I like stuff.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Thinking...

Back when I started this, this was my foodie-blog. In the great blog consolidation effort of 2007, this became the "everything blog"

Lately, I've been cheating on the consolidation effort, and have been dribbling out bits into the old blogstreams.

But I got to thinking a bit tonight, and I've not yet shaken an idea. There are plenty of blogs about frugality. There are plenty of blogs about food. There is a subset that focuses on frugality on food quite admirably.

But there's also a lot of talk about quickly-inflating food prices, and after reading a few articles about dishes borne of necessity being served as "cultural luxury", I'm hung up over the idea of "Why would a meal that originated in making-do with scraps, or originated out of a culture of famine, demand a price here suggesting a gourmet palliate?"

I'm thinking a lot about that "making-do" ethic. I'm also thinking a lot about the "processed foods" being significantly cheaper than the real thing. My current inclination involves a lot of "Good job, marketing, you keep finding a way to sell us 'processed food products' that would have otherwise been tossed."

Sorry, I'm all over the place on this issue right now, but humor me for a while as I sort out some of these thoughts.

2 comments:

stiill said...

You're going freegan?

transiit said...

Well, I was going "2 girls 1 cup", but suddenly freegan sounds way more appealing.

No, I'm just thinking a lot about eating on the cheap, and how much it's been sullied by foodie-culture and mass production.

I'm thinking a lot about what we've given up in the name of convenience. 2 bucks per serving of pre-cooked, ready to eat after a half hour in the oven steel-cut oatmeal from trader joe's vs. 7 bucks for 5 pounds of steel cut oats off teh intarwebs.

I'm thinking about restaurants taking a blue-collar staple like meatloaf and passing it off as gourmet at inflated prices, even when it's the same ground meat + filler + binder + whatever formula. Squirting ketchup on the top sure does sound a lot more appetizing when you call it a vinegar and tomato-puree glaze, yeah?

Fuck art, let's kill.