Plagiarism? In cookbooks? Gosh.

"Food influencer" accused of plagiarism. Gosh. You think?

First of all, welcome to the world of food. Everybody steals, copies, and tweaks. It's normal, because food is ephemeral and imprecise. My own stance on intellectual property (Doesn't exist. Make your name with valid, tangible, and more permanent assets.) aside, this just starts a squabble where nobody involved looks good. 

Unless it's really, really obvious. 

The person in question is Brooke Bellamy- an Australian TikTok-er who has some robust internet notoriety and a place called 'Brooki's Bakehouse'. She's also got a book "Bake With Brooki", which is where the trouble shows up. The allegations of pilfered recipes are very much justifiable. I looked for myself to be sure. As a chef and a recipe developer myself, I'd back them up. I would never have allowed something so blatant to hit the shelves. It's not James Beard levels of pilferage, but it's a different sort of bad when it's not even your own previous publications you're pilfering from. Worse still, the recipes came from other easily found places with operators who pay attention to this sort of thing.

Recipe Tin Eats is a site I'm less familiar with, but I also don't do a lot of recipe hunting. The owner Nagi's recent post showed an easy to follow comparison between the recipes in question. By my standards, it's fairly cut-and-dried. It was pointed out in the first place by her fanbase, who discovered it after some digging and brought it to light. If it's that obvious even to non-professionals... yeah.

Sally's Baking Addiction is another name listed, and an absolutely extraordinary resource for the modern home baker. Sally knows her stuff, takes great pictures, doesn't overdo it on the ads or the storytelling, and the recipes on her site do what they say they'll to- I've used plenty of them myself. When I'm doing my own recipe dev work, her site is on a list of many I check for baseline recipes to compare with. 

Here's an easy to follow example for you. I went back to look- Sally's oatmeal cookie has a great deal in common with my own oatmeal cookie. Did I steal it? No. Why is it similar? Home baking has limits. Equipment, ingredients, and yield don't vary much at all, mostly because of storage and intent. Almost nobody's batching dough for a gross of cookies at once- they're making a batch they can fit in a bowl and bake in a home oven to feed a small number of people. Those fairly narrow parameters can make for a lot of very similar recipes. But don't underestimate the power of research. It's way too easy to be found out if you just lifted something wholesale, and the general public is veeeery happy to pour a little poison on someone's reputation, deservingly or not.

If you're going to just up and take something, do it more like Dylan does. His cookbook recipes all come from other places, but everyone is quite well aware because it's part of his schtick. Taking the horrors of home kitchens past and making modern and palatable incarnations is nice. Highlighting recorded-but-forgotten delights is even nicer!

Me, I don't use TikTok, and had no idea who this Brooke lady was. But I sure do now. I'm not linking her website, her socials, and especially not her cookbook. Screw that.

Munchies: ViceTV Gives Retrospective Food-For-Thought

 

I've said this before- when you open a cookbook, you can gain an impression of the time, place, and circumstance from whence it came. Be it the photography (or lack thereof), the writing voice of the author, the people and establishments referenced, or any number of other things, almost any cookbook that's not actively trying to be a reference text (and most that are) can be dated to some greater or lesser degree. 

This is "Munchies:  Late-Night Meals From the World's Best Chefs". Sounds awesome, no? Now, this concept was a unexpectedly slow burn. Riffing on the rise of an open, honest, appreciative approach to food in entertainment media over the course of the mid-2000s, eventually VICE started leaning in with 'Chef's Night Out', a raucous mess following chefs and foodservice professionals of all sorts as they stumble through their after-work whatevers.  

It's full of the usual mix- people you might have heard of, people you'd rather never hear of again, rising stars, jaded pros, they're all here. But boy, does this incarnation read like they shanked it. Most of the stories and recipes in here are quite disjointed, as befits an attempt to turn a watched experience into a read one. They want to be interesting but often aren't articulated in ways that do them any favors. A fair number of the recipes are a long way from home kitchen friendly, and some of them seemed a rather far cry from delicious to boot. (Look. I'm not a serious cheese guy. But breading and deep-frying chunks of Camembert and drizzling them with maple syrup? I weep for that wasted syrup.)

But what Munchies does do, and rather well, is evoke a quite poignant and painful memory of a very specific period in the culinary industry's modern era- what it felt like to be a chef as the public was being made aware of / wrapping its head around the notion that working a blue-collar job might actually be okay. That it might not have to carry the social stigma that comes with long hours and inadequate pay. That maybe those things might even improve. An era of, if not comfort, at least confidence that the world might be willing to understand that the people who hold society up are the ones worth understanding and celebrating. A genuine time in food media where the concepts and attitudes that could have changed the world's perceptions of the industry essentially hit a concrete wall and vanished from the public eye what felt like overnight. 

