saturday night in tijuana

the poetics of food

Believe it or not, I plucked this beautiful magazine from the overgrown forest of Britney displays and Celine Dion Christmas CD's at Sam Goody on a typical weekday-in-the-life. There amongst the expected magazine titles was an unexpected cover image that was not sculpture but food! The cover image is black sesame praline sauce and chocolate mousse sitting on a chocolate sponge (Fillipo La Mantia, La Trattoria, Sicily) . No. 2 is a "Green Apple Feuillete" with puff pastry, green apple sorbet and carmelized apples (Christian Albin, Four Seasons, New York). No. 3 is a banana leaf filled with sweet rice, quail egg, barbecued pork and chinese sausage (Michael Taus, Zealous Lounge, Chicago) . No. 4 is made out of cocoa powder, couscous, chocolate, strawberries and raisins. No. 5 is a pistachio sorbet with pistachio hoop-croquant, pistachio milk foam and peeled pistachios (Albert Adria Acosta, El Bulli, Barcelona).

Ok...I'll say it, this food looks very architectural. In these assemblages the ingredients have become raw materials re-shaped, even engineered (in the case of the pistachio hoop) into new forms but with the added dimension of taste and smell! This metaphor has its limits since food works up to a certain scale and one cannot live in their food (but they can live for it).

Polar, WI

Last weekend I traversed 2100 miles by air and another 250 miles by land and 18 footsteps to the farmhouse and childhood home of my girlfriend to celebrate her first birthday over 49. It was a full house of 10 + 1 more late arriving Cousin named Joe. The midwest welcomed me with 6 inches of snow! I felt very loved and the result of making out with the cold is now a stuffy nose and cough. It was a strange switching of gears to land back in san diego and find myself having a glass of wine after shooting (and missing the non-living targets) a shotgun via the guidance of Susan's brother, indulging on three versions of birthday cake, the best lasagna ever, and sharing one bathroom with 10 people for two days -- I think only midwesterners can do that, there would have been a lawsuit in California.