Black Pepper is a classic home infusion in vodka. It was one of the first infusions I did, inspired by everyone's favorite quirky ridiculous cooking show, Good Eats. Unlike most of the other infusions I will be posting here it is not an ideal match for sugar syrup, though it can be an excellent accent to several liqueurs. Traditionally it was used as a flavor profile in Bloody Mary mix. It is also an amazing accent in a dirty martini, though I have to say I am a gin martini man I can easily put a few drops of this in one of mine and it's quite delightful.
Ratios: Alton Brown recommends 2 Tbsp of slightly cracked black peppercorns for a 750 ml bottle of vodka. I generally do double that because I really like my mix to kind of kick you in the fact so you only need a couple drops of it. That is mostly because I don't use it as a main flavor, so I want to be able to maximize the volume of my other flavors in whatever mix I'm making.
Flavor profile: PEPPER!!! With a lot of infusions the alcohol pulls out a specific set of flavor molecules from your source ingredient that are volatile and prone to dissolving in alcohol. Black Pepper's flavor is made up almost entirely of these volatile chemicals. It's why grinding pepper in advance is such a terrible idea and almost everyone has a pepper grinder at this point. In alcohol everything about the pepper that is sharp and spicy and intense is emphasized and made stronger. In terms of flavors that are good for pairing the sky is the limit. I had never paired it with fruit until my first liqueur workshop and a couple of the participants mixed it with peach and strawberry. Their finished liqueur was absolutely amazing. A splash is good for cooking, and it's amazing with any "harsh" style cocktails especially ones with herbal notes. A few drops are also pretty amazing with cocoa flavored items, much like black pepper brownies. Really the sky is the limit.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
A Little Discussion of Simple Syrup
So I jumped right into discussing infusion flavors and the dynamics they add to a liqueur without talking about the almost forgettable ingredient of simple syrup. There are many flavored liquors in the world, but a liqueur or cordial is partially sugar. In most cases that means simple syrup. The ratio in most liqueurs between alcohol infusion and simple syrup is 50/50. A skilled home liqueur maker might tweak those ratios to get a more specific effect, but it's a good starting point.
There are two types of simple syrup that I tend to use in my house. The first and easiest to make is plain simple syrup made with white sugar. The recipe for said syrup is:
1 part white sugar
1 part water
boil until completely dissolved
There really isn't much to say about plain simple syrup other than I primarily use it to pair with light fruity liqueurs. Strawberry, lemon, peach and similarly delicate flavors.
The second type of syrup I make is Turbinado syrup. The recipe for that is follows:
1 part organic evaporated cane juice
1 part water
Bring ingredients to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer. A film will develop on the top of the syrup that is very similar to the scum that develops on the top of chicken stock. Skim the froth off with a spoon or similar implement and discard. Continue to simmer until the syrup is completely clear and froth is no longer developing. Depending on how much syrup you are making, and how long this process takes (different turbinado sugars have different concentrations of impurities) you might need to add some extra water to compensate for the moisture that boils off.
This syrup is nice because it is easy to find organic turbinado sugar. Turbinado also brings a nice earthy roundness to the flavor party. This syrup pairs well with cacao, coffee, vanilla, nut infusions other earthy flavors.
The other thing you can do with these syrups is do a heat steeped flavor infusion instead of infusing your flavor in the alcohol. Ginger works very well for this, as does lemon zest. I try to keep ginger turbinado syrup around whenever I can. The water and sugar infusion draws very different flavors out of your ingredients because of different solubility profiles in the flavor molecules. A ginger syrup can add a very different flavor profile to a liqueur than a ginger alcohol infusion. So it's something to consider experimenting with. I recommend infusions that do not involve fruit as they will add pulp to the syrup and that will effect the liqueur texture.
There are two types of simple syrup that I tend to use in my house. The first and easiest to make is plain simple syrup made with white sugar. The recipe for said syrup is:
1 part white sugar
1 part water
boil until completely dissolved
There really isn't much to say about plain simple syrup other than I primarily use it to pair with light fruity liqueurs. Strawberry, lemon, peach and similarly delicate flavors.
The second type of syrup I make is Turbinado syrup. The recipe for that is follows:
1 part organic evaporated cane juice
1 part water
Bring ingredients to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer. A film will develop on the top of the syrup that is very similar to the scum that develops on the top of chicken stock. Skim the froth off with a spoon or similar implement and discard. Continue to simmer until the syrup is completely clear and froth is no longer developing. Depending on how much syrup you are making, and how long this process takes (different turbinado sugars have different concentrations of impurities) you might need to add some extra water to compensate for the moisture that boils off.
This syrup is nice because it is easy to find organic turbinado sugar. Turbinado also brings a nice earthy roundness to the flavor party. This syrup pairs well with cacao, coffee, vanilla, nut infusions other earthy flavors.
The other thing you can do with these syrups is do a heat steeped flavor infusion instead of infusing your flavor in the alcohol. Ginger works very well for this, as does lemon zest. I try to keep ginger turbinado syrup around whenever I can. The water and sugar infusion draws very different flavors out of your ingredients because of different solubility profiles in the flavor molecules. A ginger syrup can add a very different flavor profile to a liqueur than a ginger alcohol infusion. So it's something to consider experimenting with. I recommend infusions that do not involve fruit as they will add pulp to the syrup and that will effect the liqueur texture.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Infusions: Cinnamon
So when I say Cinnamon here I mean cassia. For most people they are the same thing, but in truth original ceylon cinnamon has a very different flavor. I'm hoping to get some ceylon in the near future, but it will depend on when Mountain Rose herbs puts in their next order.