Everything spoken of with such joy, such exuberance, is just... gone. That world has ended. Much of it died in 2016, not long before this book actually came out. It probably felt like an obituary on the New Releases shelf. What remained of the feeling this book fought for was dealt a crushing blow in 2018 with the death of Anthony Bourdain, and the plague cut down what felt like the last of it.

People are trying, here and there, but there really just isn't much to smile about in the world of food these days. Munchies tried to make it feel current with classic undertones, and frankly if the world weren't such a disaster it would be. As is though, it feels like a memorial to what could have been. A loss, and perhaps the end.

Chili crunch is older and better than David Chang.

 

That's all that needs to be said, really. Dude tried to claim "Chile Crunch", two words that describe a sizeable array of products with history in many parts of Asia, as a trademark of the Momofuku product line.

So, branding is a common horror, and taglines aren't new concepts either. The common pattern is a notion of "what it is, and what it does", whether the phrase is literal, figurative, or ironic. "Think Different", for example. That one from Apple got some serious mileage but also took no small amount of heat- particularly when Gandhi showed up as an example in their ad. Imagine the uproar if they'd also put in the Dalai Lama like they'd planned!

But how many things can you think of that use some variant of the word 'chili'? 

How many more that use 'crunch'?

Momofuku inexplicably owns the rights to the term “chile crunch” (spelled with an “e”, you know, like the country), as noted in a 2023 trademark from the US Patent and Trademark Office. This, to my mind, is a staggeringly unethical breach of linguistic protocol, using technicalities and semantics to put a thumb in the eye of 'truth in advertising' law and open up a massive profiteering exploit, made abundantly clear as Momofuku started selling licenses to others. They created an artificial chokepoint! 

Recently, Momofuku also filed for another trademark, this time to 'protect' chile crunch on a broader scale, expanding its territory to chili oils and seasonings, as well as taking swings at alternative spellings. Chile? Chili? Chilli? Talk about overreach.

I can't imagine how they managed to get such a thing approved in the first place. Did they want a brand identifier? Just add the notorious Momofuku name in front and I doubt anywhere near as many people would be complaining- but to keep it deliberately vague, using common descriptors that have decades of history on supermarket shelves? And then take swings at other businesses via Cease and Desist orders? It's clearly an attempt to cut off competitors' ability to openly access, use, and riff on an extremely common product.

Whose palms got greased to make this nonsense happen? I'd love to know.

This ham-handed shot at creating a rigidly defined proprietary product for the Momofuku brand -while deliberately avoiding the name or adding anything distinctive- has managed to aggressively highlight it anyway- and then drag that name straight into the mud where it belongs.

This probably won't sink Momofuku, but it's a solid hit that hopefully does some lasting damage.

There's a reason we don't say "I'd Buy That For A Dollar!" any more

 

On occasion, I make note of a concept called a 'food desert'. In brief, those are places where there is minimal to zero access to food that isn't some sort of  quick-service food operation, or that's purchasable but prefab/frozen/dehydrated/etc. Essentially a no-fresh-groceries zone. 

They tend to be in what you might call low-income areas. Often but not always urban, they tend reliably with gerrymandered oppressed voting districts too.

This is going to kill people.  Well, more people, given that even the king of drag-ass, OSHA, 'last year criticized the company for a “continued disregard for human safety” that “suggests the company thinks profits matter more than people.” '. That's nothing new to anyone with sense, and certainly applies to far more companies than this. But for it to actually be said is always a legitimate surprise.

In many locations, establishments like Dollar Tree and its contemporaries are potentially the only affordable source for... produce. I can't even bring myself to say 'fresh produce', because some of the incarnations I've been to would give that word a hell of a workout.

The problems here are numerous, and they chain together something like this: 

• Small 'dollar stores' exist where they do because there's no viable space for the larger 'discount' chains like Walmart or Target, and the travel time and distance to such places can be logistically prohibitive.
• Bargain hunting is a myth now. Look at my supermarket comparisons from just the other week. People see 'sale prices' that aren't really any more affordable, but they still pay out. They already committed to being there and may not have the time to find an alternative- if one even exists.
• Bargain hunting is also a long-developed and constant state of mind, particularly in lower-income areas. Having been achingly poor for most of my life, I will forever despise what it's done to my shopping and spending habits. I'd rather go hungry rather than pay 'full price' for what I want to eat.

