One of the saddest and most unfortunate misunderstandings likely to be encountered within the topical category of food these days; is the unexplainably twisted concept that there is something presumptuously pretensions, obnoxiously overbearing and pompously prideful about those of us who enjoy gourmet food.
Perhaps it years and years of horrid stories of the malevolent misdeeds perpetrated on the rest of “US” normal, every-day folk, by a creepy and callous class of cold-hearted, self centered, arrogant aristocrats, sucking the very marrow out of the common person’s life in search of selfishly monopolizing all of the finer things in life while we peasants are left to make due with the various table scraps and crumbs left behind after the jubilant feast.
How many theatrical presentations since well before William Shakespeare, going all the way back to the ancient plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes poetically portray the grandiose and gargantuan greed of the gruesome gourmands and their gang grand, “gargoyle-like” gluttons.
Onward through the novels of the centuries, films of the past century and now even within popular TV shows, including those with funny, likable characters such as the bumbling brothers and Drs. Frasier and Niles Crane, there has been a judgmental smirk and bony nose of indignation tossed into the air when it comes to those who enjoy the captivatingly creative culinary concoctions that come together when only the choicest, premium ingredients are artfully brought together in the kitchen.
But let’s take a moment to honestly look at the evidence and see if this unfair prejudice has any reasonable logic to it at all.
Gourmet is a term that actually speaks to the overall quality, freshness and nutritional value of the food and truthfully has absolutely nothing to do with being exceptionally elegant, fancy, sophisticated or complex.
Gourmet food is actually simpler, purer, more down to earth and basic than mass produced, processed foods. Gourmet food has far less ingredients and maintains a dedicated commitment to keeping it simple, clean, fresh, natural and healthy.
Are these concepts somehow smug, selfish, stuck-up, snooty, or superficial? Are you truly opposed to simplicity, cleanliness and freshness? Does natural, healthy, down to earth, nutritional food sound like something that you and your family want no part of?
What exactly is so arrogant and cruel about all natural olive oil, coffee, fresh salsa, barbecuesauce, jelly, jam, preserves or organic popcorn?
What’s really so greedy and contemptuous about wanting to eat and feed your family a healthy, farm fresh cut of beef, ham, or pork chops?
Are small, simple enjoyments such as natural tea, honey, pancakes and olives considered the outrageously audacious and obsessive, self indulgent luxuries set aside for only the very rich and famous?
Fresh, natural olive oil, jelly, tea, pancakes, ham, popcorn, salsa honey, beef, olives and barbecue sauce … not exactly the outlandishly exorbitant, lush, lavish and luxuriously lustful excesses usually associated with royalty and blue blood affluence, are they?
Guess what? If you like the idea of fresh, healthy food without the preservatives, drugs, chemicals, bacteria, virus, disease, artificial fillers, colors, flavorings that go into most mass produced, processed foods, then you my friend … like gourmet food!
Welcome!
Signing off and Pigging Out,
Rocco “Boss Hog” Bacon
