Culinary Detective
It has taken me some time to realise that Google doesn’t know everything. My first reaction to desiring a particular food item is to google every permutation of its name until my fingers bleed, but I’m coming to believe that perhaps virtual food detection is a narrow street that I have walked the length and breadth of. Perhaps it’s time for this culinary gumshoe to take to the streets. If I told you I hadn’t been to the farmer’s market in the whole two months I’ve been doing this project, you’d beat me up, right?
Though my diet harks back to pre-medieval times, my lifestyle certainly doesn’t. I sit in front of a computer for three days a week at work and often for a further two days working on my own projects. I’m a videoblogger, I run conferences on social and digital media. The phrase ‘Web 2.0’ makes me feel all funny inside. On top of this, I do a lot of non-tech stuff – from learning to mend bikes to organising clothing swaps. In short, I haven’t got time. Internet research is the easiest available option.
It’s starting to strike me that this isn’t really the point. This project is scaffolded by the internet – I use it to find suppliers, to find recipes (it isn’t unusual for me to be looking at my computer while cooking), to communicate about what I am doing and to connect with others, but I think that I could be doing so much more.
I could, for example, be using this project as an excuse to explore the 100 miles in which I live. Unfortunately for me, a good portion of the aforementioned 100 miles is in the English Channel. I have made tentative plans to get an unsuspecting yachtsperson at the Marina to teach me how to crew a boat but as I don’t eat fish, this won’t do me much good nutritionally. Luckily, there is plenty of land left to explore and as of now I vow to explore it. Yes, alright, I’ll go to the next farmer’s market, and if you insist, I’ll visit some pick-your-own farms. What, you want me to talk to people while I’m there? Well, ok.
As I write this, I have cunningly used the internet to find a directory of PYO establishments in the vicinity - http://www.pickyourown.org/uks2y.htm. Later, I’ll spend a couple of glorious hours with an Ordnance Survey map, plotting the routes between them so that I can visit more than one in a day. Then I’ll have to turn my brain to the tricky problem of how to transport soft fruits on a bicycle. My life has become more adventurous and innovative since I started this project!
August 1st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Hi Beth - just discovered your blog following the mention in the Freeconomy email. Good luck with it and I look forward to joining in, in September…although I don’t know what I’m going to do about my little boy’s love of bananas.