Cassia Cinnamon is what most people are accustomed to. It is the bark of the Cinnamomum aromaticum plant. It is the strongest and most fiery of the cinnamon varieties, and is also the most common cinnamon spice in America and Canada. Most cinnamon liqueurs made commercially have a very strong fiery flavor which looses the subtle nuance that the whole bark can bring to a flavor profile. To get this effect many of the least expensive schnapps and liqueurs only use artificial cinnamon to get the fire to the exclusion of everything else. In many cases the initial infusion of cinnamon may be distilled to remove the resins and complex compounds and keep only the most volatile of the cinnamon flavors that will survive the distillation with the alcohol. Cinnamon brings a very strong tannin profile, and if left in the liquor long enough will actually thicken the infusion with no simple syrup at all because of the resins in the cinnamon bark. So be very careful about your infusion times. While the cinnamon tannin can be very nice and I know several people who enjoy it, it can also get out of hand, so test regularly and stop when the tannins are at the level you enjoy them.
Ratios: Because the strength of stick cinnamon can vary so much I recommend going very heavy with your intial infusion and if it is stronger than you want then you can add additional pure rum to the mixture and reach the flavor balance you are going for. I would break up 4-6 sticks of cinnamon (depending on size) for a ball far sized infusion. More like 10 sticks of cinnamon for a full bottle. The reason I recommend breaking the sticks is so you don't have to use more alcohol than necessary to cover them in a ball jar. If you are just putting the sticks into a full bottle of rum then breaking them is not necessary. You will have a delightful quality infusion in 24 hours. If you want a strong tannin profile you can go as far as you want without any bitter or unpleasant side flavors. Just be aware that the tannin profile of this infusion can become very intense.
Flavor Profile: You will have fire, and wood, and earth. This is a very grounding flavor despite its fiery front. It pairs very well with coffee, other spices, nut liqueurs, and some fruits as well. Left just as in infusion it is also delightful in many desserts. Though I recommend a brief low tannin infusion for dessert applications.
Cassia Cinnamon is what most people are accustomed to. It is the bark of the Cinnamomum aromaticum plant. It is the strongest and most fiery of the cinnamon varieties, and is also the most common cinnamon spice in America and Canada. Most cinnamon liqueurs made commercially have a very strong fiery flavor which looses the subtle nuance that the whole bark can bring to a flavor profile. To get this effect many of the least expensive schnapps and liqueurs only use artificial cinnamon to get the fire to the exclusion of everything else. In many cases the initial infusion of cinnamon may be distilled to remove the resins and complex compounds and keep only the most volatile of the cinnamon flavors that will survive the distillation with the alcohol. Cinnamon brings a very strong tannin profile, and if left in the liquor long enough will actually thicken the infusion with no simple syrup at all because of the resins in the cinnamon bark. So be very careful about your infusion times. While the cinnamon tannin can be very nice and I know several people who enjoy it, it can also get out of hand, so test regularly and stop when the tannins are at the level you enjoy them.
Ratios: Because the strength of stick cinnamon can vary so much I recommend going very heavy with your intial infusion and if it is stronger than you want then you can add additional pure rum to the mixture and reach the flavor balance you are going for. I would break up 4-6 sticks of cinnamon (depending on size) for a ball far sized infusion. More like 10 sticks of cinnamon for a full bottle. The reason I recommend breaking the sticks is so you don't have to use more alcohol than necessary to cover them in a ball jar. If you are just putting the sticks into a full bottle of rum then breaking them is not necessary. You will have a delightful quality infusion in 24 hours. If you want a strong tannin profile you can go as far as you want without any bitter or unpleasant side flavors. Just be aware that the tannin profile of this infusion can become very intense.
Flavor Profile: You will have fire, and wood, and earth. This is a very grounding flavor despite its fiery front. It pairs very well with coffee, other spices, nut liqueurs, and some fruits as well. Left just as in infusion it is also delightful in many desserts. Though I recommend a brief low tannin infusion for dessert applications.
Infusions: Cacao Nibs
So as a followup to my work on the infusions-liqueurs class I am going to be posting some of the things that we infused. I'm hoping to expand my experimentation with liqueur making and post the success stories . . . as well as the failures here. First is a classic in our house.
Cacao Nibs are the unprocessed bean that is used to make chocolate. The bean is generally crushed into small pieces that are a few millimeters wide. As an ingredient it has a very nutty flavor that is vaguely reminiscent of chocolate, but really has a profile all its own. When made into a liqueur the effect is somewhere between Creme de Cacao and Amaretto. There is no real way to describe it adequately, but it is something you will never find in a liquor store and is well worth investing in doing at home. This ingredient does have a tannin profile. If you do not mind the tannins then this can be left to infuse for weeks. If you want to more closely monitor the tannin development then test a teaspoon of the infusion mixed with a teaspoon of simple syrup periodically after the third day of infusion. Strain when you like the finished effect.
Ratios: Fill the container you are going to infuse in a quarter to a third full of nibs. Then fill the container with a clear liquor like Rum or Vodka. I personally use Don Q whenever I can find it. It's a bit smoother than Bacardi, but tends to be less expensive in America. The important thing is for the liquor to be smooth and not really bring anything to the party that might interfere with the flavors of the nibs.