So consider. How far would you travel to get groceries? How much would you spend to get there and back? How much could you transport at a time? How much can you afford at a time? 

All questions that can loom very large for people who live in and around food deserts. Dollar stores are a shitty mitigation, but at least they exist. This latest debacle is just going to introduce more stressors where there are already too many.

Not even a day goes by, and they're walking it back

Apparently bullying corporations out of being intolerably exploitative works sometimes!

Do it more.

Make them undo the damage they're doing to us.

Or make them close down.

Or both! Both is good.

Notice they didn't leave it off the table, they just added delays and obfuscation. They hope we'll get used to the idea over the next year and spring it later. Screw 'em.

Covering the Bases in Catering

 

One of the things about catering that most people don't get is 'What happens if the food runs out?' Logically, it's obvious. If the food is gone, it's gone. There isn't any more. 

But should there be? 

Unless there was a specified "All You Can Eat Buffet" notion, usually the answer is 'No.".

The standard method I use to defend against food running out is simply extra food. My catering platters are listed as serving a given number of people as entrée portions, and slightly less than double that number as side dishes. Those numbers are calculated by product weight- they're standard and reasonable to both casual and professional eyes, but the latter will probably recognize that they're what I call 'just in case' low. If the number of people listed are fed, there will be a few portions left over. That quantity buffer removes worry if unexpected guests show up hungry, or if an item is unexpectedly popular.

What about piecemeal items? Hors d'ouvres? Dumplings? Skewers? Same concept applies. If the client only paid for a fixed number, I'm bringing anywhere from 15 to 30% more than that.

No, they didn't pay for it. No, I'm not going to ask them about it, either. That's the hidden safeguard against an empty tray. It costs me money, but so does everything. I'm not going to begrudge additional expense for my own peace of mind. Typically, that's more than enough.

But what happens if something runs out anyway?
Then it becomes the client's problem to solve, not mine. It's their event, their budget, and their final approval of both the menu and the quantities. They got everything they paid for, and more besides. All reasonable precautionary measures were taken by me, and there is no blame to be placed.

Apropos of nothing, I have another catering gig to deal with this week. Hopefully it goes smoothly.

Stop Asking For The Cheap Stuff- and No Billionaire Earned All That Money.

Courtesy of Eater SF- We've got a scoop on some local pasta supply companies trying to spin pedestrian product as affordable rather than simply... uninspiring? I don't want to say their product is bad, because I've eaten it and it's not. A major part of what makes restaurants appealing is scale- the ability to make more flavor than a home kitchen because more time and resources are devoted. These pasta joints just aren't very interesting. The pasta they sell is solid, but the composed dishes are no trick to replicate in part or in full, even with standard grocery store items.

But that's not the issue, not to me. What upsets me most is the approach and the mindset behind the concept.

"...the hospitality industry needs to figure out how to provide an inexpensive restaurant experience for customers since there’s certainly an audience for it. 'With the approachable, priced-less restaurant experience, there’s just an opportunity there that’s unserved'..."

Utterly absurd. There's such blatant desperation from struggling industries to reestablish the mindset of pre-pandemic ‘normalcy’. They aim to distract the general public from the fact that everything was already terrible- and that 'affordability' was treated as a selling point instead of more rightly as a warning sign.

'An inexpensive restaurant experience' is, to my mind, a cultural hazard. People get the idea that X or Y should be cheap, and then have the temerity to act surprised when things become popular, prices go up, and quality goes down. 

In short: Prepared food is a luxury item. Behave accordingly.

However, the notion of prohibitive expense is also deliberately engineered. The inability to have sufficient free time for one’s own cooking (or to garner the funds to properly compensate hugely underappreciated food industry staff) is almost entirely the fault of universally inadequate, deliberately hamstrung wages, salaries, and other compensation.

Such overarching systemic flaws come from the efforts of those who possess gratuitous, superfluous wealth and entirely undue influence. Too much hoarded at the top, too much attention aimed at the bottom, and too little attention to the social and cultural obligation to provide a given quality of life.

Fixing all of this is easy. It just requires the willingness to actually commit. It means making some very wealthy people very unhappy and less wealthy, but that's worth doing any day that ends in 曜日.

Outsourcing? In *MY* Local Newspaper?

