Food as a friend.

When good food is in my life, I feel like an old friend has come to visit. It is calm, easy, warm and I can enjoy as much drink as I would like in its presence. I can cry onto it, or laugh with it. It will never judge me for my opinions, and will always let me know that I am loved. Food is my life long friend, and I am constantly trying to be the best companion that I can. In this vein, I am always trying to perfect my recipes and try new ones. I bring new friends to our gatherings to see how they might get along with one another. I am always careful to treat my edible friends in the way that best suits them. I love to learn about their histories. I love to help them to envision a new, and adventurous future.

Food is the best friend I have ever known...

and I love it very much.

Life is toast

I am sitting in my living room. My beautiful fiance is cooking me toast and eggs. The room is filled with that familar, familial smell of browning bread grains, the sound of spattering egg butter and it just makes me think of everyone that is not eating this breakfast. Maybe its someone rushing in the drive thru for a unlovable styrofoam box full of hollow foodish gross, or someone who can't afford anything today, or even worse, someone who can afford it, but won't eat because they make actually create a curve on their body. I am so grateful for every little snap, slurp, mmm, yum, burp, rip and touch. Eating good food, with great people is simply a divine experience. Food is available for reverence. Free food is coming off trees right now. Picking a little cherry, nibbling a tomato, eating our season. Exquisite dopeness.

free food: http://denver.fallingfruit.org/, http://boulder.fallingfruit.org/

Why to learn culinary terminology, (and why you're not a dick to use it)

I have just added an element to the blog, "Culinary Idea/Word of the Day". As you will notice on the starboard side of our little foodie adventure ship, I am going to add a random word or thought or idea or technique or food everyday. I think that if you are going to work with food, and respect it, then its always a fantastic thing to be improving your quiver of culinary diction. There are definitely some people who are snarky and condescending with culinary terminology; these people are dicks. It has less to do with the words they are using, and more the kind of shitty person that they are. We are not going to be these people. Knowledge is power. We understand that collecting a common language about food will make us all stronger and more efficient culinarians. It is not about being superior to others, but the terms and ideas used in the food world matter. Chopping is not dicing. Stock is not the same as broth. A sauteed onion will and should look different than a sweated one.

So feel free to use this daily term with those around you. There is always an appropriate time to interject with your newly found knowledge about baba ghanouj, bone marrow or Boston brown bread. Annoy your partner, co-workers, cellmate, bassist in your REO Speedwagon cover band, Shuffleboard teammate or child that you are inculcating with the love of food. Then feed them all!

30 and "counting"...

I am 30. I am about to turn 31. Age has never really felt like a logical way for me to quantify things. I have never applied the social norms to my life, i.e.: At 24 I will marry my college sweetheart, by 25 I will have a career path, by 26 I have children, and by 30 I will hate everything that I have created.

I have vacationed within my life for what I feel like is just the right amount of time. I did the proverbial journey into "myself" and sorted out who I am on some level or another, what I need in my life and the things that I can discard and tag as clutter. Through all of this self-indulgent "searching", I always had it somewhere in my mind that things were just going to turn out fine...Strike that, turn out AWESOME. I would meet the most killer partner to share my life with. I would find a job that made me lots of money, as well as potentially famous and pretentious. I would live somewhere that felt like the most truthful me. Ok. I'm close.

I have a partner who is amazing. Silly. Gorgeous. Flamboyant. Intelligent. Loves me.

I have a job that is changing the world for the better. Literally.

I live in a place that most people dream of vacationing in: mountains, music, yippies, sun.

Im still itchy. I want to make sure that I am recognized to the fullest extent that I can be. By myself and others. I don't want to miss anything. I want to eat and drink everything, everywhere. I want to live by the ocean. I want to live in the mountains. I want to work out more. I want to eat out more. I wish that I could make tons of money and never work again. I love living simply and having a job that is fulfilling. I want to be cooler. Im pretty fucking cool for 30. I wish that everyone would pay attention to me. I wish I was the kid that could just read a book in the corner. I want my partner to know that I love her more than anything. I want to make more art. I wish I had a 9-5, predictable career job. I should have picked one thing and stuck with it. Im intensely glad I didn't do that. I wish I didn't miscount my blessings so frequently.