Flavor Profile of Final Infusion: Nutty with a light but earthy finish. Mild to moderate tannins depending on how long the alcohol is given to infuse. This pairs well with coffee, vanilla, cinnamon and other spices that go well with nuts or chocolate. It is also an ideal candidate for turbinado simple syrup. In addition using golden liquors for this infusion could be quite nice. A delicate whiskey or golden rum can add some additional complex woody flavors that could make for a delightful final liqueur. Don't use anything with too much burn though or you will overwhelm the cacao profile.
Cacao Nibs are the unprocessed bean that is used to make chocolate. The bean is generally crushed into small pieces that are a few millimeters wide. As an ingredient it has a very nutty flavor that is vaguely reminiscent of chocolate, but really has a profile all its own. When made into a liqueur the effect is somewhere between Creme de Cacao and Amaretto. There is no real way to describe it adequately, but it is something you will never find in a liquor store and is well worth investing in doing at home. This ingredient does have a tannin profile. If you do not mind the tannins then this can be left to infuse for weeks. If you want to more closely monitor the tannin development then test a teaspoon of the infusion mixed with a teaspoon of simple syrup periodically after the third day of infusion. Strain when you like the finished effect.
Ratios: Fill the container you are going to infuse in a quarter to a third full of nibs. Then fill the container with a clear liquor like Rum or Vodka. I personally use Don Q whenever I can find it. It's a bit smoother than Bacardi, but tends to be less expensive in America. The important thing is for the liquor to be smooth and not really bring anything to the party that might interfere with the flavors of the nibs.
Flavor Profile of Final Infusion: Nutty with a light but earthy finish. Mild to moderate tannins depending on how long the alcohol is given to infuse. This pairs well with coffee, vanilla, cinnamon and other spices that go well with nuts or chocolate. It is also an ideal candidate for turbinado simple syrup. In addition using golden liquors for this infusion could be quite nice. A delicate whiskey or golden rum can add some additional complex woody flavors that could make for a delightful final liqueur. Don't use anything with too much burn though or you will overwhelm the cacao profile.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Elixers and Liquers Playshop at Edible Alchemy
This past weekend I taught a playshop at Edible Alchemy on making custom liqueurs at home. The class went incredibly well. I learned a great deal from the process, both in terms of teaching and about food. I learned that peach and black pepper go shockingly well together. I learned that sometimes the person with the least previous knowledge on a subject has the most to teach you because they can approach a topic without pre-conceptions.
The other thing I discovered while doing research for the class is that there is very little information available on making custom infusions and liqueurs at home. There are several sites that have recipes for simple single ingredient infusion based liqueurs. There are a few recipes out there designed to re-create Drambuie, or Kaluha. However, finding recipes based on innovative flavor combinations, or posted information on how to go about innovating in this field on your own is very limited. Given how many people take part in the much more complicated process of home brewing beer and wines I have to say I was very surprised at the lack of comprehensive information on the topic.
Home brewing liqueurs is very simple and incredibly rewarding. Purchasing decent sweet infusions in a liquor store can be an incredibly expensive endeavor, and while it is unlikely that you will be able to make a perfect Dissarono at home, or recreate Chartreuse, there is a lot of leeway to make unique fruit infusions from the bounty of your home garden. It is also incredibly easy to make liquors out of ingredients that aren't commonly utilized in the commercial liquor industry like fresh ginger, or cacao nib. The zest these creations can give to a dessert, or a custom drink (basil liqueur gin martini with a lemon zest garnish. Just saying) gives you the ability to connect with your beverages and make a more personal investment in the drinks you provide your guests at your next party.
While I am primarily concerned with this as a culinary obsessive this does very easily lend itself to pagan pursuits. While we often provide wine as an offering in ritual there is something to be said for having an offering of an infusion that started in the live giving cradle of your garden, and you infused for a lunar month, and then carefully aged over the next lunar month before bringing to your ritual. These skills lie us to what we consume, and therefore tie us to the land and more.
My partner has been studying alchemy, and over the past several months began practicing with some of the distillation and refinement of alcohol and more complex reagent creation methods. For the truly invested practitioner one could brew their own wine, then distill it into a strong slightly fruity spirit working with energy intentionally at every step of the process. Then when they had enough refined alcohol they could pull the infusion from their garden and begin the elixir process before carefully blending their work for offering in a ritual. While this process is certainly more involved than any witch I know would probably invest in such acts empower our workings, and our sense of connection to what we do.
I am hoping to do more work in this vein, and I will be teaching another class at Edible Alchemy on May 19th. The focus is entirely culinary, for now my pagan musings remain here but I would encourage anyone interested to attend. I am going to try to make quite a few more infusions than I had at this last class and I had quite a bit with me for the most recent class. I am also thinking about starting to put my work together and post it online. It should be exciting.
The other thing I discovered while doing research for the class is that there is very little information available on making custom infusions and liqueurs at home. There are several sites that have recipes for simple single ingredient infusion based liqueurs. There are a few recipes out there designed to re-create Drambuie, or Kaluha. However, finding recipes based on innovative flavor combinations, or posted information on how to go about innovating in this field on your own is very limited. Given how many people take part in the much more complicated process of home brewing beer and wines I have to say I was very surprised at the lack of comprehensive information on the topic.