Looks like the SF Chronicle once again forgot that there are many local experts waiting for their support. Mackenzie Chung Feegan, huh? Well... hm.

From a technical standpoint, she's not bad. She manages to produce some work worthy of aplomb once in a while- I remembered her name from this gentle evisceration some years back that had me giggling like a stoned hyena. I know exactly the kind of person highlighted there- the uninformed, out of their depth Asianesque dabbler I've spent my entire career supplanting and trying to either educate or eradicate.

But... the Chronicle needs a food critic, and she's not one.

That's okay sometimes. Successful food critics can come from anywhere. Sometimes it's political journalism, other times music, or from what might seem like nowhere at all to some. Understanding the environment and intended audience is every bit as important as the technicalities of the literary and artistic approach, and the willingness to develop that understanding is the key to longevity in such a position.

The job needs someone who can write, of course. But for a location like this, it needs a great deal more. The SF Bay is a hub on par with NYC or Tokyo- places steeped in cultural subtleties borrowed from all across the world and gently nudged (or sometimes vigorously muscled) into something uniquely local. 

To do right by such a place, it calls for someone attentive, alert, and well informed on the industry and area alike. It also needs someone patient enough to ignore the cash-heavy hype that ebbs and flows around restaurants in the Bay Area, and disciplined enough not to endorse without suitable cause.

Given that she's migrating from a Senior Editor role at Bon Appetit magazine in NYC, I'm very much disinclined to believe that last bit. So it's a thumbs down from me till proven otherwise.

In fairness though, I put in for the position myself some years back. The Chronicle ignored me entirely and gave it to Soleil Ho instead. Writing chops aside, I didn't think she was up to the very specific rigors of it at the time, and despite her critical acclaim (including a Beard award in 2022 for her restaurant reviews), I was proven correct.

Let's see if I go 2 for 2, shall we?

Stop Giving Money To Assholes!

It seems obvious, right? But apparently the locals (which recently came to include me) sometimes disagree. This is the shit I hate. The sort of person whose reliance on transient, unreliable things like blatant demographic pandering, trends, or memery spits on the advanced knowledge and perspective of experienced, validated professionals. Actively, aggressively hound them out of the public eye, shame their backers into backing out, and eye their motivations postmortem. The world has no need to support such immature inadequacies.

Give us those restaurant spaces. Give us that financial backing. Most times, professionals are too cautious to strike out on our own because we care. We know the many, many risks, and don't want to hurt anyone else if things don't work out right. But in this context, that doesn't even matter. We deserve those opportunities. We deserve the backing and support to create something that's worthy of being there- of being at all!

Sharing a great deal of common ground with that problem- there's a distressingly large number of wealthy 'investors' that think ROI is supposed to be something other than social capital when it comes to investing in small businesses. The actual goal is always to build a thriving, sustainable, largely self-sufficient community. To create a comfortable environment for those nearby, and a draw for those farther afield.

But the more money people are willing to throw at things, the more likely their outlook is to strip-mine instead. When the faces of the pump-and-dump operation also buy in to that strip-mining plan, they take advantage of things like local community generosity and goodwill, tear the life out of the very places they claim to be an integral part of, and ride into the sunset with full pockets, leaving behind battered neighborhoods and broken promises.

Too many people with too much money try to understand cost and fail to understand value, and too many people without enough money to succeed will cheerfully exchange their principles and ethics instead. Each and every one is a blight on the human condition, and a weight on the shoulders of those carrying its future.

Notes On Stealing Shit

 

While often an open secret in many fields, and the primary goal of several (looking at you, finance and insurance industries!), the food world is and always has been known for being full of pilferage at every level, on all sides of the equation.

It could be guest and customer related stuff- a pint glass from your favorite pub, or a menu from a place you'll never be able to afford again. Restaurants sometimes call that 'shrinkage', and while they don't want to have to account for it, they do. Something that goes missing is no different from something that's broken or otherwise damaged- it has to be replaced to ensure the operation continues to run as it should, and so there's a line item in the budget for it.

It could also be employee miscellany-  food and liquor tend to vanish first and foremost. Sometimes it can be cookbooks, tools, equipment, or even paychecks. Timeclock fraud by management is a universal issue, but it hits the food industry the hardest and most often because of how it's structured. Irrespective of industry, that's a problem not looked at nearly enough.

