I'm not Thomas Keller

Nor do I pretend to be.

Recently on my blog, I wrote about the food of a newly opened restaurant, and also responded to glowing reviews, for the same restaurant, on a public food-lover forum. The resulting remarks degraded into back-handed comments pulling my credentials into question, and essentially calling into question the credentials of all who blog about food.

The customer is not always right, but as an eater, diner, and someone who loves reading and writing about food, this backlash solely serves to degrade those who work to enable the entire food industry, and have a passion for food.

Are my opinions worth anything, if I only give positive reviews? Are my opinions worth anything, only if I am a chef?

My aim is to encourage a love of cooking, and a love of good food. Not all food can be good. We all need to nourish our bodies, and should do so with care. I do spend substantial time pondering the origins of the food I put in my body. If it is less than healthful for me, it must be very, very good. Every morsel needs to be worth it, not just bang for buck, but bang per mouthful. Expensive or cheap, I just want good food, and something made by a real person, with a penchant for flavour. I started this blog for myself. I love good food; I travel frequently, and I wanted to document my experiences. Food is in fact an obsession for me, and it seems it always has been. I have to laugh when I find old postcards I sent as a child, in which I solely describe the foods consumed throughout a vacation. My parents also had an enormous garden. I grew to appreciate fresh vegetables, and the honey I used to have dripped on my finger, from the vat my Dad used for beekeeping. I consumed fresh cream and cheese from the farm, and nearly every imaginable homemade Ukrainian food that a Ukrainian granddaughter could be fed. It was certainly not pretentious, but always very good. Baba's food is not fancy, but there is a reason my Baba's first boyfriend named his perogy company after her. I have never had a better perogy than hers, and believe me, I've tried. I do not often create dishes for my blog with excessively refined techniques, as I also believe that everyone can cook something. No excuses. It doesn't mean that I can't use refined techniques, or that I don't; I just don't share those dishes, as others seem discouraged, when I am trying to mandate that we can all cook, and should share in a joy of good food. We do not need all of our food prepared for us from a box, we are all capable of preparing something. I work long hours with my two occupations, besides my preoccupation with food, and can always find the time and energy to prepare something. My idea of fast food, is a simple spread of flavourful and fresh vegetables, accompanied by equally simple meats or grains. Good food, doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to be good. Sometimes I write about food that seems so absurdly simple, as I hope to encourage friends to eat fresh, and enjoy a meal prepared with their own hands. A meal that is healthful for the body, and for the family as an opportunity to be together to enjoy each other's company. A meal is an opportunity to be savoured. For a while I lived on the Eastern Seaboard of the US, and restaurants were generally decent, no desperate necessity to find somewhere at least edible. The service might be brusque, but it was professional. You learn very quickly, that those who irritatingly complain or are excessively demanding are treated with inferior service. Generally, service was fantastic, and the food was wonderful. It came to be defined to me as good service. However, if I found a place I didn't enjoy, I wouldn't go back. If I spent hard earned money once, and there are hundreds of other options, why go spend more money at a less than stellar place? At this time, I also worked in several restaurants, and picked up the occasional catering gig, preparing the food. I am not a classically trained chef, but I can cook. Eventually you meet a lot of people, and pick their brains too. It also helped to live around the corner from a brilliant Italian pastry shop, incredible markets, and some of the best pizzeria's anywhere. You discover there is always something more to learn. I am an extremely curious person, and a voracious reader. There have been years in which I studied and memorized literally hundreds of restaurant menus. Abnormal to be sure. Sometimes it was like a game to see if I could pre-imagine how a dish would taste, just from reading the menu. I realize it's absurd. Although, I still occasionally pursue the same habit with recipes. It's just for fun, and when my expectations are blown out of the water, all the better. I must say that it is not often, when I do not have fewer books in my home than the local public library, from where I frequently borrow. I probably read too much about food, old and new, and for this I simply cannot apologize. It doesn't make me an expert, but I have a vocabulary. When I moved back to Calgary, after living away for nearly a decade, I became disappointed with the food and service I received. As time goes on, it improves, and for that I am thrilled. In the meantime, I have continued to cook for myself, and my family and friends more and more. I obsessively plan eating trips, to learn and discover. There is always more to learn. I certainly do not consider myself an expert by proxy. Actually, I'm hardly one to claim, expert status, even on things which I am more than certifiably an expert about. Although, I might very occasionally turn on foodtv, I honestly hard watch tv. Certainly, I don't like to watch schlock, or take it as anything more than entertainment. I do enjoy a good laugh, and shows which take me on a journey to a far away land for new experiences. I find it laughable that it is implied, I might consider myself an expert from watching foodtv, when I don't even really watch it. This is absolutely hilarious. NO press is bad press. Although, restaurants are not always happy when someone has a less than pleasurable word to offer; negative press is still press, and creates a desire for the curious truth seeker. Personally, I take all reviews I read with a grain of salt, and generally want to find out the truth for myself. I encourage others to do the same. I certainly do not take another's opinion seriously, if it is never without a certain element of scrutiny. I have eaten in New York often enough to know that New Yorker's do complain, albeit with nasty looks, or grossly absurd comments. Although, more often than not, and not shockingly, the food is quite good. I am not out to complain, but I believe in the tremendous power of potential held by the restaurants and food scene in Calgary. But we have to continue to demand more. More than nice silverware, a beautiful façade, and expensive ingredients; the food has to be good.

