History Lesson

Some of the most tastless and vile things in history produce the best things.
I'm thinking of slavery.
In the 1700's, the slave trade pretty much rocketed after Bacon's Rebellion in Colonial America, when the good old white folk were looking for a new source of labor without standards, and with more color. Their eyes turned to Africa, where prisoners of war and the such were being auctioned off by triumphant warlords and slave traders to make a hefty profit for their man-hunting efforts. They sold to the highest bidder, packed them into a freighter and sent them on a horrific trans-Atlantic journey to death by overworking.


Most of these slave were sent to plantations in the Indies, but a decent amount were sent to the Southern Colonies that relied on Agriculture for their profit, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Connecticut. The temperatures were humid and hot, malaria and other diseases were rampant. This was all terrible, terrible, terrible.
Why am I discussing the Slave Trade on a blog about food?
Food comes from people, and groups of people who are together in one place. These Africans were lumped together in the southern plantation colonies, and they survived. Did you know that the word Gumbo was brought from Africa? And Goober? Even okra.
A combination of African-Americans and the resources down there gave us dishes today like Gumbo, fried okra, black-eyed peas, collard greens with ham hocks, and they perfected the art of cooking scrap food for slaves, and making it into something delicious. Collard greens, turnips, mustard greens, corn, sweet potatoes, and biscuits. Rice was used alot and hushpuppies are still something people drive miles for, if it's good. Chitlins and pigs feet, melons, eggplant, and kola nuts. These were all foods that were taken during a horrible time, and now it's something that is a cuisine. It's a delicious and famous type of food, and it came about at such a horrible time, like most foods do.
People eat "soul food" practically every week. Collard greens, or fried chicken and waffles. Things that people who were living in squalor took with them as they rose up in the social ladder to keep as their own. Food that we eat 300 years later, and we still enjoy, even though we might not really think about how it came about. Just think about it next time you got to KFC.
Heck, think about where your food really came from next time you go anywhere.

Cheese Wiz, Poptarts, and Spoiled Appetites

I want to talk about cheeze wiz.
Ever since I was like, a wee little food lover, cheeze wiz has been something to frown upon and NOT eat. Something that is supposed to be dairy and comes in an aerosol can for squeezing just was never appealing to me. Apparently I was sadly, sadly mistaken.
I took a trip to Philadelphia this past week, and of course the first thing that I did was go to the bathroom. That flight was long. Second thing we did was get in a car and find a philly cheesesteak place. And the best place to go for cheesesteaks is Jim's Steak, as any local who knows anything will tell you. I went to the one on south street, and it was awesome. The whole building had an old fashioned shine to it, like a diner, and it was all monochromatic and dingy. Very vintage. So we go in, my coworker and I, and a kindly samaritan sees us looking at the menu when we come in, other diners rushing past us and getting their food. She helps.
"Pretty much, you just go up and say wiz or american. Really. And get wiz, it's the best." she smiled brightly and I tried to look thankful and NOT like a tourist.
So anyway, I made this face, because there was this beautiful pile of steak waiting to get nestled in my delicious looking hoagie bun, and these maniacs wanted me to put cheap, supermarket, economy size cheese wiz on it?
I got the cheese wiz.
And see, it's an interesting thing, all of our inhibitions we get from the things we learn, and how "grown up" we are, situations that look alot like cheese wiz. I lately have been told that artisan cheeses and crunchy, european baked bread is good to eat on sandwiches. You know, the cultured stuff. Or you probably learned that a nice dinner has to be over 20 dollars, or that shellfish has to be fresh and lightly seared to be delicious. Which is all true. To an extent. But whatever happened to the cheap sandwich shop on the corner that serves hoagies on bunny bread? Or fishsticks being a treat after a long weekday in the 1st grade? Or how about those little packets of crackers you got to dip in cheese wiz in your brownbagged lunch? There's alot of things that people will turn their nose up at, but this whole sandwich with cheese wiz thing reminded of what a brat I can be sometimes about food. Sometimes we need to just go back to like, kindergarten, and eat a poptart for dessert, or chips and mustard, or spaghetti with ground beef and ragu. Because that sandwich? Literally, and I really and truly mean literally like this when I say it, that was the best sandwich I ever ate. With Cheese wiz. The best. Ever.

Mecca Fresh: A Lunch Pilgrimage

I decided to throw one of my favorite restaurants up here for you people who live in the Palm Harbor area. Florida isn't one of the best culinary areas to date, believe me, but if you're willing to check out alot of places, the laws of luck dictate that you have to hit a winner sometime. I usually go to places within walking distance, to help digestion, (read as: no car), so I've become pretty familiar with anything in a 3 mile radius. It took until 3:30 to twist my sister into going with me, so it was a pretty late lunch, but we went anyway, her waiting for her promised pastry from the bakery, and me just counting down until I could eat something that didn't taste like my crap cooking.