But, Im happy. Really Real Happy.

Exercise Vs Food

My life has been a balance between two of my most favorite, but at sometimes, most diametrically opposed pastimes. Eating and exercising. As my father has said in the past, he eats so that he has the energy to exercise. I, on the more self-indulgent and gluttonous side of our family, exercise so that I don't feel excessively fat when I eat whatever I can get my hands (and mouth) on. I love to be outside. I love to bike and ski and run. Though, not nearly as much as I love pig and cheese. I envy those with high metabolisms, though I do not feel that they wholly appreciate their circumstances in relation to food. I have to work to be able to indulge. The experience is therefore that much sweeter. I am also that much more pleased when I am in good shape. I feel like a proud craftsman having made my very own bookshelf in the garage. I consider the genesis of strenuous activity for means of exercise. As we as a world have gotten more sedentary, we have also began to eat more and more. The quality of the food has been inversely correlated to the quantity, and as a result: America the Swollen. It wasn't until 1949 that we truly discovered the connection between exercise (physical activity in general) and improvements in health. Meanwhile, we have consciously chosen to use cheaper methods and ingredients for our food, we have become too busy to be bothered with "unrealistic" activities such as growing or cooking our own food and we have invented more and more ways to have less and less human contact. We have, quite literally, created a world of issues for ourselves, yet we want the quick fix. For me, there are simple ways that we can stem the tide of this landslide. We'll call it the Human Race Redux: An Exercise Plan.

1. Create Community. Technically, I think this could be the only bullet point of our plan. It encompasses the solution to nearly every issue plaguing our society today. Most of our main issues have materialized due to a pulling away of people from each other. Eating alone, driving alone, living alone…it requires more of everything! From an eating perspective, there is no doubt in my mind that I eat more poorly when no one is judging me. When my girlfriend is here, it's very rare that I have my midnight-thirty useless peanut butter face shove parties. Eating with others not only celebrates the food and friends, but is way more utilitarian and energy efficient than cooking for one or two. The same goes for exercising…If I have a workout partner, its like having Mick from the Rocky movies shouting at the back of my head.

2. Eat Intentionally. Buy food that you have some general idea about where its going to end up. I buy nearly all of my veggies once or twice a week at the farmers market, and I have at least a loosely formed plan for where they will end up. Squash: Roasted to be eaten tonight and for probably a couple more meals -- The other half go to making fresh pickles. Green Beans: Sauteed with nearly every meal for the next three days. Its so easy to buy things and forget about them, and then they die. Or buy something, ala a box of Late July Organic "Oreo" cookies from Costco (therefore the size of a 1980s VCR) and feel the need to whittle away the purchase by shoving six of them in my mouth four times a day. By the way, they are one of the best cookies made…watch out Oreos. Buy food that wants to be wanted by you. You're the chef…and the diner.

3. Learn to Love Exercise. Find an activity that is really exciting and fun. Something that gets you outdoors, with friends or not, and just so happens to have the fringe benefit of keeping you looking and feeling sexy! Skiing, hiking and mountain biking are things that I would love to do even if they somehow were laden with saturated fat, high fructose corn syrup and made me a fat slob. I can see why people loathe their workout time when they are doing it at 24 hour Fitness. What a clusterfuck sweatbox of tight, toned, judgmental grunters, all of whom are too engaged in mirror looking and the Nickelback piped into their ears to have an actual human interaction. Enjoy the nature. Love the nature. It will certainly love you back. Nothing centers me more, (while also working off the 2 lbs of pork I consumed last night) than a great hike/trail run and then a swim with my dog in the river. Find something you dig, and do it. Then find some dope, delicious, GOOD food…and eat the hell out of it.

Happiness (and good food) is shared.