Home brewing liqueurs is very simple and incredibly rewarding. Purchasing decent sweet infusions in a liquor store can be an incredibly expensive endeavor, and while it is unlikely that you will be able to make a perfect Dissarono at home, or recreate Chartreuse, there is a lot of leeway to make unique fruit infusions from the bounty of your home garden. It is also incredibly easy to make liquors out of ingredients that aren't commonly utilized in the commercial liquor industry like fresh ginger, or cacao nib. The zest these creations can give to a dessert, or a custom drink (basil liqueur gin martini with a lemon zest garnish. Just saying) gives you the ability to connect with your beverages and make a more personal investment in the drinks you provide your guests at your next party.
While I am primarily concerned with this as a culinary obsessive this does very easily lend itself to pagan pursuits. While we often provide wine as an offering in ritual there is something to be said for having an offering of an infusion that started in the live giving cradle of your garden, and you infused for a lunar month, and then carefully aged over the next lunar month before bringing to your ritual. These skills lie us to what we consume, and therefore tie us to the land and more.
My partner has been studying alchemy, and over the past several months began practicing with some of the distillation and refinement of alcohol and more complex reagent creation methods. For the truly invested practitioner one could brew their own wine, then distill it into a strong slightly fruity spirit working with energy intentionally at every step of the process. Then when they had enough refined alcohol they could pull the infusion from their garden and begin the elixir process before carefully blending their work for offering in a ritual. While this process is certainly more involved than any witch I know would probably invest in such acts empower our workings, and our sense of connection to what we do.
I am hoping to do more work in this vein, and I will be teaching another class at Edible Alchemy on May 19th. The focus is entirely culinary, for now my pagan musings remain here but I would encourage anyone interested to attend. I am going to try to make quite a few more infusions than I had at this last class and I had quite a bit with me for the most recent class. I am also thinking about starting to put my work together and post it online. It should be exciting.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Food and Power and Magick and Power
Thesis: Magick is about power, and leveraging that power to shape and form the world we live in to the world the practitioner wants to live in, and food is a medium of power leveraged by many to that end.
This might seem somewhat extreme. Very few people think about food in these terms. Generally food in our lives is thought of in terms of what we can get our hands on quickly and conveniently enough to eat before the next event in our overbooked schedule starts. This simple human experience defines everything about why food is a medium of power though, and why we are the ones being controlled.
Now before I jump into how I think we can leverage food as a medium of power I want to spend some time defending the position. I'm going to do this because I'm sure I'm on the verge of loosing some people. Food is power?!?!? What is that drivel all about?
If you stop and look at the average expenditures on food in America you see that we spend roughly 12% of our income on food. The other large expenditures are housing, transportation, and retirement expenditures. Now one thing I would like to point out about these numbers is that this is an average. If there is one thing the 99% conversation has shown us, it's that averages don't really tell us anything about the average person. So the person who is bringing in a median income of somewhere in the 25-26K range the amount of money spent on food is probably much much more, and if one has a family at that income then you have to purchase the most affordable food available.
Now most people would assume that means people who are in this low income bracket must cook for themselves. Here is where things get interesting though and you begin to see the food as power dynamics at play. For many individuals food that must be cooked is not accessible. I recently watched Food. Inc. and one of the pieces of the film profiles a low income family who is struggling to get by on a very limited budget. The father drives for a living (they sadly don't provide additional detail on what exactly this means) and has diabetes. The mother also indicates she has an incredibly oppressive schedule and is unable to take the time to cook for her family.
Now I could go into great detail in this post about the conclusions that they came to about this family in Food Inc., but that's not really what concerns me. What struck me when I watched this family is how similar they were to my family when I was growing up in many ways, yet how different their approach to their difficulties were. We had very similar income and time restraints, and my mother exercised strict control of the checkbook. Food was made in a crock pot, or included simple baked casserole style dishes. Protein was often tuna from a can, or the absolute cheapest cut of chicken from the store. That's just how it was. She demanded that we have balanced diets though. That included frozen veg because it didn't have additives, and it's what she could afford that was healthy. In the Food Inc. segment the family compared Burger King, and it's affordability to fresh pears at the store, or a head of fresh broccoli. They looked at the head of fresh broccoli at a dollar a pound and compared it to a hamburger from Burger King, like someone was going to sit down and consume just a head of broccoli as a meal.
I have run into this all or nothing, fresh, beautiful, perfect, often organic produce is unattainable so I have to eat fast food mentality in my own life experiences as well. This is where food truly begins to be power, in terms of power over other people. We are at our core dependent on what we eat for health, for energy, for thought and vitality. If a person knows how to leverage food to bring out that vitality in one's self then they can do nearly anything. I'll use the burger king example. At the beginning of the profile of the family from Food Inc. they are driving through a Burger King drive in lane and they order 4 burgers, 3 regular drinks, and a large drink for the father. This amounts to somewhere around $11 after tax. Now I'll use a comparison meal my mother made for us regularly when I was growing up. Lentil soup. A pot of lentil soup might have a $1.30 bag of lentil's in it. A few carrots and a few ribs of celery along with an onion. The carrots would be about $0.50 fresh, the celery would also be about $0.50 and the onion would be maybe a dollar. A can of tomatoes to throw in for an even $1 and we'll allot $0.50 for spices and general seasoning like garlic and dried herbs. We now have a pot of food that comes in just under 5 dollars that will provide dinner for said family of 4. Toss in some iced tea or heck we'll even allow them the soda and you get to maybe 6 or 7 bucks. The lentil soup takes maybe 20 minutes of prep in the morning before going in a crock pot.
