Trifecta

Introduction to Food Adventures (1)
Ever since 5 o’clock this afternoon, I have been trying to think of a way to introduce this blog. Since then, 5 hours have passed and my mind is still a blank. I really want to tell you about my culture, my love for eating, my culture’s love for eating, my culture’s love for uncommon foods, but I cannot formulate the words to do so.

Writer’s block has always been a problem for me. I have many ideas, but it takes me a really long time to cohesively connect all my thoughts together. Maybe that is the reason I prefer blogging to writing essays. To me, blogs are like journals. They are chapters of personal stories and thoughts that do not necessary need a thesis, topic sentence, or be the typical five paragraph essay. They are like freewriting and brainstorming, something that I love to do. I actually keep a personal blog that I share with my friends. This blog allows me to express my mind without worrying about how childish, overly excited, or depressed I may sound.

I guess I can start by telling you about my family. My parents are also big fans of food and different kinds of food. I am pretty sure that is where I got my love of food from. We are constantly in search of delicious dishes. Whenever we find a good recipe, my dad (the cook of our family) will try to recreate it in our kitchen.

Did you know that my dad learn how to cook by himself? He always tells us that he learned to cook when he started working and living by himself. His cooking skills developed from over thirty years of trial and error, observing other good cooks in our family, and looking up recipes. But unfortunately, ever since my dad learned to cook, my mom stopped cooking and our weights have been steadily increasing.

Being a daughter of a good cook, I always feel that I should inherit his heirloom of recipes one day. I think I have a little talent in cooking, but the foods I make always turn into an alteration of the recipes. Thus, I immerse my passion for food in eating and watching shows like Ace of Cakes, Iron Chef (though I personally prefer the Japanese version over the American one), Emeril Live (Gotta love Emeril and his BAM!), Food Network Challenge, Man v. Food, Cake Boss, and Top Chef. That is why I feel very fortunate to come from a Cantonese family because we eat many weird and unusual foods in our culture like field mice, crickets, and scorpions (well, that’s not on our daily menu). As Cantonese people put it, “as long as its back faces the sky then you can eat it”.

Using my dad’s cooking, I want to introduce interesting recipes that may be strange in some cultures, but delicious in our family and tradition. I want to tell you more about Cantonese cuisine and the different cooking methods. Hopefully my recipes will persuade you to try something new next time you are thinking of eating. Welcome to Food Adventures!

A Source of Inspiration and Perspiration (2)
Because this is my first food blog (and being the studious worker and meticulous architecture student that I am), I have been researching precedents and journeying through different food blogs on the internet for examples and potential models. The web of connections eventually led me to Kitchenscraps.

I was immediately captivated by the colorful and adorable illustrations, drawn with a “sketchy” hand that illustrates so much character and personality. Each post is like reading a story, narratives filled with humor, history, culture, and facts. It is academic in content yet presented in a style that is not filled with technical terms or lengthy vocab words, which is perfect for everyone to read!

The recipes (one per post) are preceded by comical introductions. And then the storyteller moves to a more serious tone, sprinkling with amusing words here and there when presenting the directions. Although fairly random, the posts are linked by a common theme of delicious recipes and fun illustrations.

As I was reading his blog, I thought I might share this particular post with you. I had to look up a lot of words (like "Babushka" and "borscht") from this post because this is a soup recipe combined with ingredients from many cultures I am unfamiliar with.

Here's another entertaining one. Don't you like how he personifies the asparagus? That is something this blogger likes to do often. I think this makes his posts seem more like a children's story. The blogger also likes to include facts. It is enlightening to learn facts about the food you are eating. Let me tell you a fact:

Only some people produce the sulfurous smelling urine after consuming asparagus but, to complicate things, not every one who produces the odour is able to smell it. Resulting in 4 categories

Those who produce the odour but cannot smell it

Those who do not produce the odour and cannot smell it 

Those who produce the odour and can smell it 

Those who do not produce the odour but can smell it in other peoples’ urine

Although he posts several times a month, unfortunately, he hasn't updated his blog in awhile; must be busy with his book. I forgot to tell you more about the author of Kitchenscraps! His name is Pierre Lamielle, an award-winning illustrator in the process of publishing (or has published) his own cook book. Mister or Monsieur Lamielle completed a graphic design and illustration program from a college in Vancouver and began his career as a designer for the Vancouver Sun. Monsieur Lamielle later moved to Calgary, where he wrote food articles for the Calgary Herald’s Swerve magazine. His column has been described by some as

offbeat writing [with] irreverent illustrations-and great recipes.

After some ups and downs, Monsieur Lamielle furthered his education in the culinary world by enrolling in the French Culinary Institute in The Big Apple. And now, Monsieur Lamielle has probably published his first cookbook! Congratulations! 

I really enjoy the fun attitude Mr. Lamielle brings to his blog posts. I am going to strive for the same approach; hopefully I can make you laugh too. Similar to this blog, I will be introducing less known recipes, all from my Cantonese culture. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the orange chicken, fried rice, or chow mein recipes. In addition, I will occasionally be slipping in Chinese proverbs and traditional stories so you can learn about other aspects of Cantonese culture too. Please look forward to the next episode of Food Adventures!  

