1. Food writing: what are your experiences with both reading and writing about food?
I have next-to-no experience writing about food, except maybe for what has unintentionally worked its way into my fiction, like the time doctors thought my great-grandfather's stomach was bleeding after eating too much czernina (aka, ducks-blood soup). What I’ve read about food is a little more developed; I read FoodNetwork Magazine, own a few cookbooks, and have read some food literature such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma.
2. What roles does food play in your life? How important or unimportant is it to you? In what ways does it feel simple and/or complex?
Sometimes, I eat just to satisfy hunger. We all do. When I'm on break working at Panera Bread, I get a bagel if it's breakfast, a sandwich and soup (or a salad if I'm feeling bloated that day) if it's lunch time. Nothing mystical there. Dinner, now that's a completely different story. When I eat out, I make it worth my time. I try not to go to the same restaurant more than once a month because there's just too much great food in this city to eat the same thing over and over, and nowhere is this more true than for chains like Applebee's and The Olive Garden. I like my dinners to be exotic, an experience, whenever possible. When I look at a menu, I look for that one item that I couldn't get anywhere else.
There is but one exception to this rule: wings. God, how I love buffalo wings, but I'll save that for another time.
3. Has this roles changed over the years? Talk specifically about your younger self vs. your older self. If food has stayed the same for you, explain why.
When I try to remember back to when I began thinking of food as an experience, it saddens me that I can't. I clearly remember being so picky that I wouldn't even eat pizza. Yeah, pizza! Everyone in class goes to Danny's birthday party at Pizza Hut, and all I eat is breadsticks with no sauce. Now, I eat more sushi than is probably good for me. That's it, there is no middle ground, no transitional period to my recollection.
Whatever it was that clicked, it changed me, if you'll pardon the cliche. When I started to enjoy grilled tilapia and chipotle mayonnaise and arrachera, life took on a new, more visceral quality. Food, I came to realize, could be an event, something I could truly anticipate and save up for rather than a mode for stopping my stomach from growling. As I started cooking for myself (more than Pop Tarts and Ramen noodles), I began to focus on every detail of every meal I ate, thinking, if the meal was good, how I could re-create the dish in my own kitchen.
Being my own cook has profoundly changed my own identity. Getting back to nine-year-old, picky, pain in the ass Richie, my mother was a traditional cook. Pot roast, mostaciolli, and mashed potatoes with every meal. Accessible food, but I still wouldn't eat it. Maybe that's what it was, my palette had grown beyond my peers and while everyone was telling me I was picky, I was really just bored with what they were eating. :-p
4. French critic Brillat-Savarin said, "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are." What do you think food says about us? What beliefs, perceptions, and judgments do we make about others based on the food they eat? How do we classify those around us--and ourselves--through food?
More than anything, I think the food we eat is a representation of out self-worth, a factor of our lives that correlates with how we identify ourselves and what is important to us. Someone who dines exclusively at high end, five-star restaurants thinks they are entitled to only the best things in life, while someone who's diet consists of McDonald's more than once a day might consider food as a way of staying full and flavor a minor concern to other obligations, or maybe they're just lazy. These are merely generalizations, of course, but how does this question concern me?
I'm certainly not above eating McDonald's and I've spent over $50 for dinner on occasion, too. Personally, I think to fully enjoy "great" food, you have to eat all food, not just the creme de la creme every day. All criticism requires some frame of reference; to fully appreciate complex food, you have to remember what simple food is, like a well-rounded reader should study both modern and classic literature, or a musician should understand classical and contemporary music.
5. Food is universal--we all have to eat, so food often becomes a way to bring people together (holidays, family gatherings, celebrations, dates). But food can also separate and alienate us. Talk about an experience you've had with both.
I come from an extremely close-knit family, Polish on one side and Italian on the other, so we eat. A lot. My grandma has always hosted for the holidays, and that's not just Christmas and Thanksgiving, I'm talking Easter, Memorial Day, Grandparents Day...hell, she would cook for Boxing Day if I suggested it. "Food" and "togetherness" are synonymous in my family, though there is an exception...
The one kink (not to be read "annoyance") in our holiday plans has always been my Aunt Tammy and Uncle John. My aunt has always been the black sheep of the family, "the weird one" as my grandpa is fond of saying, not because she's a career criminal or anything, but because she's not divorced, has a college degree, owns one television, reads for pleasure, and--strangest of all--is a vegetarian. So, while we're all eating turkey and ham, they either bring a tofurkey loaf or Veggie-Delites from Subway. The dynamic isn't much different when they host dinner, which is a rare exception.
My aunt makes the most delicious baked salmon, and since she only buys organic, the quality of every piece of the meal is heightened. Sadly, I've always felt this effort lost on the rest of my family, as they prefer fried over baked fish and mashed potatoes over rosemary fingerling potatoes. It's strange, being together yet apart for dinner.
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