First off, my own relationship to it: A constant battle with weight. I can't say about myself that I am a gourmet. A gourmand is what would describe me better. Outside of the rare thing, such as Okra, I eat with relish and in copious amounts. I love fast food as much as home cooking or fancy restaurant thingies. One ground rule however - the greasier the better. Please don't come to me with lectures on healthy diets and such. Mayo on french fries, that's me.
And unfortunately, I do not have the sort of fast metabolism needed to deal with all the junk that I eat. I have had a weight problem starting from my early 30s - so it is always feast or famine around here. I eat, I gain weight, I go on diets, lose the weight and then I start eating again. And being in a "trying to cut down" phase at the moment, I am thinking about food almost constantly. And funnily enough, putting this blog together is helping with that. I can always look, right?
However, even more importantly, in my relationship to food is an abhorrence of animal factory farming that is in a perpetual fight with the fact that I love meat. Not just meat - all protein. 
And not only do I love protein but I also happen to know that we, like much of the larger primate family, are omnivorous. So, it is not sinful or unnatural or harmful for us to eat meat, to relish the taste of it. Our guts are constructed for it, in fact. Proof? Right here actually > > > ;-)
And not only do I love protein but I also happen to know that we, like much of the larger primate family, are omnivorous. So, it is not sinful or unnatural or harmful for us to eat meat, to relish the taste of it. Our guts are constructed for it, in fact. Proof? Right here actually > > > ;-)
But all this said, I still struggle. The solution that I have found is to eat only meat, poultry or eggs, that I know come directly from farms and not a mass production company. This sort of specialty stuff is very expensive of course, but I take that in my stride. What is more problematic is eating away from home. Mostly I hold to my rule and stick to the vegetarian part of the menu, but my golden rule has often been known to be broken.
Note: None of the recipes on this blog are mine. I am not even a mediocre cook. I just about cope with the basic stuff. I do however, have a very good nose for ingredients. So, as I am putting these posts together I read many recipes and I especially look at their ingredients, and not only at what they are but the amounts in which they are used. And then also at the instructions, of course. And only when I find one that satisfies all my senses do I decide to use it. But, to repeat - the recipes are not mine. Their sources are always linked, and if you are into cooking I would advise you to go to them and explore their sites further, since they all have really great stuff.
Second, respect for and awareness of one of the high points of human "being": Cooking. I am deliberately staying away from the more high falutin terminology such as "culinary culture", "gastronomy" and so on, and instead use this one simple word: Cooking.
Second, respect for and awareness of one of the high points of human "being": Cooking. I am deliberately staying away from the more high falutin terminology such as "culinary culture", "gastronomy" and so on, and instead use this one simple word: Cooking.
There is something disturbing about how something as natural, as spontaneous as enjoying what one eats has produced all of these fads. How food has become "interesting" over recent decades. Or how people try to make themselves more interesting through their culinary choices. I have one word for this: It is risible. More, it is contemptible; if one is so desperate in terms of personality that one has to resort to bragging about one's food choices in order to acquire what can only be a pseudo identity.
And yes, as far as I am concerned, this includes things such as veganism, as well. Are they really that ethical? That concerned about the welfare of the animals that they are not eating? Well, maybe some of them are - and for those I will stand corrected and apologize. But, I know plenty who are not. It is just "the current thing" to do. And they do it. And what a great way it also is to show others what a good person you are. So, whenever I meet someone who tells me within the first half hour of meeting them that they are vegan, all of my spidy senses go off a-tingling.
All this specialty food. Thousands of gourmet cheeses. Aisles of sauces and condiments as far as the eye can see. Endless charcuterie counters. Endless exotica. Endless "special needs" food. It is disgusting. It is decadent. It is not about enjoying food. It is about something else entirely. Something that has gone very wrong in our globalized culture. Where eating has become something else. A ritual of "interestingness". (Is that a word even?). On this blog, sometimes I show such "interesting" food - with the appropriate homily attached. Labeled as "faddish." But mostly, this blog is just about good food.
