Believe It or Not... I actually Found My Social Bookmarking Soulmate!

Believe it or not... I have heard about del.icio.us about a year ago, but I never had the chance to try it, or even just create an account for it. After knowing so much more about social bookmarking, for the first time of my life, I registered for a diigo AND del.icio.us account! So now you know my blog is about bizarre, or in other words, scary food, I naturally subscribed to articles and websites that are related to them. In spite of how large the user base of del.icio.us is, I found it extremely hard to look for my social bookmarking soulmate (someone that shares similar interests with me on the web). It literally took me 3 hours to get used to the website, bookmark the sites I found interesting, and patiently look for the one person to pop up. But just when I was about to give up, I found you... after so long... HoustonFoodie!

HoustonFoodie, I don't know if you will ever read this blog, I don't know if you are a man or a woman, but I do know you love to eat and explore, just as much as I do! As his name implies (I am going to assume it's a "he" for the rest of the post), Foodie is a very possibly a food lover from Houston. From her 516 tags on del.icio.us, I would assertively say that more than half of them are about food, or at least food related subjects such as recipes, and restaurants. One thing I like about him, is that he also loves travelling and exploring food from all over the world. His tags include, but not limited to, food culture from "Palestines," "Mexican," "Portugal" and many more "exotic countries the West has yet to see. He also has 26 pages tagged on "travel" and "tourism," which makes us even more compatible.


HoustonFoodie's profile is pretty thorough, as he covers a lot of topical issues concerning food, including food safety and foreign food policies. Yet he never commented on any of those pages. (I think his tags pretty much explain what the pages are about though) he has about 220 bookmarked pages, in which, as I have mentioned before, more than half are food related webpages. Starting from December, 2008, HoustonFoodie bookmark pages on del.icio.us almost every single day. In less than a year, his profile has become an extremely organized page. All of his pages are categorized under specific tags, there are at least a dozen of tags named under the big umbrella of food!

In case you wonder, "food is such a common big topic, how does HoustonFoodie's profile relate to your bizarre food blog?" Indeed, he is probably as interested in bizarre food as I am. One of the oldest page he bookmarked, for example, is a step-to-step guide to butchering a lamb carcass! What interests, or probably benefits me the most, is that his pages also talk about the cultural exchange among countries through the use of food. For instance, in March 2009, he bookmarked a page concerning how pizza struggles to find its way to North Korea, which seamlessly fits the direction of my blog. While my blog tries to compare different dining experience from East to West, this article in particular, provides a lot of insight for me in researching this area of food culture.

Thanks to del.icio.us, I have found my social bookmarking soulmate! His page gives me a lot of big ideas in terms of what my blog should talk about in the future. The technology of social bookmarking tools certainly makes my research much easier and more enjoyable!

A Little Thought on Andrew Zimmern

The idea of eating bizarre food certainly does not come from my originality. As many have known, Andrew Zimmern, the TV host of Bizarre Food with Andrew Zimmern, is probably the pioneer in this field. In fact, as a regular viewer of his show, he has become a great inspiration to my blog. Zimmern also recently wrote his first book, The Bizarre Truth: How I walked out the Door Mouth First... and Came Back Shaking My Head. As a blogger on bizarre food culture, Zimmern really is my role model. He travels around the world eating the most unexpected foods you can ever imagine. His experience is not only a cultural journey, but also a culinary adventure! As Zimmern noted in his book:

"The best experiences you will ever have as a traveler require getting off your (butt) and spending quality time with real people in real towns. ... I prefer to do it by experiencing food and sharing culture"

I cannot agree more that food reflects a certain cultural practices of the country. Have you ever gone to a place, thinking back how stupid it was to not try one of the most famous bizarre food in the country you just visited? Well, I have, but certainly not going to do that again, because what more adventurous thing can you do than to eat a live critter? I certainly am not trying to promote the eating of illegal animals like dogs or cats, but Andrew Zimmern does stand a firm point. While many of us take food for granted, we often neglect the cultural meanings behind them. Sometimes, the simplest action often gives you the bigger picture of life, and Andrew Zimmern is definitely the living example of this.