Unfortunately, I know too many people who do not dine out in this town because they are tired of having overcooked fish or similar, at anywhere other than super high-end restaurants; they are tired of receiving inferior food, or likewise paying through the nose for something edible. There has to be some middle ground. If a restaurant sends out food, and I am paying for it, it had better be good, no matter the dollar figure. I find that overly glowing reviews are too difficult to swallow, as it seems just too artificial and contrived. I am not painting a less than rosy picture because I have a flair for the dramatic, but because to I prefer to be honest, as I am a meticulous and particular eater. If I can make a dish better at home than in a restaurant, this is disappointing for me. This is just as disheartening when I have enjoyed beautiful dishes in the home of a friend, who is interested in food, and creates dishes more enjoyable than at restaurants. I just want to say wow, even for a dish that appears relatively simple. I eat out to be inspired, and this is my expectation. The food has to be better than the home cook, or at least equally as good, but I didn’t have to do the work. I do not dismiss the ridiculously hard work of chef's as something which can be easily imitated, or that should be less than highly regarded. But, I do not put myself on a pedestal either. I do not want exceptional food to go under appreciated. However, I have great difficulty supporting blatant mediocrity, in any form. We need to discuss the bad and the good, and to distinguish ourselves from mere lemmings. Not everything can be good, nor can everything be good for everyone. We all have our own taste; no I am not Thomas Keller, and I do not consider myself solely entitled to criticize others outright, but I do strongly encourage others to form educated opinions for themselves.