To look at the meal above it might seem obvious, but you have to look at the $1 bag of carrots and the $1.20 bunch of celery and understand that you're designing multiple meals off that veg. You have to be able to strategize a menu, and know how to use up all the food you buy without wasting any of it. These things aren't necessarily difficult but they do require something that has been all but lost in the lower income segment of the American population, a dynamic knowledge of cooking. I'm not talking about Food Network cooking either. I'm talking about the kind of cooking you learn growing up watching your mother and grandmother. I'm talking about sticking scraps of vegetable in a bag in the freezer to make veg stock with later, and old recipes that sustained us in the past. Our great grandparents didn't have McDonald's, and pre-packaged convenience food. Those things came about later, and oh how they have changed things.
The loss of knowledge passed down through family experience has resulted in a generation of parents who can't really cook for their children, or themselves. They can learn to cook for themselves, but where will they find this knowledge? At this point the most accessible cooking information is on the internet, and in old re-runs from early Food Network, and sometimes in publications like Food and Wine or Vegetarian Times. The problem with all of this is that these guides are often driven by a desire for excellence, not sustainability. On food network they will tell you to get "only the best ingredients" and use "only the best parts" of those ingredients. This results in profound food waste, and a psychological effect where if you can't afford "the best" then you're somehow not doing it right. This discourages many people from pursuing home made food, because of the "perfect or go home" message that is wrapped up in so many cooking shows. The accessible, mistake prone, but perfectly acceptably delicious days of Julia Child are behind us at this point, with no expected return.
The push for excellence sells, because people like glamor, and as with all things in our modern society money does the talking. Unfortunately the dis empowering impact it has on people is more than just a subtle side effect. When you look back at the impact food availability has on lower income families, and consider that the leisure time to pursue something like cooking as a hobby, where you might take the time to perfect your food is truly a luxury that is not afforded to many.
Now I've made a small argument about the power of food, and the power of cooking knowledge which is now so heavily ensconced in the culture of "eliteness". The real impact comes in how those things interact relative to the health impacts of our diets. Modern medicine often does not look at someone who has a diet induced illness and push a diet based fix. This is partially because Americans are often bad at changing our habits, so we have invested the past several decades in making it chemically possible to maintain poor personal health behavior while we continue to draw breath. Setting aside the arguments about the quality of life on multiple medications they are profoundly expensive. For many once you have spent the money on the personal pharmacy required to maintain an American lifestyle there is little left to invest in a dynamic diet, especially in the absence of a strong culinary education (I use this term in the broadest sense, not in the academic context).
So thus far we have seen how food can keep people down, keep them unhealthy, and ultimately maximize their role in society as a constant stream of revenue that could otherwise go elsewhere. Food's intrinsic place in this process also gives it the power to remove all of us from this particular enslavement.
The only thing standing between us an truly healthy, enriching, empowering food is knowledge and a willingness to give up a little bit of convenience for great gains. We can each choose to take the radical step of offering to teach someone else how to cook for themselves, or to make truly wonderful food for someone who has only ever had pre-packaged space meat. We can also take the time to engage our family in the craft of food and the rituals of nourishment.
Rituals around eating open doors that I have seen very few pagans walk through. Many of us grew up Christian, though a few lucky individuals may have been raised by pagan parents. As such the rituals of eating might seem intrinsically Christian in nature, the prayer before meal, the bowing of heads. Let me assure you that they are not. As pagans it is important to remind ourselves that many of the rituals we associate with Christianity have much older roots, and we must be willing to reclaim our connection to those roots. While the traditional meal time prayers of judo-christian households focus on thanking God, and a simple pagan prayer might thank the gods and the Earth, in truth the potential of this act as a source of self empowerment goes much farther. Here I must point out the difference between the worshiping pagan, and the witch. For a worshiping pagan giving thanks and honoring the gods is truly the root of the the meal time observance, and it is a ritual well worth taking the time to perform. Just as much of our food system is hidden from view, there is also much that can be hidden in this simple meal time act as well.
The food in front of you at any given meal represents the cumulative energy of countless workers, spirits of the land, and depending on your paradigm deities. A meal is not a time just to give thanks to them, but a time to see the path the food took to reach you, and as part of giving thanks invoking the spirits and energies which contributed to the nourishment you are about to take into you. This magickal act is empowering in two very different ways. On a spiritual level taking such power into yourself is a potent magickal act, and it is an ideal time to regularly engaging your talents as a will worker, and engage more completely with the energies and spirits which not only surround you naturally, but which are brought to you day in and day our by our strange modern world. This also evokes a place within the practitioner where one becomes aware of what one is consuming. One becomes aware of the impact of their food, form a health standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, from a societal wellness standpoint (I don't just mean human raising of animals, issues of humaneness in our food extend far more profoundly to farm laborers and the communities they are part of). This engagement, this moment of reflection in and of itself empowers us to make conscious choices about our food, and though even the briefest regular meditation to begin to understand how our engagement with food empowers or dis empowers ourselves, and can empower or dis empower those around us. These moments are important, and can make a huge difference in our lives.
This might seem somewhat extreme. Very few people think about food in these terms. Generally food in our lives is thought of in terms of what we can get our hands on quickly and conveniently enough to eat before the next event in our overbooked schedule starts. This simple human experience defines everything about why food is a medium of power though, and why we are the ones being controlled.
