senses

so i read this last night.

helps that it came with an intense portrait:


really, though, it's an incredibly intriguing portrait of an artist losing that which drives his art, namely, in this case, a chef losing his sense of taste via tongue cancer.

chefs fascinate me. food fascinates me. the food described in this article is, well, a little too avant garde for my tastes, i believe. i mean, i'd love to try it if someone else was paying for the violet white chocolate and olive coated strawberries. or the four course menu described:

"The meal was almost comically elaborate, involving twenty-four courses and costing three hundred and seventy-five dollars, with wine. The food starts off at the savory end of the spectrum, and slowly turns sweeter, concluding with coffee, in the form of crystallized candy. Most items could be eaten in a bite or two, but the procession took four and a half hours. I had liquefied caramel popcorn in a shot glass, and a bean dish that came on a tray with a pillow full of nutmeg-scented air. The plate of beans was placed atop the pillow, forcing the aroma out. I sampled a “honey bush tea foam cascading over vanilla-scented brioche pudding,” in the words of the young man who brought it. There was also a dish centering on a cranberry that had been puréed and then re-formed into its original shape. The berry was then prepared on a device called the Antigriddle, which Achatz had helped design. The Antigriddle froze the bottom of the berry but left the top soft."

exciting, yes. $375? nah... not for me.

but the photos of the food are beautiful


Gelled sweet potato, brown sugar, and bourbon, tempura-fried on a torched cinnamon stick.


Dehydrated bacon wrapped in apple leather.



A cylinder of honeydew with vinegar, served in mint-infused gelatin.


i guess, go read the article. (and the one about genius which reminds me of the discussions about the difference between historical and scientific objectivity we've been having in my anthro of history class)

but things like this, that emphasize the importance of smell so much, make me wonder what doctors/scientists would make of my mom. or my aunt for that matter. neither of them have a sense of smell. yet they're both incredible cooks. but if, as this article says, apples and onions taste the same, how is that possible? i mean, my mom cannot smell anything - great for changing dirty diapers, not so great when she talks about wanting to have a perfume - but somehow she can make a mole poblano or a carefully spiced jambalaya to die for. and she knows when things taste bad. when the spices are off.

apparently, the sense of smell is tied incredibly strongly to memory. i wonder if this has something to do with my mom's memory problems.

blindness, deafness - not as uncommon as we'd like them to be, but people cope. apparently, lacking a sense of taste makes eating uninteresting and can lead to people starving. and having no sense of touch, well, people experience that in patches, but being completely without? i can't fathom it. comparatively, having no sense of smell is easy, livable. still, it would be good to know why she doesn't have it. she never has. her sister lost it after an illness as a child. i think her mother also didn't have it. not sure though.