I've been on this pescatarian (look it up) kick for awhile now, so I like going to places that are organic or have vegetarian options. So, there's this place by my house, Mecca Fresh Cafe, and it's one of the best spots for lunch. It's a really cute size, but pretty open, with a sushi bar and outside dining. It's in a plaza with lots of nice and talked-about restaurants, and I think some of the culinary awesome rubbed off onto them, because it's really tasty.

So, I normally wouldn't have found it, mostly because I don't eat out alot, but I got lucky because next door is one my favorite window-shopping destinations, the Surf and Turf Market. It's this market that has all sorts of fish, meats, wines, cheeses, and desserts. I go in there to breathe in the smell of raw meat, clean fish, smoke sausage, and dingy carpet; I look at all the goat cheese spreads, hummus, aprons and meats, wishing I had 100 dollars and the stomach of Drew Carrey. You know, what any normal girl does on her labor day weekend. Anyway, shopping trip aside.

Yeah, these people though I was a total creeper after I asked to snap a few.

The things I do for you (3) people.

When I first go into Mecca, my sister in tow, the first thing I notice is that the both the women are super nice, and pretty understanding of the fact that I take over 10 minutes for any decision past what socks I put on in the morning. They check that I don't need anything yet, and then leave me to my ruminations, with me ignoring odd looks from my fellow diners. (I figured out there was powdered sugar down the front of my shirt. My sister couldn't wait for that pastry.) During my intense perusal of a conveniently short and sweet menu, I usually try to pick something that I haven't tried before, just in case I miss out on an awesome food experience. Lo and behold, when I look up from my menu out of sheer absent-mindedness, I see a huge chalkboard telling me the soup today is sweet corn with veggies. I've had a cold for the past few days, so that sounded perfect. I got a cup of that and a salad with chili shrimp.
I hit the jackpot with my menu choices pairing-wise, because when my salad comes, it's got the same vegetables as the soup. The soup has tons of corn, carrots, squash, zucchini, and it's got herbs floating around that you could see, which was totally awesome, because I love me some herbs. It was colorful and filling, and the perfect size, because I finished it all and scraped the bowl. It was good, but I was really dissapointed on the other half of my meal. Maybe I just had high expectations, but it wasn't that noteworthy. The salad was the perfect size, but I didn't really feel that great about ordering it. Usually I get a salmon salad with rasberry viniagerette and that's great, along with most of my salads that I order there, but that just goes to show, that's what I get for branching out. The vegetables weren't that tasty when raw, it was squash and zucchini, and the dressing didn't have to much of a kick to it. The shrimp was plain, with just a hint of chili and I had been hoping for something seared and spicy when I ordered it, not moist and soft, and there was only 2 pieces. Kind of cheap, if you ask me.

The place is totally worth it, though. They serve you amazing noodles, like pad thai or mai thai with red curry coconut milk and bean sprouts. They're vegetarian friendly, and the outside dining is super nice and comfy. They do a pretty good seared ahi tuna for some salads, and their paninis are great, too. Dissapointing salad or not, Mecca is still one of my favorite restaurants.

My bakery was practically right next door, so I picked up some pastries for dessert, and it was pretty much the perfect day. Those times when you can word-wrestle somebody into going out for food and walking the whole way are definitely the ones worth keeping around. Take pictures, recount it to uninterested third parties, whatever it takes.

Hogfish? Is that like, seafood for barbecue?

I'm super excited today. Just yesterday, my dad came home from some epic, all day fun-and-diving-in-the-sun trip to the keys, while I wasted away in a dim house, doing homework and eating icecream. It was totally worthwhile though, because guess who got a sweet haul of pescatarian goodness? Turns out training a pre-teen kid to shoot metal spears at small, defenseless animals was a good idea.




Funny thing, my family spearfishing. My whole family is here in Florida, and fishing/diving is like, the great pastime down here. We really appreciate our fresh, and ever dwindling supply of fish, so seafood is like scaly, wiggly gold to us. I was free diving by fifth grade, and my little sister (age of 12, folks) was a certified diver as soon as she could save up for her own B.C. (Bouyancy Control? Battery Crusher? Berry Cobbler?) Anyway, long story aside, seafood is the best thing ever, and most folks would kill for the fresh source we have down here in Florida.



So here's my dad, walking through the door, dragging the dinner through our front lawn in a moist and slightly salty cooler full of seaweed-scented cadavers. I think it's a guy thing, (and a cat thing) the whole killing animals and bringing them home for the family. Like if they drive through town with a cooler-full, people will point at his manly 7 seater Tahoe, and say "There goes a fisherman."

I say, "Dad, what up with the luggage?" and he opens it to show me the beautiful pink and black fish, with petite little fangs, pretty much the biggest pile of hogfish I've ever seen. We had that, and a whole bunch of red and brown shells, lobster with the heads missing, ready for butter. That is to say, we hit the jackpot.



Seviche. I have been seriously and literally dying to try this recipe since I tasted it one year at a Prostart Culinary competition practice, but I've been waiting for just the right fish, the perfect time and the best ingredients. I've found them. The filets of this fish are so white and tender, you'd think it was made of marshmallows. It flakes apart so easily and there is no impurities in the flesh.

