The Cheese-Sandwich Blog: How This Month's Food & Wine Caused an Existential Crisis (& a Challenge)

Yes, I had a cheese sandwich today. In fact it was a sandwich "gone wild!" with mesquite-roasted turkey, Caciocavallo ("cheese on horseback" which is similar to Provolone but stretched, shaped by hand & made in southern Italy) bought at Steve's Cheese in Portland, flash-frozen home-made arugula pesto zapped in the microwave from a prior winter dinner, a Safeway roma tomato that was ready to turn, some Ybarra Alioli (yes, that's how they spell aioli in Espana), & finally, some fiery Giardiniera bought from The Tuscan Market & Wine Shop, the only decent gourmet purveyor (as far as I can tell) in the vicinity of my grandmother's assisted-living facility in Arlington Heights, IL. A real melange!

Now normally, would I tell you about what I concocted from our ridiculously over-condimented fridge on a Sunday afternoon? Well, of course not! I don't have the time to write about every meal I make, nor should you care. So this brings about the *point* of this missive which is about the Always Hungry column in the March '06 publication of Food & Wine, "In the Belly of the Blog". What makes a blog worth-while your reading & my writing???

Wells' critique bases itself upon the model of the cheese-sandwich, i.e- I am going to write about everything I ate today & you will find it to be interesting. Yet, look at quirky cataloger Georges Perec & tell me that you're not fascinated with what this Polish-Parisian imbibed in a year. It's the equivalent of accessing Dali's intestines! At least one guy, Tucker Shaw, has jumped on this idea & got himself a major book deal with Everything I Ate: A Year in the Life of My Mouth. Shaw's book did not stem from a blog, as Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen did--a year's worth of blogging on the existential reality show of "living the dream" as a secretary with higher aspirations in the Big Apple. There must be something more to life--enter food, that one common denominator of the human experience--be it that first spoonful of soggy cereal in the morning, to thrusting a fork into the golden skin of a perfectly roasted chicken.

So while I do agree that the world of blogging can become so self-referencial that it becomes a bore & a burden on the history food writing (I am, therefore I blog) but there is so much to the "information highway" that is useful, valiant & inspiring. I would much rather hear about the cacophonous exploits of bloggers that span a culinary gamut, as I do in real life, than rely on someone that writes solely about the most Fear-Factor food to be consumed in L.A. or everything pizza, hamburger, or likewise narrowly-defined Vietnamese noodle spots. Interesting, perhaps, but valuable to me as a diner? The defense of a day-in-the-life blogger rests. I hope you, dear reader, agree that variety is the spice of life for all of us.

Comments

[Ms. G]

Well, well, well.. I'm reading backwards from Paris thru Ezell's and now Cheese Sandwitches a la blogs and the Gourmandy Police who dictate taste in a never--ending blitzkreig of self-appointed egoisms.

I agree Madeleine, variety which we've been dependent on for 100,000 years is preferable to any rigid "good for you" menu. Invariably "good for you" and "for your own goodites" don't actually eat what they would have you follow. Just like politicians who want the rest of us to pay our taxes so they can go on "fat finding missions" at our expense while ducking out of paying their own share.
Cheese sandwhiches are WONDERFUL. They're the bi-monthly fallback when dinner is late and we're too tired to pop - they're the feel good, "memory access route" to childhood's peter rabbit comfiness. So anyone who takes exception is not paying their childhood's proper respect.
Ms. G - with out variety I wouldn't be me

[ms.proust]

Well, well, well-said Ms. G! Who's to argue with Peter Rabbit? There's nothing more innocent than a good ol' grilled cheese sandwich & a cup of tomato soup...

Hip-hip-hooray for the spice in life--I'd simply go mad if all I could blog about was little French cookies! Afterall, the madeleine was the springboard for Proust's great tome, not the fodder of all 3500 pages...