Food Musings

Food is Art.  Food is not just the visual art we are used to thinking of, the rainbow plate of amazing-ness - the mosaic - the bento box.  It's becoming more - it's deeper.

It is drama - the goji berries grown at high altitude surviving with their lectins giving them the edge to survive.  The stories on our food, the personalities selling it to us, the feelings it engenders are part of the opera that food is becoming.

Food is deeply personal, what we choose to nourish ourselves with becomes part of us.  The art we choose to consume also affects us, helps make us who we are.

Food was always a key part of human cultures, but it has taken off, at least in our culture, in recent years as a key cultural expression.  The theatre of food at Electric Picnic, along with numerous other food markets and stalls.  There's an insatiable appetite (pardon the pun), particularly among the millenials, for food to be part of how they express themselves.  Food is no longer a chore in Ireland, there I've said it.  It is becoming something that we are fascinated by, that we use to fascinate others.  (If you haven't tried the Okinawa purple sweet potato then you're among friends, but if you have - please tell me where to find it).

Food is a voting opportunity,  a daily political choice, a way to show the world your philosophy, a way to make the world more like the place you want it to be - whether by planting your own tomatoes, showing love through extravagant preparation of something for others or for yourself, or buying a premium ice-cream that promises at least an hour of orgasmic joy on the couch in return for a hefty price.

Andy Warhol (I'm reading a way too long biography about him right now) was inspired by food products, and consumer products in general, but food products are currently turning around and being inspired by art, with high end popcorn showing up with beautiful prints, impressionistic arrangements on plates, Mango strewn bento boxes.

Food is from nature, and nature & food always inspired art (remember your first drawing of a fruit bowl?), so it's no surprise how much food is seen as a visual beauty, but it's increasingly being used in a more challenging way.  At my xmas work party, I had a lemon thing for dessert that looked like a raspberry thing.  This was a head F&*K, this is what art sometimes does and what food is now trying to do.  Take you by surprise, laugh at your assumptions.

Food is poetry - mark my words.  The O- Cajun- al pun, will develop, the novels will be read while you browse, while you cook, the letters will be embedded in the apples, like they used to be in sticks of rock.  Bottles of wine will grow on trees, in the actual bottle, as food becomes sci fi.

Yes, I might've just been to Harrods.