I've been writing this blog, with varying degrees of prolificness, for almost exactly half a year now. My love of all things gastronomic hasn't burnt out in the least, but I keep hitting very serious walls that make writing about my objective experiences with food very difficult. In an attempt to grease the wheels I'm going to go stream of conscious a little bit and try and unlock some of the reasons why.
To me, the process of eating food can be a sacred thing. I don't mean to come off as desperate or lachrymose when I use the word "sacred", but there is an inherent romance attached to good food. It can be something I've eaten a hundred times in my life, but if it's a good product that took consideration to make, I owe it my consideration as it's being consumed. Let's use the very basic example of fresh cheese curds. Any self-respecting Wisconsinite has experienced the majesty that is opening the twist-tied bag of cheese curds and popping a fresh chunk of squeaky cheddar in their mouths and just slipping cozily in to bliss. For me, the sensory experience given to be by cheese curds immediately brings me to my grandparent's farm, where I have a distinct memory of my late grandmother and I sharing a bowl of cheese curds on the front porch while Amish buggies clopped by. The fresh air, my grandma's voice, Uecker on the radio all hum back to my by proxy of a taste I can connect through memories over time. That is what is sacred.
So why is this difficult to write about? It's hard to say. Maybe I'm protective of memories like that, or perhaps I'm nervous I won't do them justice. Maybe it's difficult for me to communicate deeply personal moments that leave me feeling slightly vulnerable. Being that I am, to a fault, pretty open with how I feel about things, I think the difficulty is more in trying to relate personal experiences than anything else.
To draw a comparison, the experience of eating food for me is like being in love. I have proud, precise feelings when it comes to the love I have for my wife and my family and friends, but it's an unquantifiable and amorphous experience that is individual to me. Everyone loves differently, even my wife loves me in different way than I do her, so really how accurately can I describe the experience of our relationship and it's depth to someone who I haven't even met? The same goes with my own personal attachment to food and dining. Given the insatiable ardor I have in my heart for gastronomy, I'm probably something of an authority, but really how much of one? My experience as a diner is pretty deep but certainly not in comparison to others food writers out there. My experience as someone who's worked in restaurants is a decade long but that's mostly front of house and odd job work that doesn't actually pertain to making food, the parts that do pertain to making food are fucking laughable. I cook at home but I'm a bronze medal finalist behind my wife and roommate.
Everything I listed up there are all things that make me question myself in to the role of "hesitant authority". It sounds cocky to consider oneself an authority at all but if I didn't then why the hell write about anything at all? I know my love for food is genuine. Literally almost everything about the experience of "food" is exciting to me. Where the food comes from, who is making it, how it's meant to be eaten, what it's meant to be paired with, the kitchen it came out of, etc. The trick comes in capturing that thought and holding it in my brain long enough to transcribe it in to words, and then convincing myself that I'm making it good and real enough to click the bright orange "Publish" button that's mocking me from it's perch in the upper right corner of the site.
Wow, this is all sounding a whole lot less confident than I am as someone who writes about food. The point I'm trying to make is that accurately describing a personal experience and trying to relate it to people in a very general way can be very difficult. This truth is magnified when it involves a topic so dear to me that I consider it as much a cornerstone of my existence as the people I love. The implicit challenge is equal parts exciting and intimidating, a combination that serves as an adequate enough inspiration fuel for me to keep writing and hoping that I never come off as trite or mawkish.
If you've read this far I guess it's safe to say that you vibe with Rough Chop, and for that I sincerely thank you. I always thought it was a bit of a lame platitude to readers when other bloggers have described their work as a journey shared with the writer, but in a way I understand where that feeling comes from. I hope you want cheese curds as much as I do now.
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