In offence and defence of my last post OR what I am going to do.

Didn't think my last post would have raised the kind of responses it did. Made me happy that the fur flew a bit. Most people agreed with me, some shared similar experiences, but a few admonished me for complaining about a malaise but doing nothing to combat or cure it.

So here goes ...

I wrote because I felt I needed to. I also wrote because most people agree (and have agreed on social media whilst discussing what I wrote) that what I have said is the truth. Most of these people though did not think it necessary to write about this. Perhaps they felt washing their dirty linen in public was not done, or perhaps they just diddn't want to write about this, or perhaps they didn't think it was anything great. Their prerogative.

Some of my friends though were honest enough to voice their opinions that cribbing about it and using it as an excuse was a cop-out and that if one felt strongly one should do something and not just crib. 

In my defence ... I have been thinking, I am going to be doing but (perhaps due to my innate damn laziness) by not specifying it yesterday I left myself open to criticism. Fair criticism.

But - Crinbbing i.e. recognising the problem is the first step in doing something ... right?

So this is what I have decided to do ...

I have decided that I must be true to myself. When I started this blog I named it after three (of the four things) things that mean the world to me. Then, I wrote about eating, feeding and archaeology ... what I didn't quite realise was that I needed to write more often about how all three pleasures could be encompassed in a singular activity. I think this was always at the back of my mind but my unconcious perhaps didn't mangae to get through and manifest itself. Here's my next step or attempted solution to my complaint/crib/rant/etc.

I've decided to write a little more often and in a little more focussed manner on something I call Gastronomic Heritage - a happy marriage of Food with Culture and History/Archaeology. Its something that is the need of the hour. 

We are losing a large amount of gastronomic heritage due to fusion; lack of sustained interest; disappearance of traditional raw materials in a fast growing homogenised market; inability of people to cook the way they used to in modern nuclear families, i.e. educated women who haven't had the time or inclination to spend 10 years in the kitchen between the ages of 5 & 15 and educated indifferent men who still think 'coooking is a woman's job'; food stores which will source and stock exotic foreign foods but rarely ever exotic  or rare Indian/local ingredients; and general apathy.

I intend (intentions are noble let's see how this goes) to write about food history, traditional groups and their foods, lost foods, hidden  places and people that still serve such foods.  About experiencing, eating and cooking such food. I intend to write about dishes, communities, recipes, ingredients, regions, times and all such things. I also intend to write in greater detail about the the various reasons (and more) that I have listed above, as to why we are losing this heritage, what we can perhaps do about it, and, why its not necessarily a 'bad' thing.

opta ardua pennis astra sequi (Virgil's Aeneid XII: 892–3) ...