I want to see all of this go back to where I think it should be: Cooking. Eating. Just that. The way my neighbors here - good sturdy Istanbul housewives (oh dear - that is now a forbidden word, is it not?) do it. Cook something great. The way their grandmothers did it. No weird experimentations. Watch your friends and relations consume the thing. Wherever you are. Whatever culture or geography. Which is why I try to put food of different places here - but preferably always of the type that the people living in those places gobble up with no major fanfare. Because it tastes good. Just that. Without any exclamations of "oh, this is very interesting."
Interesting - my foot! A very deliberate agenda to get people used to the idea of eating strange things, more like. Black burger buns today, bugs tomorrow.
And with this we finally come to the crux of the matter: "Ze Bugz."
And with this we finally come to the crux of the matter: "Ze Bugz."
Like many appalling things nowadays, this whole discussion comes out of the World Economic Forum. Apparently there was a sound bite of their fearless leader, Klaus Schwab, where he said "you will eat ze bugz." I have not been able to find this, they have probably scrubbed the internet clean of this little gem. However, the discourse is alive and well on their website and their twitter feed, to give just two examples here:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/why-we-need-to-give-insects-the-role-they-deserve-in-our-food-systems/
https://twitter.com/wef/status/1082362484546187265?lang=en
And if you aren't sufficiently grossed out yet, here's a few more - not from the WEF, but hey - one globalist is as good as another, right?
And, needless to say, little entrepreneurs are popping up all over the place. Nice sanitary looking packaging too, eh?
It hasn't even been that long ago that people who made predictions such as these were screamed at as conspiracy theorists. They still do it, in fact. As far as I am concerned however, we have come to the point where yesterday's "conspiracy theory" is today's "breaking news". And just listen to the background music of that twitter video: This cutesy putesy jingle that makes all of it sound so harmless. So innocuous. This is the sort of music that they put behind all of their horror clips. Propaganda and conditioning, where even the smallest detail has been worked out. Oh - they are very very good at what they do!
Go take a look at their website. Now, this is a masterpiece: On the homepage you will see all of this nice stuff. Here's one: "Women in work: how companies in Chile reduced gender pay gap". This is the sort of honey that they catch the flies with. But if you skip past all the nice-talk and go inside - that is a different state of things entirely. You need to scroll down the home page until you hit the "circles". That is where, among much else, you will encounter "ze bugz" that you will be expected to eat.
Literally thousands (if not indeed tens of thousands) of articles, presentation slides, white papers, government reports, videos, conference talks, and and and... That they seem to be collecting in what I can only describe as a state of demented, driven frenzy. Articles written on the necessity of bio-surveillance. Articles proclaiming how happy you will be when you own nothing in 2030. (The article can only be found on the Forbes website now, they ended up having to delete the one on the WEF page due to all the rotten eggs thrown at them because of it. And the same also goes for a video on the same subject - they had to delete it after thousands of people wrote cuss words as comments under it on twitter. But I, as many others, had the foresight to save it - hehe, so here it is.) Where you can peruse their strategic maps on just about every topic under the sun and where everything is connected to everything else, and all of it is a crisis for which the only solution is for you to give up your rights, your property, and especially your freedom - as those thousands of articles attached to those scary wheels will tell you over and over again.
Literally thousands (if not indeed tens of thousands) of articles, presentation slides, white papers, government reports, videos, conference talks, and and and... That they seem to be collecting in what I can only describe as a state of demented, driven frenzy. Articles written on the necessity of bio-surveillance. Articles proclaiming how happy you will be when you own nothing in 2030. (The article can only be found on the Forbes website now, they ended up having to delete the one on the WEF page due to all the rotten eggs thrown at them because of it. And the same also goes for a video on the same subject - they had to delete it after thousands of people wrote cuss words as comments under it on twitter. But I, as many others, had the foresight to save it - hehe, so here it is.) Where you can peruse their strategic maps on just about every topic under the sun and where everything is connected to everything else, and all of it is a crisis for which the only solution is for you to give up your rights, your property, and especially your freedom - as those thousands of articles attached to those scary wheels will tell you over and over again.