But notice- all of these things are physical. Tangible. What about the stuff that's harder to pin down? Methods, recipes, concepts, even phrases or logos? Those are where it gets tricky, and most of the time the little guy loses out. A few years back there was a small tussle over DC chef Kevin Tien leaving his restaurant and taking his signature dishes with him. The irony of such a thing happening in a restaurant named Himitsu had me shaking my head. (For non-Japanese speakers- 'Himitsu' / 秘密 means 'Secret'.)

And then there's me.

From the tail end of 2020 up till now, I've been streaming on Twitch in the Food and Drink category. The pandemic shut down the cooking school I was teaching in, so I took my instruction digital. Plenty of people stuck at home needed a reassuring voice and some inexpensive, beginner friendly food. My regulars are always very much appreciated, and I do right by them, offering all manner of useful information and techniques. Getting a message like "I'd never thought to clean my spice grinder that way, and it works beautifully!" is music to my ears, and I take some small pride in knowing I'm doing something to make lives easier, better, and more .

However.

No fewer than half a dozen times have I brought out obscure techniques, recipes, or even bits of trivia for my stream, only to discover suspiciously exact iterations or subtle variations of my methods, phrases, or results published a week or three later on media conglomerate-sized channels. 

Sure, coincidences happen. But this isn't about the plausibly deniable stuff you can just spend five minutes casually Googling and get ahold of if you know where to start. Sometimes the information is from texts that are out of print, or have nothing to do with the subject at all. Sometimes they're from personal interviews I've given, or not even from English-language sources- I know my way around at least three other languages well enough to have hunted down that sort of thing in the past.

But it'd be my word against a brand- sometimes an entire organization. I can't compete with their media and legal teams- even when I can prove I was the one first past the post, I'll get washed. Their massive viewer bases have a pretty good appetite for constant new information, so smaller creators sometimes get their stuff snitched on the sly, to have it repackaged and rereleased without credit in a format better for binging.

Culinary Life vs Covid Life: Comparisons

 

Think back to the start of the pandemic. I know you don't want to. It's not over, and the people who say otherwise have money to make on the backs of the dead.

But when the lockdown orders came, I was happy. Unemployment, though a pittance, would keep me from being homeless for a while. I spent the time exercising, writing, reading, doing recipe dev work, and a little remote consulting, while being very, very careful about where and when I shopped for groceries. (Sidenote: How do you know it's shaping up to be bad? When the local Mexican market is out of dried beans.)

Weeks passed, slowly and steadily. I kept a diary for most of the first year, and much of the less personal notes were centered around how other people were reacting to the physical realities of the situation. "Cabin fever" was running rampant, and even in my social circles I would often see things like "Not being able to go out, see people, and do things is wreaking havoc on my mental health.", and all too often that left me seething.

Those most likely to say such things were (and remain) those least inconvenienced by such necessities. Often able to work remotely and so sustain their income, financially comfortable enough to get food and groceries delivered, or even live independently. The social side of their lifestyles, though, had been cut down to a size quite familiar to me, and to a great many others in my field.

The food business doesn't pay well, despite what seems like far too many working hours. Nights, weekends, holidays, they're all spoken for, and the effort leaves many too worn to do anything else even when times allow. What does that all too often mean? No socializing. No parties. No restaurants or nights at the bar. No favorite hangouts, movies, or events. Naught but sitting at home, contact with others only through radio, phone, or screen.

Sound familiar? So... restricted by plague? Or by poverty? Not much of a difference between, really.

Now in the grip of COVID, the rest of the world learned, or were reminded, of what it feels like to have no means, no access to many of the joys and pleasures of life. What did a great many of them do? They crumbled. 

Those of us who deal with such handicaps as a part of our normal lives have had a very hard time finding sympathy- plenty of us were and still are working, risking our health and safety to better ensure the comfort and ease of those with the ways and means to stay secluded.

They really ought to work harder to be worthy of our sacrifices.

New Disability, Same Indifference... New Way of Life?

 

    Covid sucks. It's shifted from pandemic to endemic because some people weren't cautious enough and a lot more people actively enabled the spread through willful ignorance. Thanks, assholes. Your attitudes have killed several million people- and counting.

    But this isn't about the virus's body count. Nor is it about the ego driven political tribalism that enabled its rise to endemic-dom, or it being the one massive piece of leverage the general public could potentially have used to ensure lasting positive social and cultural change.

    This is about what it's done to food industry professionals. A smaller-stakes issue in some ways, but no less a global problem.

    Remember how it started? People who caught Covid were frequently losing their sense of smell. The phenomenon became so noticeable that papers got written on what was sometimes called the Yankee Candle Review Index, wherein upswings in Covid infection rates were sufficiently correlated with negative reviews of scented candles and other similar products that the surges could be predicted to some degree.

