Mechanics of Food Writing Lab ' Indulge Your Senses ' with Monica Bhide #FBC14

2. Agenda
Welcome
Coming to our senses
Taste – Not!
When a sense is lost
Channel your inner diva
Wrap-up and Q&A time

3. What we write about..
•Developing recipes for different ways to cook a turkey
•Rounding -up summer drinks in your local area
•Conducting taste tests of vermouth in your home
•Interviewing a chef/sommelier on spirited (!) cooking
•Reviewing a hot-dog stand
•Following a famous food critic around a major city!
• Discussing six new uses for a potato peeler
•Following a trail though Europe to document the history of clotted
cream
•Traveling with a group of motorcycling chefs through the Rocky
Mountains
•Reporting on the new bacteria found in tap water or the bacteria
that lurks in kids' cafeterias
•Debating the role of mayo in a sandwich
•Documenting 76 finger foods for toddlers

4. Why MFK Fisher does it best
“The first thing I remember tasting and then
wanting to taste again is the grayish-pink fuzz my
grandmother skimmed from a spitting kettle of
strawberry jam. I suppose I was about four.”

5. Words to describe this?

6. Summer Serenity?
Cheap Summer Thrill?
Mellow Chill?
Liquefied Summer?
Size of a bird bath?
Drink is crowned with lime?
Punctuated with lime?

7. Don’t use
Delicious
Yummy
Sinful
Tasty
Foodie
Artisanal

15. Exercise - See, smell, hear, feel
No taste

16. Just a few words you cannot
use
Alkaline cheesy burnt crispy vinegary buttery bland
raw ripe sour spicy hearty hot tasty
sweet bittersweet gingery overripe oily fruity fishy
sugary salty luscious rotten sour spoiled
peppery mellow bitter tangy greasy delicious biting
burnt creamy flavorful fruity gingery grainy
hearty hot juicy mild minty nutty oily
peppery salty savory smooth spicy sugary sweet tangy
tart tasteless
Tasty

17. The magic of Tom Sietsema?
• A bumper crop of interesting new restaurants
• Crusty veal schnitzel oozes kaymak, similar to clotted cream, with
every slice; the richness of the strapping dish, bedded on mashed
potatoes, is cut with caper relish
• Rosy rib-eye massaged with Old Bay rests on a pool of sweet corn
and picks up delicate crunch from grilled okra
• turnips …staged around a scarlet scoop of beet sorbet.
• the artful gin and tonics

18. Blind Tasting

23. Can you do it?
Tweet like Ruth?

24. “Magenta morning: cherry trees in bloom. Inhaling color. Blood
orange juice. Warm biscuits. Sweet melting butter. Sliced
berries.”
“Huge gray clouds, moving fast. Sun shines on far mountains. Lawn
bright.
Gorgeous chiaroscuro. Black beans. White rice. Salsa. Inside echo.”

25. Homework – BE YOU
Once a day– A new word
Kill your darlings
Pretend
Once a week – A new story
Once a month – A new ingredient
Once a year – Total media silence
Every minute: watch, listen, learn and observe.
You are the storytellers of today.