Now before I jump into how I think we can leverage food as a medium of power I want to spend some time defending the position. I'm going to do this because I'm sure I'm on the verge of loosing some people. Food is power?!?!? What is that drivel all about?
If you stop and look at the average expenditures on food in America you see that we spend roughly 12% of our income on food. The other large expenditures are housing, transportation, and retirement expenditures. Now one thing I would like to point out about these numbers is that this is an average. If there is one thing the 99% conversation has shown us, it's that averages don't really tell us anything about the average person. So the person who is bringing in a median income of somewhere in the 25-26K range the amount of money spent on food is probably much much more, and if one has a family at that income then you have to purchase the most affordable food available.
Now most people would assume that means people who are in this low income bracket must cook for themselves. Here is where things get interesting though and you begin to see the food as power dynamics at play. For many individuals food that must be cooked is not accessible. I recently watched Food. Inc. and one of the pieces of the film profiles a low income family who is struggling to get by on a very limited budget. The father drives for a living (they sadly don't provide additional detail on what exactly this means) and has diabetes. The mother also indicates she has an incredibly oppressive schedule and is unable to take the time to cook for her family.
Now I could go into great detail in this post about the conclusions that they came to about this family in Food Inc., but that's not really what concerns me. What struck me when I watched this family is how similar they were to my family when I was growing up in many ways, yet how different their approach to their difficulties were. We had very similar income and time restraints, and my mother exercised strict control of the checkbook. Food was made in a crock pot, or included simple baked casserole style dishes. Protein was often tuna from a can, or the absolute cheapest cut of chicken from the store. That's just how it was. She demanded that we have balanced diets though. That included frozen veg because it didn't have additives, and it's what she could afford that was healthy. In the Food Inc. segment the family compared Burger King, and it's affordability to fresh pears at the store, or a head of fresh broccoli. They looked at the head of fresh broccoli at a dollar a pound and compared it to a hamburger from Burger King, like someone was going to sit down and consume just a head of broccoli as a meal.
I have run into this all or nothing, fresh, beautiful, perfect, often organic produce is unattainable so I have to eat fast food mentality in my own life experiences as well. This is where food truly begins to be power, in terms of power over other people. We are at our core dependent on what we eat for health, for energy, for thought and vitality. If a person knows how to leverage food to bring out that vitality in one's self then they can do nearly anything. I'll use the burger king example. At the beginning of the profile of the family from Food Inc. they are driving through a Burger King drive in lane and they order 4 burgers, 3 regular drinks, and a large drink for the father. This amounts to somewhere around $11 after tax. Now I'll use a comparison meal my mother made for us regularly when I was growing up. Lentil soup. A pot of lentil soup might have a $1.30 bag of lentil's in it. A few carrots and a few ribs of celery along with an onion. The carrots would be about $0.50 fresh, the celery would also be about $0.50 and the onion would be maybe a dollar. A can of tomatoes to throw in for an even $1 and we'll allot $0.50 for spices and general seasoning like garlic and dried herbs. We now have a pot of food that comes in just under 5 dollars that will provide dinner for said family of 4. Toss in some iced tea or heck we'll even allow them the soda and you get to maybe 6 or 7 bucks. The lentil soup takes maybe 20 minutes of prep in the morning before going in a crock pot.
To look at the meal above it might seem obvious, but you have to look at the $1 bag of carrots and the $1.20 bunch of celery and understand that you're designing multiple meals off that veg. You have to be able to strategize a menu, and know how to use up all the food you buy without wasting any of it. These things aren't necessarily difficult but they do require something that has been all but lost in the lower income segment of the American population, a dynamic knowledge of cooking. I'm not talking about Food Network cooking either. I'm talking about the kind of cooking you learn growing up watching your mother and grandmother. I'm talking about sticking scraps of vegetable in a bag in the freezer to make veg stock with later, and old recipes that sustained us in the past. Our great grandparents didn't have McDonald's, and pre-packaged convenience food. Those things came about later, and oh how they have changed things.
The loss of knowledge passed down through family experience has resulted in a generation of parents who can't really cook for their children, or themselves. They can learn to cook for themselves, but where will they find this knowledge? At this point the most accessible cooking information is on the internet, and in old re-runs from early Food Network, and sometimes in publications like Food and Wine or Vegetarian Times. The problem with all of this is that these guides are often driven by a desire for excellence, not sustainability. On food network they will tell you to get "only the best ingredients" and use "only the best parts" of those ingredients. This results in profound food waste, and a psychological effect where if you can't afford "the best" then you're somehow not doing it right. This discourages many people from pursuing home made food, because of the "perfect or go home" message that is wrapped up in so many cooking shows. The accessible, mistake prone, but perfectly acceptably delicious days of Julia Child are behind us at this point, with no expected return.
The push for excellence sells, because people like glamor, and as with all things in our modern society money does the talking. Unfortunately the dis empowering impact it has on people is more than just a subtle side effect. When you look back at the impact food availability has on lower income families, and consider that the leisure time to pursue something like cooking as a hobby, where you might take the time to perfect your food is truly a luxury that is not afforded to many.
