Food Fashions

I don’t understand why certain things become fashionable in clothing. Why does this year need or have a color? Why was pink the new brown last year when everyone in fashion still seems to mostly wear black (no doubt afraid they may have forgotten what this year’s color is so better to play it safe)? I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t care to know. With an ever invading cynicism taking hold, I’m trying to avoid experiences and information which are highly likely to only lessen my opinion of my fellow man or woman.

I know how those decisions are made of course. “They” make the decisions. You know “They” right? “They” are responsible for most of the important things that happen in life as in, “You know ‘They’re’ saying now that eating just the yoke of an egg could decrease your odds of getting the flu by as much as one half of one percent.” “They” say stuff, and do stuff and conspire, etc. Well one subgroup of “They”, known as “Snobs” gets together in an opulent over decorated sitting room in France every year and they sit around and decide things like: collars should be wider, skirts should be shorter, models should be even skinnier and it’s been long enough to start recycling the looks of some past decade.

That’s how it happens. Trust me, I may or may not be a member of a group who are part of another subgroup of “They” known as “The Man,” as in, “The Man is holding us down,” or “This is my way of stickin it to The Man”. My suspected membership in this group has allegedly made me privy to certain inside “They” information which I will share from time to time on this site.

However, I now believe that some rogue offshoot subgroup of “They” acting entirely on their own and in secret has decided to treat food like fashion. I’m hoping you can help me get to the bottom of this. When exactly did food become trendy and why does a food that’s been around forever and been a perfectly good food suddenly become sensationally popular and then just as quickly as it rose to prominence fall back to obscurity?

Roughly fifteen years ago, everything was pesto. Pesto mayonnaise, pesto sauce, pesto chicken, pesto bagels and even one of the 23 flavors in Dr. Pepper was changed to pesto for a brief and regrettable period. Pesto wasn’t invented 15 years ago. It was invented centuries ago by one of the famous Alfredo brothers who, seeking to embarrass his older brother, famous for his sauces, added ingredients that would turn his brother’s sauce green and leave flecks of green stuff in the teeth of all who ate it. The plan backfired when not only did people enjoy the new sauce, but shortly thereafter the Snobs declared it fashionable to have food stuck in your teeth. The tooth brush was invented the very next year when the Snobs changed their mind.
Now that’s the sort of inside info you can’t get at other blogs.

Anyway, why did pesto suddenly rocket to popularity? Why? It must be this new group of “They.”

Then a few years later we had sun dried tomatoes. You couldn’t turn around without someone wanting to put sun dried tomatoes on something you were eating. Salad dressing, pizza, pasta, sandwiches and on and on. Were they even tomatoes? Or were they some strange mutant food developed in a lab like maraschino cherries or broccoli? It’s moot now though. Why? Because they’re gone. Why? Did we stop liking them? I don’t care if it’s trendy, I like the flavor and didn’t stop. Give me back my sun dried tomato ranch dressing!!!!

Then after the little shrivled tomato like offerings were whisked away by some phantom menace, we went for a brief time without a trendy food and were stuck instead with the removal of many of our most beloved culinary delights. Suddenly the whole world decided that you would soon weigh 400 pounds if you kept eating bread. We came to fear carbs. The nation appointed a carb czar who went from burg to hamlet closing down sandwich shops and pizza joints. People were hiding pasta in secret rooms and terrified to order a burger without saying “hold the bun.”

Now? It’s all been forgotten. No more adds. No more debate about whether an obese doctor should be telling anyone how to eat. Now we can all stop blaming our obesity on foods that have been the staples of thriving civilizations for thousands of years and just complain about how if we only had a personal trainer and chef like all those skinny movie stars, then we could be skinny too.

So, what’s on the menu at the moment? Well for the last couple years it has been “chipotle.” What is chipotle exactly? No one knows. As far as I can tell it is a totally made up word that can now be used to describe anything that they want you to eat. Just add chipotle and suddenly we have to eat it. There is even a restaurant out here called “Chipotle” which, interestingly, serves pretty much the same thing that Taco Bell has been calling “tacos” and “burritos” for generations. So far as I can tell, chipotle is just a way to take a perfectly good food and make it spicy. Whatever it is, my buddy Tony can not get enough and would order anything if it had chipotle in it. Though, really, I think it is just because he likes saying chipotle. Say it out loud. It is fun. What will Tony do in another year when chipotle goes the way of pesto and the fondue pot? He should be storing up now like Joseph preparing for the lean years in Egypt.

This all remains a mystery. Somehow I can’t help but think that the secret is in mayonaise. If you notice, every new flavor gets added to mayo in any restaurant that has cloth napkins. Pesto mayo? Check. Sun dried tomato mayo? Check. Chipotle mayo? You bet. Let’s hope maraschino cherries never become the rage.

So, if any of you have any information on a super secret group of people meeting somewhere to decide what we will all be eating, “They” want to know and “They” do not like to be disappointed, so watch your step. You don’t want to have to deal with “The Man.”

I’m off now to grab a sandwich made on this brand new bread called ciabatta. It’s sweeping the nation and I just have to try it.