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real food diet

I say the word diet very loosely - diet, as in we all have a diet of whatever it is we consume to nurture our bodies everyday, just to keep us ticking along. I eat what I want. But, I'm not very big. Some people might say I'm small, but I'm certainly far from teency -- indeed it does depend what country or city you're in, and to whom or to what standard I'm being compared. And while I do exercise, sometimes a lot, I can no longer bring myself to actually think of a diet, as in the forbidden word, dieting. I seem to have found a formula that works - exercise only because I like it, and more importantly, when I want to - and then to eat only real food, and whatever I find tastes really, really darn good, and I don't worry too much about the portion, just that I am full, and fully content. Now, when I think about it, it probably sounds a little strange. What is real food anyways? If a carrot is real food, then is carrot juice fake? In a way - yes, if it came from a bottle, and not from your juicer. It seems the more I learn about cooking, and the traditional diets cultures have developed worldwide, the more I find that there is very little which people have traditionally consumed which is refined or processed much more than a washing, or a pressing. Some foods are aged, such as wine and cheese, or meats. Other foods are eaten raw, or dried before being sold. But it's not real complicated. Except that these foods often require...actual cooking and this singular fact terrifies and intimidates seemingly a vast majority of the North American population. Things really only get complicated upon entering into a modern gigantic supermarket, then things get tricky. In traveling, I have been into grocery stores with very few items actually resembling the bounty of a harvest or a beautiful cut of meat. Sometimes it seems that everyone is terrified of food resembling what it actually is! There are no pigs feet or snouts, but several brands of hot dogs. A locally prepared sausage is one thing, but a hot dog is designed to do exactly that; not resemble it's whereabouts one bit. This is a sad state. Suddenly, it seems that real food can be extremely hard to find. Try finding bulghur. Aisle 1, or aisle 28? I love a good challenge, but let's be realistic, this can be seemingly impossible. Even though bulghur is perfectly good for you, has lots of fiber, and cooks pretty quickly, finding it can be like searching for truffles in Antarctica, when you should be in Italy. The problem then must be the marketability of the name; it just doesn't have the right ring to it. That must be it. Nor does the package (if you can find it) have a cartoon character, a distinctive logo, or an exuberant theme song. If I wanted breakfast cereal, this would be an entirely different matter. But to me, these are not anything resembling real food most of the time. There are hundreds upon thousands of cereals all with incomprehensible multi-syllabic ingredient lists, and mushed up grains coated with sugar. Do I really need more omega 3's, protein, and vitamins added to my breakfast? Shouldn't the foods I eat, already have these nutrients, if these nutrients are good for me, and really a necessity? Instead of purchasing fad-foods with lots of stuff added into it, I try to eat the stuff with good things in it, that don't have to be added in because it has been already stripped of all nutrition. And interestingly, more and more, I've been finding that I can eat the elusive, whatever I want, as long as well, it came from real stuff. I eat a lot of butter. Not on purpose; it just happens. I generally enjoy cookies made from scratch with butter, eggs, and sugar, much more than purchased sandwich-style cookies or rolled pastries. To me, homemade, or purchased items that have ingredients I can easily understand and pronounce, just tend to taste better. Organic tomatoes can be like candy, and positively addicting. Quality eggs give pasta a beautiful golden hue. But even better than that, these kinds of foods seem to keep my palate satiated, and my clothes from getting too tight. I think even a bit of calories of probably burned just cooking, baking, and cleaning, because that is what is necessary to eat real stuff. In theory, I could probably be smaller with fewer fat calories in my yogurt (6% fat), or ice cream (no clue, but I make it with 35% heavy cream), or even my cappuccino's which Jeff expertly prepares using homogenized milk. But would my hair be as shiny? Would I have as few wrinkles? But seriously, in all honesty, would I be as happy? If I have a choice between a filet mignon, and a rib-eye, you can bet I will pick the rib-eye. No question. It has glorious flavour, and gorgeous fat. Who needs botox when it keeps those lips from dwindling? OK, and add in few curves here and there. But just a few of course, hopefully in the right places! I certainly can't resist my Baba's (Ukrainian for Grandmother) perogies, and I shouldn't have to. They are made with love, and a tradition of the family. To deny that, is to deny a part of oneself. Sure, I'm not walking down a couture runway anytime soon, but this is a diet that works. My size hardly changes, and I do eat quite a bit. But really, I look a lot better with some food in me; meat on my bones from meat, fruits, vegetables, bread, fat and sugar included, they are just a part of really eating, and for me, really living.
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Taste of the show

An empty stomach and grocery store shopping do not mix. I would probably buy the entire store! This is probably also good advice for attending a food convention. With row upon row of samples, and vendors looking to entice new buyers, one could easily eat everything within sight. Which is fine, except in New York, when there is more than just a convention, after all, it's New York! The eating possibilities are endless. I just got back from the Fancy Food Show in New York City, and just want to give you a sneak peek before I give you all the details on the trip, and all the accompanying yummy eats. New York already has some of the very best eats one could imagine, and was miraculously even more enticing with the show. What a great combination! If you can stomach it of course... At first, the food show seemed daunting as there were miles and miles of booths, with samples, tastes, and an overwhelming amount of information. There were thousands of rare and unusual products, and more familiar favourites as well; everything from smoked blue marlin to Walker's Short Bread. As an obsessive-compulsive only virtual New Yorker, I spent hours planning and poring over which restaurants I would check out. It starts to become difficult to choose. Restaurant reviews help, but there are many oddball reviews, which need to be taken with a grain of salt. Finally, the anticipation subsided as I made it to most of the places on my "must eat" list. Usually, my restaurant lists include places with more unusual dishes, which are not available in Calgary. If a restaurant can make it in New York, it pretty much has to at least be good, or it just won't survive. New Yorker's are picky, and for good reason - there's so much choice! In the next few days, I will be making several posts for the highlights of the food show and the city. I think my feet are just starting to recover from all the walking. I just hope my feet won't walk away, as they are very confused, before I can finish giving you the complete details from the trip. Just to get an idea of the enormity of the place, check out those booth numbers! These wheels were fantastically enormous too. It was hard not to want to eat the entire thing, right then and there. Here's an idea of what the booths look like: At the Rougie booth, I ran into Julie from Bite here in town. She introduced me to Chris from Rougie, and we all enjoyed some champagne, and foie gras torchon. How cool is that!?
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