Food is personal. Part of what you eat becomes part of you. You may or may not be what you eat, but you are what you ate. As Brillat-Savarin famously said, "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are." He may have been talking about class more that physiology, but to a certain extent, so am I. Through much of human history, and for far too much of the population today, the quest for food is a matter of survival. But for most of you reading this, your next meal is all but guaranteed. What you do look for when you are hungry, when it's time for lunch or dinner, when you select a restaurant, when you shop for food, when you peruse a menu? Surely the choices you make say much about who you are.

In Western culture, once you reach a certain level of affluence, you have an unbelievable range of food choices. Despite the assault on the middle class over the last decades, that level of affluence, the amount of money you need to open the gate to that vast array of choices, is lower now than it has ever been. The "masses" can afford, at least once in a while, to dine at fine restaurants serving food that, in previous generations, only the most wealthy could afford. At the same time, the overall quality of food seems to be going downhill. Fast food and chain restaurants know that they will only survive by providing palatable fare at a reasonable price. Food science is producing products that appeal to our basic craving for carbohydrates, fat and salt, often without including the subtlety and diversity of palate sensations that make great food, well, great.

If it's all about economics, we are doomed. There's a "race to the bottom" in mass marketing that will inevitably lead to reduction in quality such that, in the end, it only has to be good enough that most people will find it acceptable for it to be a commercially viable food product. To a certain extent, we are victims of our own success: the same forces that "raised the standard of living" dictated that not everyone can eat a meal that a small army of kitchen staff spent hours preparing. Restaurants must buy at least some of their foodstuffs in less than pristine state -- prepared, breaded, frozen, packaged in single portion units -- because starting every bit of every meal from scratch just isn't economically feasible. The result is more (the appropriately named) Cheesecake Factory than haute cuisine.

But it's not about how well a chef can disguise the fact that she didn't dress the lamb, bake the bread or grind the coffee beans. It's more about how close she starts to raw, undressed and unground. Good food is simple, fresh, clean, free of processing chemicals and full of the chef's skill and care! Good food may employ food science, if only because so many food preparation techniques are so imprecise. But the food certainly should not contain a list of ingredients that you can't pronounce.

The whole point here is not to be elitist (although I freely admit that I am), exclusive or even to suggest that we completely avoid processed foods, convenience foods and fast foods. But it can start as simply as looking at the ingredients in the food you buy, and choosing foods where the list includes only items that you recognize as actually being food. Once we have food, rather than some kind of chemical stew designed to appeal to our reptilian brain, we can start on our journey.

Every meal should be a quest for satisfaction, but not just satisfying our hunger. We should view food the same way we view music and art. We know what music we like, but we never close the door on listening to something new. And we may frequently return to old favorites, but new favorites are especially good. You can make this as extreme as you want. I really like trying new foods, experiencing them in new combinations and generally expanding my palate. But even if you are not that adventurous when it comes to exotic ingredients, you can still try new combinations, new textures, new techniques, new flavors and new dishes. If you got this far, you must have some interest in exploring food.

This site was, some number of years ago, my attempt to share my exploration. With any luck, I may revive it again.