Category: Food Stories

Food & the single girl

I have taken a long, long break from writing and it was not a good one. It was a year of breaks, each of them harder and less glamorous than the other: break-up, breakdown, heartbreak. I left behind a life I built the hard way and everything I thought I wanted, but didn’t. I had my heart broken in ways I didn’t suspect a heart can even be broken. I went to hell and back, several times.

Today I find myself alone and single and happy, with an entire universe to delve into. A lot has changed, and the way I interact with food has changed, too. Initially, I thought I’d be cooking up a storm and finally eating only the stuff I wanted (chickpeas, lentils and a ton of cheese). Yet, once alone, I found myself incapable of cooking. After a few weeks hiatus – during which I have no idea what I ate- I started coming back to my senses and back to the stove. I’m learning to shop for one and cook for one. What is the right balance between effort, time investment, pleasure of cooking and pleasure of eating? How many tomatoes do I buy, so I don’t go shopping every day and still, they don’t go bad on the kitchen counter? How long can one keep a bottle of champagne open (not that I have this problem often)? How to plan my meals, when I don’t know if I’m gonna eat out or not? This is a life experiment to be documented.

There’s another experiment that requires my attention, and I am ready to dive into thorough research. How do our food choices influence our relationships with the opposite sex? Would I sleep with a guy who orders well-done steak (yes, I judge)? What about a vegan guy (I did sleep with a vegetarian, so I guess that’s that). What about a guy who doesn’t know the difference between Thai and Chinese food (I can imagine such monsters exist).
Food has always been a gate to interpreting the world around me, understanding myself, assessing others and my relationship with them. This is what I am planning to explore in the next articles. I have never been shy with and of men, so I promise you it’s gonna be an interesting, funny and sometimes embarrassing ride. Stay tuned!

P.S. When you live alone, a kilo of cherries is, without any doubt, an appropriate dinner. And if it may give you stomach pain and diarrhea, it’s not a big deal. You live alone, after-all…

 

Photo-reportage: Communist eateries and food stores across Romania

While the previous photo-reportage brought back eating venues and markets of the early 20th century, the current one is looking at food in the late stages of communism. It is not my purpose the present an exhaustive analysis of communism in Romania; I will solely try to capture bits and pieces specifically related to food practices. I would ask the esteemed reader to keep in mind that this is a punctual account, that presents only one facet of communism. At the same time, it important to mention that, while Romanian communism spreads for about 30 years- formally, at least- not the entire period was the same. Read More

Food and the city. Cooking and gender in Pop Culture representations.

 

One of my favorite writers, Bee Wilson, has analyzed the topic with wits and humor. She argues that SATC is not about shoes, but about brunch. Furthermore, she looks into changes that intervened throughout the seasons, as far as food is concerned. In the early days, the girls were often pictured eating green salads and cups of fruit or yogurt. As the story developed, the food- just like the fashion- got heavier and more sophisticated. Yet, there was always a constant: from beginning to end, the protagonists always gathered around food. Sharing a meal together is done among close friends, it makes people open up and share their stories. Be it brunch on a sunny terrace, expensive burgers in the Meat Packing district, vegan or BDSM flavored, sharing food is always a means of getting emotionally closer.
In this article I will shift the focus and look at attitudes towards cooking and the underlining messaging. I will review the way both genders engage in cooking and how they position themselves towards it. And there are quite a few interesting elements that emerged from the analysis. I’ve chosen this series because I believe it represents a major pop culture landmark, but also because I probably know it by heart. I confess: I watched many times over. Read More

Inspired by Bozar, The Center for Fine Arts: Foodstuff in Spanish Still Life. An evolution.