And they are dead serious about this. And furthermore, they are also very very open about it. Except no one ever goes and takes a look. You can register freely and read everything that they have - and what documents you will find! Except, hardly anyone does it, of course. Hardly anyone knows about them, and those who do, think that they are just a bunch of rich folks getting together and talking about stuff once a year in Davos. Wrong! I used to think so too until just a few years ago. This is a very influential, extremely well funded organization which counts every major corporation on the planet among its members/funders; has been running this "school" called the "young global leaders" program since 1992, and scores of current day political leaders are alumni thereof. "Our people" as Herr. Schwab says. Like who, you may ask? Angela Merkel, Emanuel Macron, Tony Blair, Justin Trudeau, Boris Johnson, Jacinda Ardern, Gavin Newsome, and and and... And last but not least, the World Economic Forum is an official partner of the United Nations. And if you think that the UN is this nice friendly organization in search of world peace - think again, would be my advice.
One fake crisis after another. It will be so easy after this point, now that a mere handful of these monsters are in charge of all the world's supply chains, to instigate food shortages that drive humanity to eating "ze bugz".
But would they even need to go that far? When it will be easy enough to talk masses of people who are in pursuit of "culinary experiences" into baking their first worm flour quiche... Let me tell you, it will be a doddle. Food shortages or not...
Whatever may come, I will not be eating "ze bugz". But, I can see how humanity is slowly but surely driven to giving up its millennia old eating traditions and habits. All these fads that sprang up over the past decades. The disdain that people were made to feel for the things that generations before them had consumed with gusto. Some fads cloaked in "being ethical", many others cloaked in "being experimental". This big obsession with cooking "interesting" stuff. TV Chefs like Rock Stars. And like I already said above - black burger buns today, bugs tomorrow.
Whatever may come, I will not be eating "ze bugz". But, I can see how humanity is slowly but surely driven to giving up its millennia old eating traditions and habits. All these fads that sprang up over the past decades. The disdain that people were made to feel for the things that generations before them had consumed with gusto. Some fads cloaked in "being ethical", many others cloaked in "being experimental". This big obsession with cooking "interesting" stuff. TV Chefs like Rock Stars. And like I already said above - black burger buns today, bugs tomorrow.
But why, on why, are they doing this? That really is the ultimate question, isn't it? Hang out long enough on the WEF website and you get an inkling. I sort of have. But, I am not going to say what it is that I think is really going on. Everyone will have to reach their own conclusions.
And finally, finally: This blog is a graphic design project which has been inspired by the images that I am using: There are several stock photo portals, some completely free, and one that gives a very good free selection but even more if you have a premium account, which I have. I have had to become very familiar with the material that is on these sites because of my teaching work since I am encouraging my students to learn to work with resources rather than hold onto this fuddy duddy notion of painstakingly making everything themselves. They will find out soon enough that the graphic design industry is far too fast paced to allow for that, but I want them to get into the habit early on.
And finally, finally: This blog is a graphic design project which has been inspired by the images that I am using: There are several stock photo portals, some completely free, and one that gives a very good free selection but even more if you have a premium account, which I have. I have had to become very familiar with the material that is on these sites because of my teaching work since I am encouraging my students to learn to work with resources rather than hold onto this fuddy duddy notion of painstakingly making everything themselves. They will find out soon enough that the graphic design industry is far too fast paced to allow for that, but I want them to get into the habit early on.
Anyway, in the beginning when all this online stock resource bonanza started the food photos were not too copious and their quality was also not all that one might wish for either. However, in recent years there are literally tens of thousands of high resolution, studio quality styled and shot food images online. And, I have always loved to work with still-life type images. In my distant past, as an art director, I was lucky enough to have had hotels and restaurants as clients and I would go on photoshoots and even do my own food styling - initially with the help of a pro food styler of course.
So, I have been dying to work with these photos. I am often astounded by how little they seem to inspire my students, they hardly seem to notice them for the most part. But, I certainly have noticed them and this blog gives me the opportunity to dive right into them.
You made my day, and now I'm hungry!
ReplyDeleteahem - that sort of was the idea, you know? But kidding aside it seems that you like this new little endeavor of mine, so I am very glad about that.
DeleteI agree with you: I also will not eat "ze bugz", and that is not only because I'm vegetarian.
ReplyDeleteExactly! Who in their right minds would? :-)
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