Side Trip (3) 

As I was planning to write in my blog this weekend, I was lured into the grasp of the World Wide Web. No matter how much I struggled to break free from the millions and millions of temptations on the web, I was nevertheless stuck online. Anyways, as I was scramming for a way out, I came across another interesting and entertaining food blog that I thought I might share with you all.

David Lebovitz brings to his blog, Living the Sweet Life in Paris, years of expertise in the culinary (especially in the pastry) world. He is the author of many best-selling books that provide guides to desserts and tell his food-related traveling experiences in Paris.

I really enjoy the easygoing tone he carries in all of his posts. The variety of post topics, blogging from interesting highlights from his travels to introducing wonderful shops and restaurants in Paris and cooking up delicious desserts, is full of surprises. Just like this cookie for example.

Although Mr. Lebovitz reveals his personality through his personal traveling experiences and thoughts, he still maintains a more commercial and business side by dedicating sections of the blog to promote his books and events. It is interesting that in these sections, Mr. Lebovitz is referred to in third person.

As I was reading his blog, I noticed that Mr. Lebovitz comes off as humorous without appearing like he intentionally pretended to be funny in order to get laughs from the audience in his writing. Unlike other bloggers who fill their posts with adjectives and different figures of speech for comical effect, Mr. Lebovitz straightforwardly—in a non-straightforward kind of way—retells his adventures in Paris, subtly causing a few chuckles (it worked for me at least!). Mr. Lebovitz also has a tendency to write long sentences (starting with dependent clauses too) and interrupt his sentences with many side thoughts. He also likes to digress into other stories and somehow manages to connect back with the main topic of the post. I guess his style of loose paragraph structure and lengthy sentences illustrate more of his thought process and his personality.

It is fairly impressive how he can slowly move the audience away from the topic of the post without the audience even being aware of it. Like in the Stop the Stuffing! post, Mr. Lebovitz starts off by telling his face à face experience with an affiche advocating a stop to le gavage to make foie gras (by the way, my French improved remarkably after reading this post and his blog in general). Eventually, the topic of French ads pleading people not to eat certain foods gradually digresses into the discussion of who’s more adventurous in eating: French or Americans? Then Mr. Lebovitz reveals unexpected information about horse meat:

Only because it's part of the French culinary heritage and vocabulary, and since I'm trying to fit in, I once thought about trying horse meat, just to give it a go. That is, until one of my commenters with horses in North America (where the horse meat in France is imported from), warned me not to, saying the meat was pumped full of chemicals and other icky stuff because the animals weren't being bred for consumption. Not that I needed much prodding, but I decided that I didn't really need to try horse meat after all. But it was close there for a while, folks...whew!

There’s a lot that can be said about Mr. Lebovitz’s style and passion just by looking at this short passage about horse meat. His use of long sentences not only illustrate his spontaneous nature, but also his excitement about sharing this information with everyone that he tries to squeeze as much information as he possibly can with a sentence instead of easily splitting the sentence into two. His insertions of side thoughts in the form of clauses further support the spontaneous nature in his writing. The italicized “really” also reveal his thought process, how he tries to convince himself out of eating horse meat. As for his word choice, the use of “icky” and the onomatopoeia, “whew,” surely brings a child-like side to him, don’t you think?

Enough about horse meat, how about Salted Butter Caramels? In this particular post, Mr. Lebovitz introduces a problem and a solution:

I had a wee bit of a dilemma recently. In my refrigerator was a half-jar of crème fraîche, that I had to use up before I left for a recent vacation on the beach. I'd been thinking about making caramels with it, but I also knew that I would be slipping on a swimsuit within a few weeks. And being alone in my apartment with an open jar of ultra-rich crème fraîche was probably not a good idea.

So what did I do? I hemmed and hawed about it, until I channeled my mother, who would have flipped out if I tossed away the rest of the crème fraîche. (Or anything, for that matter.)

So I made caramels.

Like most of his posts, the use of adjectives and other figures of speech is nearly zero. His use of longer sentences (rarely any short choppy ones) is also prevalent here. I think this post illustrates a little of the humor I was talking about. He likes to tell his audience a lot of random things (like wearing a swimsuit soon), but seems like he doesn’t really care if he gets a response from the audience. He also likes to, as I mentioned before, straightforwardly tell you something without directly telling you. For example, instead of saying that he’ll get fat from making and eating caramels, he implies that by illustrating a visual image of him in a swimsuit at the beach. His thought process is also clear here: he thinks of making caramels, decides not too because it will cause him to gain weight, decides to make them again because of what his mother might say about wasted food. A child-like image is also painted through his word choice (the words “wee,” “hemmed,” and “hawed”) of him contemplating about what to do until he thinks about his mother, who indirectly helps him make his decision.

I think the tone he carries throughout his blog is very fitting for a person blogging about traveling and food. Leisure stories should be told with a relaxed tone filled with excitement. I hope you found him as interesting and entertaining as I did!