This dish always came off as advanced to me, something that I wouldn't be able to do without some serious training or some nice supplies that I couldn't find in my mom's kitchen. I feel pretty stupid now, because my chef told me how to make it, and it's pretty much on that difficulty level right between cereal and toast.



Here's how it works, in Jessica terms: You can eat food raw, cooked with heat, cooked with oil, or cooked with ACID. That's right. Acid. I pictured goggles, gloves, and test tubes. Apparently everybody else with a brain pictured a lemon. And they were right. The citric acid in a lemon or lime or even an orange will actually cook the meat of your fish with the same burning sensation that you feel in your eyes when you peel a particularly juicy orange. You take fish, cut up into nice little dices, and you marinate them for like, 20-30 minutes in lime and lemon juice. After it's all nice and deliciously cooked, you add minced cilantro (lots, because it is delicious), salt, pepper, and a little cayenne pepper for some kick. That is a REALLY basic summary, so dont crucify me for missing anything.



If you ever make this, or any other seafood, just remember: fish aren't that big of a resource. Turns out that most species of fish that you're eating now are doomed to extinction within the next 30 or so years. So whenever you eat any kind of fish, check out which ones aren't doing so hot right now, and which ones that there are alot of. Chilean seabass? Forget it. Grouper? Not doing so good.



So you know what I'm doing tonight. Stuffing my face.

Cafeteria Connoisseur

So, I have this pet peeve.

As a student, I deal with the problem of getting food on pretty much a daily basis
You know, whenever I feel like eating.
But lately; and bear with my inner post-menopausal woman when I talk here, I've noticed a pretty steep and speedy decline in the food quality prepractically everywhere it's served to young people in america. And by where they serve to young people, I don't mean chic and indie restaraunts on the corner with live and local bands and their cute little vintage furniture. No. I'm mostly talking about cafeteria. Scratch that. I'm just talking about school cafeterias.
Now, don't get me wrong, I've met and worked with a couple of lunch ladies, and I don't want to upset them, because they were nice and more importantly, they made a great pizza. The cafeteria and the people who work there aren't the problem. It's the people who decide what we eat. I need to find those people and do them a favor by serving them a lunch of the food that they feed us every day.
I don't mean this in a malicious kind of way at all, either. Sure, I'm pretty peeved everytime I go there for fresh fruit and it's not included in my crappy pizza and chocolate milk lunch. Maybe they think they're doing us a favor. I'm sure some well meaning school official goes home to their three kids and looks at what they're favorite foods are. Pizza? You got it. Chocolate milk? Okay. And they even think about those poor students who can't get to the cafeteria in between classes. A small amount of vending machines full of soda and honeybuns and, guess what? More chocolate milk. Scatter a few machines around like chicken feed, and hey! You have a nourishment system for your future. Do we buy it? Of course. Do we like eating it? Heck yeah we do. But after putting on a few pounds I began to think about what I ate everyday, and a bag of chips came up in a degrading kind of frequency.
At the risk of sounding like I wear glasses, how about some fruit? Or even better, vegetables? Maybe instead of a bag of cookies they could put in a granola bar. How about instead of getting a hamburger they give us a turkey and tomato sandwich? Is it too much to ask for a bag of mixed nuts or something?
Me being me, I'm probably not going to do anything about it, like, writing a letter to the superintendent or something smart like that. I'm sure better worded people have sent better worded letters than what I could ever write, and nothing has changed. I'm just thinking about what everybody who's going to be taking care of you in your old age is eating, and you should be too.

Maiden Voyage

The title of this blog has the word "cultured" in it.

I think I should apologize in advance. Sure, the food might be cultured. Foie gras, caviar, whatever. I don't care about the food. Well, rephrase. I definitely care about the food. The food is what this is all about. But mainly, it's what food does to people, and what it does to me. It brings them together, and brings people out. It will make quiet people talk and force loud people to stop and think. The poorest man and richest man could both talk about it together, and I'm pretty sure World Peace will be discussed and bargained for over lunch someday. I want to see that in my life, and I want to show you exactly what I mean. The funny things that people do for food, and why does it bring the best and worst out of people? Who the heck is that guy back there making my food? Why do certain types of people eat at certain restaraunts, and for God's sake, what is up with offal?

Food is the main part of this blog, it's what it centers around, it's what makes me feel like writing. People are the punctuation, the pieces that make the food all work together and makes it worthwhile. If I didn't love food, I wouldn't be able to do this, and if I didn't love people, I would've been homeschooled a long time ago. What's happening isn't anything big. I'm on this cheesy journey, looking for knowledge and looking for experiences, and I got posessed by this small, Technology Age bug that tells me that other people will care.

This is pretty much going to be me going out and exploring things I haven't tried before, searching out people who I have never met, and then posting it on the world wide web for the public's own perusal/amusement/scorn. Disclaimer aside, I hope you enjoy.