Eating is a relationship. Emotions swell, minds race and caution is thrown to the breeze for a beautiful meal. I have seduced many a pea pod. Asparagus has certainly been stalked from from the shadows. I court beets by the bucketful. Everyone knows that feeling of lustful longing for a wonderfully crisp slice of bacon. Whew...Im sweating a bit.

So imagine my heart flutter when I found someone as feverish and love-smitten for food as myself. I have brought a dreamy, delicious, little Italiano into my life...and she cooks and eats with a passion that is nothing short of divine. Our phone sex consists of her describing the menu of a deliciously indulgent restaurant she is going to, and me ruminating on nibbles that I am cooking up and how crunchy, sweet and satiating they are. We have spent our first month living together eating, cooking, drooling over farmers market veggies and coveting well raised meat...and there no end in sight. We nosh our backyard kale, make kimchi and grill local grass fed skirt steak, talking about how we cant wait to teach our kids about the intense joy of communing around a table with delectable food and loving, sincere dining partners.

Life is all about the moments that you are able to truthfully share with someone, and finding that person that just says and thinks exactly what you would, except just much sexier or more intelligently. Though our lives are filled with so many versions of ourselves, our wants and needs are generally fairly steady; just perhaps different hues. I have always looked for the "me" that was comfortable with my emotions, truthfully relatable to those around me and passionate in a healthy direction. My lady friend has eased me into the best version of myself like a oversized bean bag chair; I'm IN it, and it's REAL difficult to stand up. I think I'll stay, perhaps forever.

So for all of you readers, (and your numbers most likely are not terribly plentiful) I hope that you have an eating and laughing partner. Its quite delightful. If you don't, come and eat with us. A love affair with food and fellowship is an investment that pays dividends exponentially. Introduce yourself to a bunch of sexy colorful carrots at the farmers market, "accidentally" bump into that basket of ripe peaches, take those honey laden Rocky Ford melons home with you. A one night stand? Nay. A fairytale romance is coming your way. Be reverent.

Thank you Corinne for being my eating mate, my backyard co-farmer and for loving food and me so much.

Love.

Rumenating on us....

I start to think about where we are as a collective culture....America, the world, humankind. Its just so easy to go down the proverbial "Rabbit Hole", and listen to the talking heads, the anger on both sides that has now become our discourse. I think that there is an amazing introspection to be gleaned from extremism, though the ultimate positive message will be distilled from the fringes. By shoring up our beliefs, and ultimately understanding that we are all better for them, there is a solace in the fact that we don't need them. Like everything in nature, we fight for equity; for a sense of equilibrium or symmetry that just feels right, and, knowing our entitlement (or narcissism) we might not immediately recognize it existence. I am so fond of coming out of an argument feeling that I have intellectually bested (read: kicked the shit out of) my opponent (read: friend/enemy/fellow arguer) that I fail to actually take what I should have away from the conversation. One: My point, while well founded, may not have been the only on the topic and Two: The essence of great thought lies in the subtleties between the words. As a culture that is built upon reactionary tones, and only formulating our response based on the last inflammatory thing that someone says, we forget to portray ourselves as we actually mean to.

"Say what you mean, mean what you say." So many arguments and statements are now lead by agenda based, epithets of partisan lingo that no one truly understands that the meaning is simply lost...and all that exists is the knee-jerk reactions that so often amount to less than a bumper sticker of true individual thought. When I find myself in a helpful place to "sort myself out", politically, humanistically, or just within my own misshapen view of what I want to be for my world, I am certainly with someone who is diametrically opposed (or at least at odds) with my soap box, and injects their views in a manner that makes me wince. A deep breath...but I know that the only constructive response has to be rational, and truthful; we begin to build. Eventually, always, I play for a humanistic, love and community based rationale for all problems. I am unapologetic in the fact that I think our solidification and ultimate reunification of everyone, relies on the fact that there is something beautiful and foundational to be brought out of the struggle. No one gets to be right. No one gets to win. Though for that, we all are better for the fight. Open your ears, rise above the static and tease out the real issues of our world.