Memories, like the corners of my mind

Misty water-colored memories. Not the best song but it brings back a time and place to many people. A good song, or a bad song, like a good meal can bring you back quickly to a very specific time and place. Combine the two and the memories become so much stronger.

Food tastes better the more senses you use while eating it. Obviously, you use taste when you eat any meal and smell is at most meals as well. Add great decor and you add sight. Put on some complimentary music and you have added sound. I am trying to add a musical accompaniment to as many meals as I can. I find that the days where I pair music with my meal in the same way I would pick a wine it only heightens the experience.

A meal you can't smell never tastes as good as the one that you smell wafting out of the kitchen before you sit down to eat it. A meal at a restaurant with the right ambiance can be more memorable than one at a restaurant that spends no time on setting the mood. I think that if you add the right music to the meal you can really intensify the meal. A great BBQ dinner with some good country music, a great burger with some excellent Rock and Roll, or an Italian dinner with some old crooner are all better because of the sounds that highlight the affair. Taking if from a meal to an event or if done really well making it not only an event but memory that could come flooding back with a smell or a clip from the right song. Try pairing your next meal with the right song or soundtrack and see what happens.

Jewish Penicillin

Runny nose, stuffy head, itchy eyes and the doctor orders some chicken noodle soup. Maybe there aren't any medicinal properties to chicken noodle soup, but you can't doubt the effect it has on you when you are feeling under the weather. It seems to work in any form. For lunch today I had chicken pho and it was as soothing as the canned chicken noodle soup I had for dinner. Probably would have been an even better effect if I had a mom or grandma in my kitchen making it from scratch but I am not that lucky barely had the energy to walk across the street for a can of soup. In addition to the yummy soups following up my evening of being sick with some comforting music I think I will go with music that reminds me of home and family so my can off soup can have some added help in healing me.

Food: Chicken Noodle Soup
Beverage Pairing: OJ
Musical Pairing: James Taylor - Daddy Loves His Work

Has the itch...

Sometimes it comes during a certain time of year and other times it just creeps up on me until I can't ignore it anymore. The urge becomes so strong that I spend night after night doing research. Research on places, programs and ideas I haven't thought of in months. Always the same thoughts and longing that seem to quiet but never go away. I wonder every time if this will be the time I act or if this is just another research activity.

So now I am once again deep in my familiar research. Cooking schools, writing programs, cheaper places to live that would allow me to live a simpler life. I am not sure I am built to be the workaholic or grinding through a work day. I think I would rather create something. Maybe it would be something just for me or maybe I would create something to put out in the world.

It is all about priorities right? I have my job so I can afford the things I want to do in my free time. Every time this urge to change it all comes sneaking up on me I can't help but wonder if I lived somewhere else, somewhere that meant I didn't have to make as much to do as much what would I choose to do. If I could find an apartment the same size for less than half my rent I wouldn't really need to make as much. I could have a less demanding job and focus on the things I love doing in my free time. Free time being something I feel I have too little of these days. It is all visualized in my head. A nice farm house just outside of a big city with plenty of colleges around. A place where I can garden, write, cook, and photograph every day.

This time is just another exercise in research of a dream and a lifestyle I think might better suit me. Maybe next time I get the itch it will be the one that catapults me towards that cute porch where I can sip lemonade and read while the fireflies circle through the yard.

Less afraid of odd cuts of meat. In the last month I have had beef tongue, beef cheeks and today pork belly. Every one of them was delicious. The roasted pork belly sandwich today was a pleasant suprise.