Definitions of ourselves

So it’s been a little bit over a month since I last wrote anything. It took two incendiary blog posts — obviously ones I’ve read, not that I’ve written — and a passionate comment from myself to inspire myself to write again.

Not to validate my self-imposed label of ‘blogger’ or ‘writer’ or ‘foodie’… but just to shed some thoughts on how we define ourselves. In this day and age, I’ve seen so many ‘create your profile’ pages where the form asks you to write a short blurb about yourself. Where do you start? Are we defined by our hobbies, our values, our moral code or our interests? More often than not, we define ourselves using our interests/hobbies/passions.

Myself, I consider myself a foodie (lover of all things food), a blogger (I have this site, don’t I?), a musician (lapsed, my guitar moved in last weekend and I’m still waiting on the piano), a Twitter/Facebook addict (if you follow my Twitter feed, I am far more active on there than I am on here)…etc… None of these things are my profession. I couldn’t be paid to be a food critic (but if anyone wants to pay me on a regular basis to be like Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmern — I’m not opposed to that!) or a musician (I haven’t played in years). I do get paid to blog (sometimes, but I don’t make a living off of it). I don’t get paid to be on Twitter or on Facebook. Ah well.  Not the whole of my point.

I read a post on a friend’s blog, Taste As You Go — ‘Chronicles of a Food Enthusiast’ where she referenced a blog post made by Michael Ruhlman — ‘Julie & Julia, Foodie & Cook’. Michelle’s (TAYG) point was that foodie is NOT a derogatory term, as Ruhlman frequently insinuated.

From Ruhlman’s first post:

Foodies are the first to hit the newest restaurant, or to plan a trip based on restaurant destinations; they[...] are the first to order the coolest new ingredient and make sure you know it.  Foodies love to talk about food and cooking.  Foodies watch food television with their pants around their ankles and buy The French Laundry Cookbook for the pictures.  Foodie is a social distinction, not a judgement.

…’pants around their ankles’… Um. Just Um, because I have nothing else to say.

I call myself a foodie, and I love to talk about food and cooking. I love to eat. I love to savor flavors (at least the ones I like), and try new ones. Now that I finally have my own apartment with my very own kitchen, I enjoy creating new dishes with the same 5 ingredients in my fridge. I’m single, I don’t make a whole lot, I don’t have the deep pockets to purchase the coolest new ingredient. I make do with what I got, based on food memories and flavors I love. And that’s that (so I can’t really start an actual food blog, there wouldn’t be much variety).

And then…

This is probably why foodies emerged.  One of the effects among a certain segment of the population who recognized that we were losing something essential to our nature became foodies, those who turn food, chefs, food-entertainers, and cooking equipment into fetishes—that is, they accord them some kind of magical power.  Another segment of our culture who also recognized that we were losing something essential to our humanity learned to cook, out of books, from their moms or grandmothers, from other cooks.  And more and more are learning every day.

I don’t look at food, at Iron Chef, at chefs, at cooking equipment as a fetish. I cook because that’s the way I was raised. Cook your food from scratch, know what’s going into the pot, onto your plate, into your body — and you won’t have any of the obesity issues we see in American today. I don’t cook well. I don’t have Morimoto’s skills, I don’t have Florian Hugo’s skills. I cook better via practice. I think I’ve perfected my scrambled eggs and poached eggs, and I’m moving into omelets in the coming weeks.

I can’t believe one little phrase sparked so much anger. His definitions are elitist at best. We foodies are defined by our passions. There are many levels of ‘foodies’ and none of us (at least from what I’ve seen) discriminate.

In her comments, Michelle states:

Before reading the post, I considered a foodie to be someone who enjoyed food in multiple ways - from growing it and cooking it to eating it and sharing it with others; from learning about it and reading about it to writing about it. But Ruhlman’s post does illustrate that the term “foodie” is beginning to take on that negative connotation you mentioned. To me, that’s more “unfortunate” than the term itself.

I think I want to stick to that innocent definition… but then again, I don’t have a food blog, so I suppose there’s no harm in what terminology I use.

In Ruhlman’s second post: ‘”Foodie”, “Cook”, and “Home Cook”, he attempts to breakdown the label further (when there really doesn’t need to be such nitpicky definitions…)

Judging from those who commented to me, people were evenly divided between those who were proud to be called home cooks and those who felt, I don’t know, as if being a “home” cook were akin to being a pretend cook.  But I liked what Chef Pardus had to say—on my facebook page (I can’t keep track of all this stuff, facebook, twitter, email, blog, the center can’t hold!)—it was right on the money, and I’m glad I didn’t miss it: he says that he writes and he skis but he doesn’t call himself a writer or a skier.

Cook is a verb.  It’s what some of us do.  Not what we are. Unless we are, in which case we can pay our rent with the result of our cooking. I’m for abolishing the term “home cook.” Or at least not using it.

If you’re not allowed to call yourself a cook, then how to distinguish between those who are foodies and those who love to cook?  That as I mentioned in the earlier post, is an important distinction. What is a foodie? I like the Miriam Webster definition: a person having an avid interest in the latest food fads.

If you look up early in this post, I call myself a writer, a blogger, a musician and a foodie. We label because society and our environment demands us to label. I label because I am passionate about all of these things. Foodie, cook, and home cook. It’s all the same to me. Foodie is better. Foodie encompasses it all.

Don’t nitpick. Don’t be elitist. We are what we are. We love food. And that’s that.

Now, I will contemplate posting my sad little pictorial attempt at Ambrosia aka Fruit Salad, Filipino Style.