Food, Self, and Society

My life has changed in a noticeable way since I’ve started this blog.  Every time I see something about food, anything at all, it piques my interest.  Of course, it had all been interesting to me before, and I’d always believed in the importance of food and the role it plays in people’s lives, but I’d never invested myself this much into food: its production, its origins, the cultures surrounding it; even the very idea of food became interesting to me – how do people think about food?  Why do they think about food that way?  We can’t always know the answers, but in trying to find those answers (and sometimes actually finding them) we can learn so much about people that the only logical conclusion is thus: food is the most important aspect of any society, in one form or another.

There’s really no point in my having told you all that, except that it’s a simple reflection on who I am, and what it means to be me.  I guess that would help explain my recent obsession with food blogs, specifically the somewhat weird ones (my already-introduced examples of This Is Why You’re Fat and My Food Looks Funny seem to be perfect examples of this.).  It also helps to explain why, when I got my acceptance letter to a study abroad program in Egypt this summer, the first thing I did after purchasing my plane tickets (and telling a person or two) was to look up the general cuisine in the country.  Of course, I would have done this eventually anyway, though earlier on in my life it may not have been the second thing I’d do.  What did I find?  Disappointment.  Then again, that’s not really a fair assessment – I was still (and remain so still) extremely excited, especially given that I’d be immersed in a culture and cuisine that I’ve never experienced before.  The disappointment, then, came from my finding that there is no specifically Egyptian cuisine, that instead there’s a general Middle Eastern diet, with a few Egyptian flares.  If there’s anyone out there who knows differently, please let me know as soon as possible. Needless to say, over the next few months I’ll be trying to eat more and more Middle Eastern food (I love falafel), while also trying to maintain the distinct American aspects of my diet.  I know for a fact that when I go abroad, I will miss barbecues.  I’ll miss the grilled chicken, and MAN will I miss the cheeseburgers!  For good measure, since pork may be hard to come by in Egypt, I think I may make an effort to have a ham and cheese sandwich before I go, eggs with bacon, some sausage and some roast pork.  And the first thing I’ll have when I get back… well, I don’t know.  I guess we’ll see, won’t we?  What I do know, however, is that I plan to maintain this blog through my journey, to document my experiences in the world of Egyptian cuisine.

A second, albeit earlier, adventure was to come yesterday, in the form of an Ethiopian restaurant.  My girlfriend, her brother, my sister and I were to go to the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art (we didn’t; the exhibit was sold out for the day), the Central Park Zoo, and an Ethiopian restaurant on West 77th Street, just a few yards away from the Shake Shack.  We went through the zoo for a couple of hours, saw a bunch of animals (all of which was exciting, of course, but it’s not the point of the story), walked around, and then continued on our way towards the restaurant.  Between the zoo and what was supposed to be the restaurant, we stopped to rest for a bit in the beautiful Central Park, where we played frisbee for a short while.  Then we got hungry, so we decided to walk through the park to what was supposed to have been the restaurant.  After a twenty-minute walk through the park, we came out directly across the street from the American Museum of Natural History, and lacking a reason not to, we went inside and walked around for an hour or so.  PS, I want to talk like a monkey does with a keyboard.  Not really, but it would be funny.

Then we went to the address Google had given us, only to find that the Ethiopian restaurant we had been looking for had been replaced by a much more expensive restaurant.  Not wanting to spend that much money, we very quickly decided to go to Chinatown and eat at Wo Hop.  Of course, we had been planning to go to Chinatown on the way home anyway, so it didn’t take much convincing.  (The Shake Shack was thought of as a possible option, but the tremendously long line was a very, very big deterrent.)  Other options presented themselves along the way to the train, but all of them proved to be too expensive for our tastes (there was an average menu price for one entrée of about $25).  We were all REALLY hungry at this point, though, so we stopped along the way for dirty-water-dogs.  They were delicious.  Wo Hop was beyond delicious, and well-worth the 25-minute line.  While waiting, we got a paper menu and picked all the things we wanted so that we could just get right to the food when we got in there.  The food was very fresh, coming to our table literally seconds after leaving the various pans/fryers/etc.  And, I got a tee-shirt!  Granted, none of the food we had been new to us, since we’d all had Chinese food before, but the experience was still superb.  There was another restaurant nearby that we briefly thought we’d try, it having been recommended to me by a friend a few months ago.  I was told it was a hole-in-the-wall type of place, but we did not know just how whole-in-the-wall it was.  When we go back to the city in a week or two, I fully intend to go back.  That is, unless I can find a good, cheap food that none of us have tried before, from a different country.  I’ll let you all know how that goes.

Ice Cream Spongebob

Earlier than this adventure, however, was a small shopping adventure on Thursday afternoon.  My girlfriend and I were shopping when we heard that tell-tale sign of summer – the ice cream truck.  I just couldn’t resist, so the two of us shared this Spongebob ice cream.  The eyes were gumballs.  He is, or so it seems, the replacement for the Tweety Bird that used to be out there.  Of course, the one from last year is probably even funnier – he’s got fangs!:

Vampiric Spongebob, 2009

I love summer.

Finally, remember the last post I made, where I told you that I’d talk about this week’s Simpsons episode?  Here goes.  The Simpson family went to Israel with Ned Flanders.  While there, Homer has an hallucination in the desert, where the cast of the Veggie Tales movies come to him and tell him that he is the Messiah, and that he is to unite all three of the major religions in the area at Jerusalem.  It’s how he does so that was so interesting, in so many ways (it was so very Homer Simpson-esque).  Instead of focusing on the differences between religions, focus on what’s the same, and how we are all to be good people.  His specific example:

Homer: Celebrate your commonality. Some of us don’t eat pork, some of us don’t eat shellfish, but we all of us love chicken.
Mulism: You can simmer it in a tajeet.
Jew: In a soup, you can boil it.
Homer: Spread the word: peace and chicken.

And with that, my friends, I bid you adieu.

Of course it takes Homer Simpson to unite Christians, Muslims, and Jews – through food.  I don’t want to ruin the episode for anyone who hasn’t watched it, so I’ll refrain from talking about it in specifics, for now.  In the meantime, watch the episode I’ve linked to below; I probably will talk about it somewhat in my next post.  Until then, my friends, I bid you adieu.

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