Food, food culture and cooking has always been important to me. All three of those things are hobbies of mine. By extension I am also interested in matters of health when related directly to food and cooking.  

So my move to Germany a few years ago was, in part, an opportunity to dive head-first into a new culinary world. Americans commonly complain that there is no culture back in our homeland. Spending a few rainy afternoons craving everything from macaroni and cheese to burritos to BBQ to a good old fashioned Thanksgiving turkey dinner will correct that notion.

You don’t have to like it, but it is tradition.

Food and how we approach it is part and parcel of who we are. In this case my expectations as an amateur chef in the New California school of cooking was a big part of my identity. It formed the basis of what I cooked with, how I felt about certain cooking methods and ingredients, how I felt about certain restaurants and cafes (*cough* Starbucks) and basically meant that I was a hardcore food snob. More to the point, I was a food snob of Russian-Jewish background. That meant pork was automatically on the blacklist, except for bacon which we all know was accidentally made part of the pig as an administrative error by God’s underlings. So bacon was OK. And cheeseburgers. Clams are good too… well, I was never all that religious, anyways. READ MORE »