Foundations pt. 2 - My extreme omnivore philosophy.

Challenging my assumptions of what is and is not food

Thanks for checking out my writings as I expand onto this platform. I want receive feedback and critique in order to grow as a writer. I want to encourage conversation to happen here. So if you like this stuff, let me know, and subscribe. These first essays will describe my general philosophy towards food, travel, and life. It’s the background of my approach to the cheese and dairy documentation that I intend to continue doing.

I enjoy walking down city streets in residential neighborhoods of distant countries, smelling the aromas coming out of people’s kitchens. Strolling through markets, I observe the range of vegetables, try to identify the species and cuts offered at butchers stalls, watch people choose and interact with vendors of spices and shellfish, stop in my tracks, nose in the air like a hungry hound as I pass bakers with heaps of hot bread. I’m looking for the strange and new, to taste things that might not be immediately appealing. I’m trying to understand why people eat what they eat, and expand my own mind and taste buds by exposing them to novel flavor experiences.

As a child, I was the pickiest eater. I was allergic to cow milk, tomatoes, and citrus which would set off skin rashes. I was scared to try new foods and ate pb and J or top ramen religiously for years when I refused what my mother had cooked. I fell in love with cooking and eating at a young age and at some point realized that I was enjoying foods that I formerly despised. I just had to give them a chance. Now I don’t simply try everything once, I try it over and over until I find a preparation or variety that makes sense. Most tastes are acquired, but it won’t happen unless we are open to it.

My first solo international backpacking trip was in South East Asia. In Cambodia they would serve many dishes with sliced cucumber and green tomatoes on the side. I never appreciated cucumbers, but here in this hot climate with this spicy food it clicked. They are so refreshing. Also the varieties are what we would call heirloom, far more tasty and pleasantly textured than the boring homogenous super market water logs I had eaten in the US. It took being in this place and climate, eating the local cuisine, to understand the beauty of cukes.

  DURIAN: is infamous for its strong stench, I find it to be highly alluring. It reminds me of a washed ride cheese, an over ripe fruit aroma with hints of gym socks and the sweetness of meat starting to turn. On bus rides through across Java I would smell it before we reached the stands, where families sat at benches eating it for desert, men smoking cigarettes selected a durian fastidiously, like you would buy shoes. When I came up to these stalls I was greeted with surprise and they would help me select an appropriate fruit, smiling at my bravery. All eyes were on me as I gobbled it down and then rolled a smoke. I was accepted as a honorary member.

Durian, the worlds strongest smelling fruit

What attracts and repels us about food is not the food itself, it’s the thought of eating it, or the psychological connections and cultural connotations. Our cultures and families teach us what is and is not food, what does and does not smell good, what are pleasant and unpleasant textures. Whatever your grandma feeds you is good, even if it’s a cheese containing living maggots (casu marzu) , fish preserved in lye (lutefisk), a boiled egg containing a partially developed duck fetus (balut), crispy salted deep fried insects. I’ve had all of these strange foods, they smelled and looked extremely unappealing to me and it took much courage and a bit of alcohol to overcome my defenses and pop them in my mouth. I didn’t enjoy them, but I am glad I tried because now my frame of flavor reference has been widened, I survived, it wasn’t so bad. Now these experiences and my emotions at the time are forever cataloged in my TASTE MEMORY BANK.

Fried insects in Cambodia

We grow as humans in part by challenging our assumptions, realizing that our beliefs and values will change, and that others are walking their own paths shaped by their environments and experiences. I understand that this type of growth and learning is not for everyone, and that many do just fine staying comfortable with familiar foods and ideas. But this type of comfort is not for me, I’m addicted to growth through motion and exposure to novel sensory experiences. Fermentation and preservation are the most fascinating foodways in my mind, and the flavors that emerge are endless, bold, and often culturally celebrated or reviled.

It’s generally the fermented foods with strong singular aromas that we place great cultural significance on. Kimchi and Korea, fish sauce and the Philippines, stinky cheeses and Western Europe, fermented mares milk and Central Asia. The flavors and aromas of cuisine are a source of unity through diasporas, and the first object of division and nationalism when objectifying others. They are the people who eat that weird stinky stuff. How could they possibly enjoy that?

Dried dairy products in Mongolia

Because, deliciousness is relative. Like morality, beauty, views towards work and politics. The most available antidote to ethnocentrism and moral absolutism is to observe how others live, to eat their food, listen to their songs, work alongside them. Then you realize that they are not so different. They are not other. We are not distinct nations with fixed tendencies. We are just people, who want to share food and drinks while and laughing with our friends and families. We just have different ideas about what tastes good. The kaleidoscope of human culinary habits is a diversity that I, for one, wish to celebrate. By tasting as much of it as I can.