Trifecta

Hello Post

I was re-watching some earlier episodes of The Biggest Loser few days ago, and I wonder "if they didn't eat so much, they probably wouldn't have ended up on TV doing all kinds of gut wrenching (or humiliating) exercises" But yet, who doesn't love food? We consume so much food everyday, that sometimes we take them for granted, french fries from McDonalds, chicken from KFC, or Burritos from Taco Bell (literally, Yum!). Yet these calories do not only come from American fast food restaurants. There are so much more different food cultures out there in the world, a world far beyond our ideological McDonaldland.

In this blog, you will find different food cultures, dining etiquettes and more about the art of eating from all over the world. From what's considered the "bizarre food", to what Westerners believe as the "norm," this blog attempts to open your eyes to these exotic cultures, as well as to examine how Western's food (or specifically American food) has begun to influence different dining experiences in other parts of the world.

I first came up with this topic after my recent travel to different parts of Asia the past Summer. Thailand, in particular, really widened my culinary horizon. On the famous Sunday Walking Street in Chiang Mai, I saw street vendors selling food that I had never considered edible. Things such as scorpions, silk worms, fetal duck eggs might sound unappetizing, but they seemed to be a widely popular choice of snacks to the local Thais (check out how to eat fetal duck eggs on youtube). After experiencing these interesting cuisines, I am particularly interested in food from what the West considered as exotic food, how the West began to influence their taste, and at the same time, how these "bizarre" food culture also quietly starts to blend into our everyday life.

Let's put this blog as an introduction of "bizarre food" from, not a Western point of view, but an Asian perspective. While I certainly am not qualified to be a food critic, I enjoy traveling and experiencing new things. My origin, as an Asian born and raised in a metropolitan city - Hong Kong, has given me a lot of insights on different food cultures around the world. Of course, the blog will include certain illustrative descriptions and sometimes disturbing images of cooked (or raw) animals being eaten by people from different nations. The blog will also be comprised of history and traditions of the food cultures. (For example, it is a regular practice in China that chefs deep fry rats so as to replace the more expensive quail!) While food culture is distinctive among regions, I believe they all involve interesting stories behind them that are worth examining and discussing.

However, unlike the Travel Channel TV show "The Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern, my blog also attempts to compare the similarities between different food cultures. As our world is getting more and more globalized, it seems that our dining experience also blends into unique fusion cuisines. It is now very common to see Pizza Hut in Shanghai, Coca Cola in India, or McDonald's in South Africa. Have our food cultures become more similar due to the trend of globalization? or are we exposed to a more diverse choice of food than we did 20 years ago? How do the rest of the world react to these bizarre food culture? Have we become more tolerant, or the other way around? These are some questions to be discussed in this blog in the future.

Throughout this blog, I hope to approach different food cultures from an Asian's point of view. While Americans consider food from other continents as "the other food," it would certainly be interesting to compare and contrast these differences from another perspective. This blog does not only serve to recommend food or restaurants like most of the food blogs do, more importantly, I wish to utilize the blog as a way to enhance communication between cultures through different dishes.

Bon Appetit, fellow bloggers!

links to related blogs:
http://www.andrewzimmern.com/blog/andrew
http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/
http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/asian-food-culture/
http://www.travelerslunchbox.com/
http://worldonaplate.blogs.com/
http://eatingasia.typepad.com/

Profile a Blog Post
I found a really interesting and resourceful blog while researching for information for my own topic. The blog, Critical Studies in Food and Culture (http://foodandculture.blogspot.com/), is straightforward as its title suggests. It is a blog collectively created by researchers from University of California, Davis. While the blog mainly "aims to support and share the work of Faculty and Graduate Student researchers investigating the intersections of food and cultural studies," it also deals with subjects including food aesthetics, politics of eating, and food appearing in other cultural medium. The blog entries, mainly posted by a graduate student at UC Davis named David Michalski, suggest food related talks and discussions happening on and off campus. The blog also links to other useful journals and websites regarding critical studies in food and culture.


Besides being the Social, Behavior and Cultural Studies Librarian at UC Davis, Michalski also wrote his dissertation on social aesthetics in contemporary wine culture, and the psychology behind cultural and social behavior, which makes him very much qualified to analyze food and its related cultural studies.

Michalski usually blogs once a month. In his most recent entry (written on May 30th 2009), for example, he encouraged his readers to submit papers for food-related architecture, including the packaging and graphic design of food. His blog, in general, is not only about how food provokes our senses. In fact, he also attempts to relate food with other media. For example, in the entry "Slow Food Slow Film" (written on September 19th 2008), he compares the products of industrialized food and the products of industrialized cinema by analyzing how differently food is represented in Hollywood and foreign movies such as Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman and Sandra Nettlebeck's Bella Martha.