Now I've made a small argument about the power of food, and the power of cooking knowledge which is now so heavily ensconced in the culture of "eliteness". The real impact comes in how those things interact relative to the health impacts of our diets. Modern medicine often does not look at someone who has a diet induced illness and push a diet based fix. This is partially because Americans are often bad at changing our habits, so we have invested the past several decades in making it chemically possible to maintain poor personal health behavior while we continue to draw breath. Setting aside the arguments about the quality of life on multiple medications they are profoundly expensive. For many once you have spent the money on the personal pharmacy required to maintain an American lifestyle there is little left to invest in a dynamic diet, especially in the absence of a strong culinary education (I use this term in the broadest sense, not in the academic context).
So thus far we have seen how food can keep people down, keep them unhealthy, and ultimately maximize their role in society as a constant stream of revenue that could otherwise go elsewhere. Food's intrinsic place in this process also gives it the power to remove all of us from this particular enslavement.
The only thing standing between us an truly healthy, enriching, empowering food is knowledge and a willingness to give up a little bit of convenience for great gains. We can each choose to take the radical step of offering to teach someone else how to cook for themselves, or to make truly wonderful food for someone who has only ever had pre-packaged space meat. We can also take the time to engage our family in the craft of food and the rituals of nourishment.
Rituals around eating open doors that I have seen very few pagans walk through. Many of us grew up Christian, though a few lucky individuals may have been raised by pagan parents. As such the rituals of eating might seem intrinsically Christian in nature, the prayer before meal, the bowing of heads. Let me assure you that they are not. As pagans it is important to remind ourselves that many of the rituals we associate with Christianity have much older roots, and we must be willing to reclaim our connection to those roots. While the traditional meal time prayers of judo-christian households focus on thanking God, and a simple pagan prayer might thank the gods and the Earth, in truth the potential of this act as a source of self empowerment goes much farther. Here I must point out the difference between the worshiping pagan, and the witch. For a worshiping pagan giving thanks and honoring the gods is truly the root of the the meal time observance, and it is a ritual well worth taking the time to perform. Just as much of our food system is hidden from view, there is also much that can be hidden in this simple meal time act as well.
The food in front of you at any given meal represents the cumulative energy of countless workers, spirits of the land, and depending on your paradigm deities. A meal is not a time just to give thanks to them, but a time to see the path the food took to reach you, and as part of giving thanks invoking the spirits and energies which contributed to the nourishment you are about to take into you. This magickal act is empowering in two very different ways. On a spiritual level taking such power into yourself is a potent magickal act, and it is an ideal time to regularly engaging your talents as a will worker, and engage more completely with the energies and spirits which not only surround you naturally, but which are brought to you day in and day our by our strange modern world. This also evokes a place within the practitioner where one becomes aware of what one is consuming. One becomes aware of the impact of their food, form a health standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, from a societal wellness standpoint (I don't just mean human raising of animals, issues of humaneness in our food extend far more profoundly to farm laborers and the communities they are part of). This engagement, this moment of reflection in and of itself empowers us to make conscious choices about our food, and though even the briefest regular meditation to begin to understand how our engagement with food empowers or dis empowers ourselves, and can empower or dis empower those around us. These moments are important, and can make a huge difference in our lives.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Sorry I've Been Gone - Now Back to the Show
So it's been a while since I posted. Right after getting started with the new direction of the blog I was distracted by my rather strong obsession with the Occupy movement, and then a new job in a commercial kitchen. Since taking that position I've been working 50-55 hour weeks, which has left me with far less time for blogging. I'm trying to pair everything back down so I can complete some of the projects that are really important to me. Turns out I can't do absolutely everything, but this project really is important to me. I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I want to get back to working on my pondering about the connection between food, magick, and us as human beings.
So the most profound activity I've been a part of in the past couple months related to food is working at Big Jones. Let me just say that it's been an eye opening experience. I'm working there part time, while maintaining somewhat reduced hours still telecommuting for Indiana University. I sought out the position at Big Jones because I have wanted to become more involved in cooking from a professional standpoint for quite a while. What I have discovered from the experience is . . . well not what I expected.
First let me talk about my history with food and why I have such a borderline obsession with what we put in our bodies. I started baking with my mother at the ripe young age of . . . I don't know. I actually have no idea what age I was because I have no solid memories of a time before my mother would put me in front of a bowl with a spoon and have me at least stir the dough. She did this because baking with my sister and I was important not because it helped her make cookies during the holidays, we in fact were a huge production liability until we were around 10 years old, but because it made us love the food we were making and appreciate what was going into it. There was no time of the year I looked forward to more than baking for the holidays, and to be honest that includes Christmas morning. Gifts are awesome, baking is better. That's just how I remember it.
So that's really the foundation of my views of food. It's about love and enrichment and connection and nurturing. Now let me talk about Big Jones. The Big Jones kitchen during a major service is a special slice of hell warmed up and served with delicate garnish right here in the real world. Now I don't want anyone reading this to think that I mean this as a criticism of Big Jones. I "knew" that's what I was walking into when I asked for a position at Big Jones. I put knew in quotation marks because I had seen many many people talk about commercial kitchens. I have read about what they are like, I have seen the TV shows, I met with and spoke with the chef multiple times before I was hired, and I have talked with other people who have worked in commercial kitchens. All of that is unquestionably true, but I put knew in quotation marks because none of that actually prepared me for being in a high end commercial kitchen.
