We watched wrinkled hands of our grandmother or deft fingers of our parents chop and kneed. We watched their foreheads fold into vs as they contemplated the precise texture for a sauce or stew. There is a flaw that has come out of culinary memoir. We tend to assume that to write interesting prose on culinary experiences one has to have experienced lands far and wide, exotic ingredients and have to have the means to do so. However, some of the most poignant stories of food come from our own backyards, or kitchens, rather. Holiday morsels, special occasion meals, and childhood favorites are just as interesting and as significant as that one unforgettable you can still taste as if it were yesterday.