The blog is very much related to my topic, in a way that it really inspires me to compare food culture to other possible cultural medium. As a cinema major, it would be really interesting to draw parallels between food culture and the film industry. In spite of its abundant resources and innovative ideas, the blog does not seem to be very popular. It ranks 1,603,173 on technorati.com, yet it is the first blog that came up when I google searched "food and culture." I believe the reason to this is because this site is mainly targeted to students at UC Davis, that in a way it's purely academic. (In other words, it's not a very entertaining site to the general public on the web) However though, this blog does give me a lot of insights and materials regarding how my blog should flow throughout the duration of 15 weeks.

Despite the fact that this site is resourceful, I am not going to simply copy its format. While it does give me a lot of big ideas, my site is hopefully going to be a lot more detailed. Instead of suggesting food related talks and conferences, I would focus more on how food cultures differ across borders and the historical origins of certain dining cultures. If possible, I would love to have more cultural exchange with other bloggers through comments. I believe by allowing comments, my blog will be richer, more specific and educational, and hopefully has more personality than Michalski's.

Voice Critique
Writing about exotic food is not an easy task at all. Eating them probably makes it even harder. While I was looking for blogs about these bizarre food culture, I came across these two "Adventurous Eaters", a husband and wife team who went to different parts of China in search of new and exotic food. The blog has not been updated for more than a year, so I assume they haven't been able to visit China again after April 2008, yet the voice of their posts does speak a lot about their persona. Marsha, the wife of the family, does most of the blog writing, and in most of the entries, she presents a really interesting thoughts on these bizarre and exotic food.

Marsha, her husband and her kids (which I think some of them are adopted from China) are no ordinary family. In one of her entries, "The King of Fruits," she made eating bizarre food sound like an everyday thing.

"I had double cooked sliced pork stomach and steamed green beans with ground pork. Mason got pork dumplings and crispy tofu. The kids got....fried rice. Yep, we went all the way to chinatown for authentic chinese and they got fried rice that you can get anywhere."

First thing on my mind: "what is wrong with her?" The woman is complaining about her kids choosing fried rice over pork stomach. When I was reading, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of character she is. Just from these few lines, I can already tell she loves being extraordinary in terms of her choice of food. She is, as the title of the blog suggests, adventurous and willing to look for every single opportunity to try new and bizarre food.

Marsha also expresses a lot of emotions throughout her blogs. In this same entry, she wants to tell her readers how stinky durian (also known as the king of fruits) really is as she capitalizes certain words as follow:

"WOW! That's the stinkiest thing I've ever smell in my LIFE!"

The excellent use of capitalization once again highlights Marsha's excitement and surprise. Although, as her readers, we might never have actually seen or smelled a durian, she really sounds like durian as something we should probably avoid.

DURIAN Courtesy of EatingAsia.com

In another entry named "China 07 Guangzhou is Adventurous Eating Paradise," Marsha reveals her inner thoughts when being asked if she wants to have dog meat.

"Doggy, woof woof, doggy [...] if I was going to be crossing an imaginary line. Would people think I was a monster? Would they hate me? Would I lose friends? Certainly I would no longer be welcomed at a PETA meeting."

Again, as a reader, I can see more of the author, as if she is speaking to me as a person, not a virtual communicator. We don't only see Marsha as an adventurous eater, at the same time, through these subtle textual cues, we also know what she was thinking when coming across with these tough decisions. As a reader, it makes the blog post even more interesting to read on as it characterizes the entry and provokes curiosity.

Lastly, I also noticed that she quotes one line separately from the other paragraphs:

"He stayed and watched them chop the snake's head off, skin it, and drain the blood."

Why did she do that? I feel like it does not only emphasize the brutality of killing the animals, it also reflects Marsha's persona as a blogger. The way she says it makes her (and her husband) more of an adventurous eater. Just by looking at this line, she is not afraid of describing the killing of the snake in an elaborate fashion. She is brave, bold, and indeed very adventurous when it comes to eating these exotic food in China.

