I didn't think it was possible to overdo the good stuff until it happened today.
After finishing a calculus exam and a foreign language test, I came home to an empty apartment. Awaiting me: an array of wonderful ingredients and opportunities.
- an assortment of six bottles of fine craft beers ready for an experiment
- freshly picked feral baby garlic from the fringe of the UM-Dearborn organic gardens
- avocados ($1 per fruit)
- rosemary ($0.99 for a bundle)
- a "maple salmon kabob" ($5)
- a bag of "confetti potatoes" (hooray!) ($3)
- a box of mixed sprouts ($2)
- a container of salsa ($3)
- left over bread rolls in the fridge from about a month (perhaps more) ago
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Neat, garlic from garlic! Youth on Age!
In the background:
The Bean Facts man, Alfred Batshon
is our kitchen deity. |
- and hot mustard (horseradish mustard) given to me from work by colleagues who ate out at a PF Chang's location
How exciting! I don't recall having so many quality, fancy, and fine ingredients in one place.
Plus, good drink pairings (including non-alcoholic drinks) with food taps into a broader interest of mine:
emergent properties in complex systems. What am I talking about?
Here's the tangent: With anything, we can appreciate something on its own, in complementary company with, or in contrast (counterpoint) with something else. In these instances, it's equivalent to adding one good thing to another.
Sometimes--a very rare and subtle experience for me--two foods together bring out a third sensation. For those who like business buzzwords, this is synergy. For physicists, this is the equivalent of a "constructive wave", when two waves combine to make a bigger wave. To life scientists and complex systems thinkers, this is the emergent property--you discover an outcome that's equivalent to multiplying two things together to get a tremendous result!
It happens a lot in nature and society: simple interactions may aggregate into something very different from what we expected (chemistry comes to mind, which brings us back to the reason for why we taste different things).
Unfortunately (back to the food), I didn't quite get to it. Simmering rosemary in the beer with a drizzle of olive oil worked out remarkably well in the pan as far as I could tell by their aroma.
However, between the salmon, its maple (syrup marinade?) flavoring, and avocado, these very rich and heavy flavors effectively dominated over any potentially subtle emergent qualities (this is the wave cancellation effect for physicists) that arose from the presence of rosemary and the Spicie Nicie ale (I'll say the ale wasn't as exciting as its label made it seem when I tasted it as-is, might have been the batch though). I could have paced my eating differently so that I could enjoy the more delicate flavors first instead too.
In any case, it was a very satisfying meal and I'm always struck by the paradox and phenomenon of luxury when indulging.
I really admire salmon--it's a noble fish (lobsters, though not fish, are also admirable, that's a different story to explain though). In the wild, many will hatch, grow up in fresh water, migrate into the ocean, and then return to fresh water to the place of their birth (found by scent!) to spawn before dying. Fish that do this are called
anadromous--their bodies change so that they can adjust between fresh water and salt water. To eat something that works that much for the success of its species demands a lot of respect, and I always wonder if I've given my fair share of effort to merit a meal like that--even if I were the one catching it.
(aside: if ever the opportunity arises and I really needed a fish to survive, the most satisfying way to catch a salmon would have to be with one's own canines, unfortunately my canines might be too smooth for this to be a reality, and salmon are way too powerful to catch in that manner...maybe I'll turn into a bear someday)
Then of course, there's the very real question of privilege and poverty--there's a difference between buying salmon for $5 to enjoy over a few meals versus buying as much sustenance to hold one over for $5--i.e. a jug of milk and loaf of bread can make a difference for a hungry family.
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I started eating before I remembered
to take additional photos. I later
found the mustard and drizzled it on the sprouts. |
Tiny note: the garlic was still very young, it fares better in a salad.
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I was so hungry I started eating and
forgot about the potatoes until later too. |
The potatoes turned out well, they went nicely with the sprouts and mustard. The salsa on the avocado was refreshing too. As good and luxurious as it was overall (even one of these items in a meal is a rare privilege for many people), there was way too much flavor going on at once for my taste buds and brain to figure out. I'd either have to sequence my meal better, or focus on just a few things. I'll call it "strategic eating" when faced with a smorgasbord of fine foods.
Ethical notes, some less appetizing than others:
When purchasing the fish, I was probably the only person who asked the fish vendor where it all came from, but he promptly searched his boxes and bags to find out for me. This salmon came from "Canada", which seems much closer to me than South America or the Pacific Ocean, but for all I know, it could have come from the West Coast. The Montery Bay Aquarium seafood watch has a
guide for fish purchasers (see here for
salmon) and frequently provides detailed reports on the fishing industry and its environmental impacts.
In retrospect, I don't feel so good about having salmon from ambiguous geographies, and likely won't be one to purchase it in the future.
Avocado comes from afar too. On its own though, I suspect having several avocados would be better than having a salmon. It's a plants versus flesh assessment: by default, plants need less resources to exist than do carnivorous things, plus imagine boating out to catch a fish, shipping/flying/trucking it to Michigan... this one was wild-caught, but farmed is almost certainly a more intensive a process when it comes to having people care for the fish and the places they're grown in--fish farmers frequently pack holding pens of fish with more fish than even the fish themselves are used to being around. It can get messy when you consider what the requisites for making an artificial environment for fish can be--antibiotics, waste, uneaten food, etc.
Ahh, maybe this post's title wasn't overdone with the good stuff after all...
On the bright side, the sprouts came from a place in Michigan that starts with the letter "I", the garlic was definitely local and organic.
Sometimes--a very rare and subtle experience for me--two foods together bring out a third sensation. For those who like business buzzwords, this is synergy. For physicists, this is the equivalent of a "constructive wave", when two waves combine to make a bigger wave. To life scientists and complex systems thinkers, this is the emergent property--you discover an outcome that's equivalent to multiplying two things together to get a tremendous result! 
However, between the salmon, its maple (syrup marinade?) flavoring, and avocado, these very rich and heavy flavors effectively dominated over any potentially subtle emergent qualities (this is the wave cancellation effect for physicists) that arose from the presence of rosemary and the Spicie Nicie ale (I'll say the ale wasn't as exciting as its label made it seem when I tasted it as-is, might have been the batch though). I could have paced my eating differently so that I could enjoy the more delicate flavors first instead too.