The attention put into the food at Big Jones is unlike anything else I have ever experienced. They make their own jams, all their own pickles, their own charcuterie including Andouille, Tasso, Blood Sausage, Pate and other items as the chef decides to offer them. The staff at Big Jones even makes the Worcestershire sauce they use on the burgers. There is no product that is not elevated above what is available on the open market. I thought that this was exactly what I was looking for, and what I discovered was that while in many ways it fulfilled me in many ways it did not. What I found was that I was removed from people who had always been an integral part of the food equation for me. I live for that moment when I see someone experience something new while eating something I've created. Perhaps it's just the novelty of simple turbinado ginger syrup (which while I was already making ginger syrup the turbinado touch is straight from Big Jones), or eating an all vegan cous cous that has no recipe and being floored by the amount of flavor that I have achieved with no meat. I know in that moment that the world is better by the iota of one persons experience in a way it would not have been if I weren't here.
Even more important than that experience is teaching someone else to cook, to make and create for themselves. I have been teaching cooking workshops on and off since I was in college. In a restaurant kitchen, especially one like Big Jones where you are creating food that the customer cannot reasonably reproduce for themselves the separation we have from our food is strengthened. Almost everyone I know is dependent on restaurants, not just for the occasional indulgence in ethnic food outside their culinary skills, but for basic meals. Every time we consume food at a restaurant and think to ourselves that we could not possible do that at home that divide grows. Every dollar we give someone else to do for us what we could have done for ourselves is a dollar of power over our own existence we have given away. Ultimately I wanted to make a world that was less vulnerable to this phenomenon, not more vulnerable.
It is my hope that I can move towards culinary pursuits that do not provide for people, but inspire people to provide for themselves. In that vein I am going to be teaching two workshops at Edible Alchemy in March. One is on yeast doughs, and the other is on making your own liqueurs. Magick isn't just in what we make, but what we make the world. I haven't completely figured out what I'm going to be able to make the world, but I'll figure it out eventually.
So the most profound activity I've been a part of in the past couple months related to food is working at Big Jones. Let me just say that it's been an eye opening experience. I'm working there part time, while maintaining somewhat reduced hours still telecommuting for Indiana University. I sought out the position at Big Jones because I have wanted to become more involved in cooking from a professional standpoint for quite a while. What I have discovered from the experience is . . . well not what I expected.
First let me talk about my history with food and why I have such a borderline obsession with what we put in our bodies. I started baking with my mother at the ripe young age of . . . I don't know. I actually have no idea what age I was because I have no solid memories of a time before my mother would put me in front of a bowl with a spoon and have me at least stir the dough. She did this because baking with my sister and I was important not because it helped her make cookies during the holidays, we in fact were a huge production liability until we were around 10 years old, but because it made us love the food we were making and appreciate what was going into it. There was no time of the year I looked forward to more than baking for the holidays, and to be honest that includes Christmas morning. Gifts are awesome, baking is better. That's just how I remember it.
So that's really the foundation of my views of food. It's about love and enrichment and connection and nurturing. Now let me talk about Big Jones. The Big Jones kitchen during a major service is a special slice of hell warmed up and served with delicate garnish right here in the real world. Now I don't want anyone reading this to think that I mean this as a criticism of Big Jones. I "knew" that's what I was walking into when I asked for a position at Big Jones. I put knew in quotation marks because I had seen many many people talk about commercial kitchens. I have read about what they are like, I have seen the TV shows, I met with and spoke with the chef multiple times before I was hired, and I have talked with other people who have worked in commercial kitchens. All of that is unquestionably true, but I put knew in quotation marks because none of that actually prepared me for being in a high end commercial kitchen.
The attention put into the food at Big Jones is unlike anything else I have ever experienced. They make their own jams, all their own pickles, their own charcuterie including Andouille, Tasso, Blood Sausage, Pate and other items as the chef decides to offer them. The staff at Big Jones even makes the Worcestershire sauce they use on the burgers. There is no product that is not elevated above what is available on the open market. I thought that this was exactly what I was looking for, and what I discovered was that while in many ways it fulfilled me in many ways it did not. What I found was that I was removed from people who had always been an integral part of the food equation for me. I live for that moment when I see someone experience something new while eating something I've created. Perhaps it's just the novelty of simple turbinado ginger syrup (which while I was already making ginger syrup the turbinado touch is straight from Big Jones), or eating an all vegan cous cous that has no recipe and being floored by the amount of flavor that I have achieved with no meat. I know in that moment that the world is better by the iota of one persons experience in a way it would not have been if I weren't here.
Even more important than that experience is teaching someone else to cook, to make and create for themselves. I have been teaching cooking workshops on and off since I was in college. In a restaurant kitchen, especially one like Big Jones where you are creating food that the customer cannot reasonably reproduce for themselves the separation we have from our food is strengthened. Almost everyone I know is dependent on restaurants, not just for the occasional indulgence in ethnic food outside their culinary skills, but for basic meals. Every time we consume food at a restaurant and think to ourselves that we could not possible do that at home that divide grows. Every dollar we give someone else to do for us what we could have done for ourselves is a dollar of power over our own existence we have given away. Ultimately I wanted to make a world that was less vulnerable to this phenomenon, not more vulnerable.
It is my hope that I can move towards culinary pursuits that do not provide for people, but inspire people to provide for themselves. In that vein I am going to be teaching two workshops at Edible Alchemy in March. One is on yeast doughs, and the other is on making your own liqueurs. Magick isn't just in what we make, but what we make the world. I haven't completely figured out what I'm going to be able to make the world, but I'll figure it out eventually.
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