Like all exhibitions organized at Bozar, the Spanish Still Life did not leave the viewer wanting. The set-up was beautiful, the light was fairly dim and the paintings simply mesmerizing. The exhibition was curated in a chronological order and the evolution of the style was captured and clearly explained to the public. I have always enjoyed still life painting, my first memory of seeing such works of art takes me back to my maternal grandparents’ living-room library and to a small booklet with colored images they quite unknowingly pushed under my nose. It became one of my favorite toys.
The Bozar Spanish Still Life exhibition was the perfect trigger to start investigating the role of foodstuffs in the still life paintings and, more broadly, cast a look at the evolution of this style. Read More

The baroque, the pomegranate & the church

The church of Montesion in Palma de Mallorca stands grand and tall, yet somehow belittled. This Mediterranean island has a fascinating history. Mallorca was taken from the Moors by King James I of Aragon in 1230 and went through a heavy Christianization process. The city of Palma, Ciutat de Mallorca at that time, had a Jewish population counting about a few hundreds. In 1391 anti-Jewish riots broke out and the population was wiped out. Some ran to North Africa, others converted to Catholicism and continued to live on the island. Their holy places were also reconverted or simply destroyed. I cannot tell for sure, but I believe this is what happened with the Montesion synagogue. The Iglesia de Montesion is, of course, a Catholic church, but what few passers-by know is that it was built in the 16th century on the site of Jewish synagogue dating from 1314. The name of the church and its street is Montesion, Mount Zion. The strangeness of the building comes from the sharp contrast between the heavily embroidered, Baroque entrance and the bare walls. No design, no carvings or plaster, only bare stone and one round window above the portico. Furthermore, trying to walk around this massive church will get you nowhere. Literally. The church’s back merges with other buildings, an old townhouse and if memory serves, a public school. What draws the attention is the incredible, almost Churrigueresque church entrance. It is covered in carved fruits and vegetables and I found it almost impossible to take my eyes of it. How did it end up here?  Read More

Science vs. pseudo-science in nutritional research: how to filter the right info

“Eat a piece of broccoli every Tuesday at 4:32 PM- you’ll lose ten kilos in month and live to be 100 years old“. How many times have you read similar statements online or even in print magazines? I say “even” because I think, maybe a bit unwary, that print should still offer a certain level of guarantee or quality. We are being flooded with reports, break-throughs, scientific discoveries, all kinds of findings coming from the elusively famous “British scientists”. One can find these articles in a variety of places, from social media, different platforms, blogs and even academic forums. So much stuff, so much contradictory stuff. Fat is bad, wait!, fat is actually not that bad, afterall. Coconut oil is everything! Blueberries are life! Your level of cholesterol is driven by what you eat, so put down that piece of bacon! Also, bacon gives you cancer! Flax-seeds are full of Omega-3! Goji berries will make you immortal! Adopt a Mediterranean diet and you’ll never have heart problems! Gluten is killing! Lactose is the devil! Probiotics will save your life! And on and on and on!
Now, let’s be honest and think about how much time we spend reading these or, for that matter, any other articles. The title and a quick diagonal? The title and the first few sentences? Most of the times we only skim through an article and we (almost) never bother to verify the facts presented. We simply take all info at face value. I find it rather naive that we trust the so-called journalists and we make big choices- from the food we eat to the votes we cast- based on what is, most of the time, bluff info. Pseudo-science is everywhere, these days anyone with a WiFi can pretend to be a learned scholar, add a pretty picture, praise the next-big-thing, covert hoards of well-intended people and call it a day. Say hello to the modern internet-health-charlatan, the one that drinks beers with your long-lost Nigerian cousin who insists he wires you your one million dollars inheritance. And even when this info comes from what should be more trustworthy sources, we find ourselves at a loss. Do you remember this study , lead by Professor Peter Rogers from the University of Bristol? Yes, this infamous study claims that, essentially, people who consume diet drinks could be more likely to lose weight than those who drink water. What comes out? The study is sponsored by International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), whose members include Coca-Cola & Pepsi.co. The funding from these biased actors didn’t appear in the paper for “lack of space”, argued the officials from Bristol University, when challenged. Click here if you’re curious to go into the details. I have a few academics in my close circle and family, and I can tell you the resorts of academic research and scientific publication are not always crystal-clear; they can be money-driven and dubious, to say the least.
So what to do in this grimm situation, when fact and fiction mingle into pseudo-science?

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