In general, "Adventurous Eater" reflects very much of its author's personality. The title fits the persona of Marsha very well. By using these textual and visual cues, the blogger's voice is stood out, and it made the experience of reading the blog much more enjoyable and pleasurable. There is so much to learn from the Adventurous Eater. Not only their bravery to try new food, but also the way they voice themselves in the blog. I certainly hope to express a coherent, at the same time, entertaining and even humorous voice throughout my culinary blog adventure. Now, are you ready?

My Comment on Andrew Zimmern's Blog

The blog post can be found here. The following is my comment to Andrew Zimmern's blog:

Give Durian a Chance

I am originally from Hong Kong, so durian is no stranger to me. Even so, I have always been really reluctant to try durian ever since I was a little kid. Locals often seem to make fun of durian too. (For example, when I was in high school, one "punishment" among our peers was to eat durian in front of the whole class) However, my grandparents from my mom side seems to like it very much, they tried to force me with it. Not until a few years ago, I finally got to eat it. What really bothered me was, surprisingly not the smell, nor the taste, but the texture of it. It smelled like trash you have put there for more than a month, tasted slightly bitter, but the texture was certainly beyond words can ever do a justice. It just felt like eating some really rotten tofu (yuck!). The whole durian-eating experience was... a stimulating roller coaster ride for all my senses.

However, if you have ever come to Hong Kong, you will find a lot of by-products made by durian which actually tastes acceptable, if not, delicious. One recommendation is the infamous durian pancake made by Honeymoon Dessert. Despite the fact that the crepe is green in color, it tastes awesome with whipped cream and tiny durian pieces. (They probably put a lot of sugar in it to balance off its smell, though)

The locals always say: if you can bare the smell of durian, you can pretty much eat everything. Give durian a chance, it really doesn't taste as bad as it smells.

By thesilkworm on Sun, 09/13/2009 - 05:27

This is No Panda Express

As one of the largest countries in the world, China has numerous distinct styles of food across different regions. While Chinese food is widely spread around the world, Westerners often associate them as fast food packed in a waxed cardboard box - ready to go. Whenever I go to Panda Express or even restaurants with names that sound Chinese (such as Ni Hao, which is another fake Chinese restaurant I’ve been to in Florida), I can’t help but laugh at the menu. Why? Because most of the times I have never heard of these dishes: Orange Chicken, Beef and Broccoli, and dishes that sound authentically Chinese, but in reality, do not even exist in China. I am not trying to pick on Panda Express here, but if you have seen and tasted the real and traditional Chinese cuisine, you probably would wonder: “why am I even eating the American Chinese crap?”

To be honest, I am tired of these chained American Chinese restaurants like Panda Express and Hong Kong express. Just because you put a panda on your logo doesn’t necessarily mean you make real Chinese food. In fact, Chinese cuisine is nothing like their cute and innocent panda mascot. The real dining experience often involves bizarre ingredients you would never imagine edible. To a great extent, Chinese food culture is way more than merely chicken fried rice, especially when it's dated back in the imperial time. Just in case the modern Chinese food isn't weird enough, I present to you... the Manchu Han Imperial Feast, a bizarre banquet that is served only to the imperial families. Think it's a privilege to enjoy such royal cuisine? Maybe you will think about it twice after this.

The Imperial Feast was a tradition developed in Qing Dynasty. On Emperor Kangxi's 66th birthday, he held these extravagant banquets, intended to settle the dispute between Manchurian and Han people. I don't know how a 3-day banquet involving more than 300 dishes could possibly resolve a racial and political struggle. But Cultural China mentions:

Emperor Qianlong promoted the combination of these two banquets. From then on, the catering cultures of these two nationalities have exercised influence on each other and finally developed into an integral catering culture of Chinese nation.

The ingredients used in this feast are certainly more of an interest to me. According to Emperor Qianglong's catalog, there were "thirty-two delicacies" including the "Eight Mountain Delicacies" such as bear's paw, live monkey's brain, ape's lips, and rhinoceros’ tails; "Eight Land delicacies" such as precious certain fruits and mushrooms, and "Eight Sea Delicacies" such as shark's fin, sea cucumbers and bird’s nest; and “Eight Poultry Delicacies” such as quails, swans, and peacocks.