    Industries like food and beverage are hard enough to begin with, on physical, mental, emotional, and financial levels. Professionals still continue to juggle plague-induced operational closings, safety of their staff, their own personal safety, and an endless pile of other problems just to survive. Not only is the pandemic killing more food workers than almost any other demographic, it's maimed a great many more. 

    The cooking school I was teaching in suspended operation in March of 2020, but I'm almost positive I picked up Covid right beforehand. The last event we did was for a passel of people fresh off that damn Disney Cruise. There was no reliable test yet (one of my housemates worked in biotech, and was part of a team developing one of them), and the lockdown was was about to begin. My senses of taste and smell have never failed me. (I do now have a never-ending cough a la General Grievous, but that's another problem.) As far as anosmia, I got lucky. But I know a good few people who didn't.

    Imagine going about your day as normal, and suddenly you're stricken blind. Everything that was familiar now feels as foreign as the moon. That's what it's like when someone whose livelihood is built around food loses their sense of taste or smell. So much of what they knew, expertise honed by constant practice over years, is not simply gone, but often worse- distorted. 

    The olfactory system's nerve pathways don't seem to recover from an attack like this at an even rate, and so all perceptions from it are rendered suspect as recovery slowly, unevenly, uncertainly tries to happen. To be unable to trust one's own senses when others are relying on them is a terrible state of being, and rapidly becoming regarded as another of what are often called "Invisible Disabilities". 

    You know how hard it is to get disability comp in America? Even when it's something physical and as obvious as can be, it's still a hardscrabble fight for every iota of aid and respite. Something like this, that's so much harder to quantify, that we can't even really treat yet? A seemingly futile struggle... and yet it's one that can't help but continue. Too many lives are at stake.

    There are plenty of people, mostly paycheck to paycheck, that are afflicted by the aftereffects of Covid-induced anosmia and parosmia. They're desperate for anything at all to keep them solvent. In lieu of proper disability provisioning or support, the crumbling F&B workforce is giving up their goals in-industry, and taking whatever it can wherever it can to survive. 

    To me, the future of food looks grim. It's always been a marginalized, derided industry, and now it's awash in a new danger full of unknowns. I know where it needs to go, and how to get it there... but I don't think it will get that chance.

Reel Life: Social Media In Food

    

    I don't have or use Instagram. 

    Weird, right? At a glance, it seems like pretty much everyone does, and has become a nexus for the food world's current approach to things.

    There are lots of reasons I personally don't- safety, accessibility, and data farming concerns, among others. But the most important one for me? Doing without it lets me maintain a more well-balanced perspective.

    Sure, it might be interesting to see what other professionals are up to. But the food world is very well connected, and it's not hard for me to just ask around and stay equally well informed.

    Most people really don't like showing off their mistakes in front of an audience, no matter how small, which means the internet typically only gets the good stuff. "The camera eats first", is what I often hear people say- screw that, I'm hungry.

    Relatably, given that much of the internet thrives on hateclicks, gossip, outright lies, and a constant State of Argumentative Discourse, even great successes can catch all sorts of hell if they're seen at the wrong time or by the wrong sort of people. No matter how small a person's online presence, it remains a distinct possibility, and something I'd really rather not deal with on the regular. Chefs and other food professionals have enough worries already- undue harassment from the unqualified is one I consider well worth avoiding.

    Remember this as well, trite as it might sound: Social media is a highlight reel. What you see is aggressively tailored, tweaked, isolated, and curated for a possible or probable audience. What you don't see is everything else. 

-A beautiful plate of food? Taking the time to get that perfect picture might have let it go cold.
-A gorgeous vista? A hundred attempts for the perfect gleam, time wasted that could have been spent enjoying the view.
-Friends and fellows all together in fun? A car got a ticket, a wallet went missing, and some of those smiling ended up heaving in an alleyway an hour later. 

    You can't really know the real costs of those perfect pictures. The face behind the camera could be feeling like Hide the Pain Harold looks... but they'll never tell.

    The most important part of a meal is the experience. It's not just the look, the flavor, or even the company. It's all of those things and more, unable to be distilled and shared by such a tepid medium in anything close to its entirety. Worse still, in the attempt to do so, the essential and ephemeral essence of that experience is tainted and lost.

    Why throw that feeling away? The effort of the artisan who created a singular experience only seems sabotaged by trying to preserve perfection.

Enjoy.