Though most of the recipes are long lost, these ancient cuisines are still commonly found in restaurants in China. For example, shark fins remain one of the local’s favorite and a must have dish in weddings and celebrations. As a Chinese, born and raised in Hong Kong, I have not, unfortunately, had the chance to try the infamous Manchu Han Imperial Feast, although restaurants there have been actively attempting to replicate its grandeur and exceptional dining experience. However, I have had shark fin, snake soup, bird nest and even peacocks numerous times. In fact, many of these dishes are still considered a way to prove your social status. Say if you have shark fin soup in your daughter’s wedding banquet, chances are that people are more likely to look up on you.

The paradox is, most of these delicacies are made of endangered animals. I know in China, there are still a lot of merchants who capture wild black bear in order to get their gall bladders. A lot of these rare animals are treated in extremely inhumane ways. While the Orientals believe in the idea that the more unique the ingredient is, the more benefits it will bring to your body, Westerners have been actively engaged in saving these endangered animals. There have been campaigns that against lab testing on animals, organizations that discourage animal cruelty. Although there are so many cultural differences between the two ideologies, as Westerners get more exposure to these bizarre Chinese cuisines through the use of Internet, Chinese are also beginning to see the Manchu Han Imperial Feast as a mere technicality. It is now almost impossible to find some of these rare ingredients in China, but – it is often more important to reproduce the historical meanings and cultural practice behind the dishes than to present the actual cuisine itself.

Right now, it seems that Manchu Han Imperial Feast can only live in our imagination.

The Voice of the Adventurous Eaters

Writing about exotic food is not an easy task at all. Eating them probably makes it even harder. While I was looking for blogs about these bizarre food culture, I came across these two "Adventurous Eaters", a husband and wife team who went to different parts of China in search of new and exotic food. The blog has not been updated for more than a year, I assume they haven't been able to visit China again after April 2008, yet the voice of their posts does speak a lot about their persona. Marsha, the wife of the family, does most of the blog writing, and in most of the entries, she presents a really interesting thoughts on these bizarre and exotic food.

Marsha, her husband and her kids (which I think some of them are adopted from China) are no ordinary family. In one of her entries, "The King of Fruits," she made eating bizarre food an everyday thing.

"I had double cooked sliced pork stomach and steamed green beans with ground pork. Mason got pork dumplings and crispy tofu. The kids got....fried rice. Yep, we went all the way to chinatown for authentic chinese and they got fried rice that you can get anywhere."

What? What is wrong with her? The woman is complaining about her kids choosing fried rice over pork stomach. When I was reading, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of character she is. Just from these few lines, I can already tell she loves being extraordinary in terms of her choice of food. She is, as the title of the blog suggests, adventurous and willing to look for every single opportunity to try new and bizarre food.

Marsha also expresses a lot of emotions throughout her blogs. In this same entry, she wants to tell her readers how stinky durian (also known as the king of fruits) really is as she capitalizes certain words as follow:

"WOW! That's the stinkiest thing I've ever smell in my LIFE!"

The excellent use of capitalization once again highlights Marsha's excitement and surprise.

Courtesy of EatingAsia.com

In another entry named "China 07 Guangzhou is Adventurous Eating Paradise," Marsha reveals her inner thought when being asked if she wants to have dog meat.

"Doggy, woof woof, doggy [...] if I was going to be crossing an imaginary line. Would people think I was a monster? Would they hate me? Would I lose friends? Certainly I would no longer be welcomed at a PETA meeting."

Again, as a reader, I can see more of the author, as if she is speaking to me as a person, not a virtual communicator. We don't only see Marsha as an adventurous eater, at the same time, through these subtle textual cues, we also know what she was thinking when coming across with these tough decisions. As a reader, it makes the blog post even more interesting to read on as it characterizes the entry and provokes curiosity.

Lastly, I also noticed that she quotes one line separately from the other paragraphs:

"He stayed and watched them chop the snake's head off, skin it, and drain the blood."

Why did she do that? I feel like it does not only emphasize the brutality of killing the animals, it also reflects Marsha's persona as a blogger. The way she says it makes her (and her husband) more of an adventurous eater. Just by looking at this line, she is not afraid of describing the killing of the snake in an elaborate fashion. She is brave, bold, and indeed very adventurous when it comes to eating these exotic food in China.

In general, "Adventurous Eater" reflects very much of its author's personality. The title fits the persona of Marsha very well. By using these textual and visual cues, the blogger's voice is stood out, and it made the experience of reading the blog more enjoyable and pleasurable.