Post 2 - Food Science, Chemistry, and Alcohol

Science, Chemistry, and Alcohol

The imminent and extemporized second post

I have a deep, hobbyist's interest in food science. Unfortunately, as with so many of my interests: I can't claim to have a propensity or predisposition for it (them? well.. here "science"). Cooking, on the other hand, has been - throughout my life - my only successfully (or consistently successful) creative endeavor. Before I navigate away from that fairly provocative admission, please indulge this brief departure.

I prefer to describe my type of art making not as a creative art, but that of a re-creative art. From the mouth (or fingers, as it were) of a musician the above statement - I hypothesize - might seem, if not unlikely, a gross equivocation. Maybe you're thinking: You're an opera singer, and a bass player by trade. Music is a creative art. As an opera singer aren't you also an actor? You're a "creative-type!" Don't you also draw? Don't you also knit?

Guilty as charged, but my conceit is none of these activities or professions engage me as a creator. I follow patterns. I do not invent, conjure, build, conceive, or create. My vocations are more like painting by numbers, or connecting the dots. Is the act of typing creative? Ok, bringing a character to life for me isn't as creative as it is investigative and associative. I have to follow a conductor, it's almost never a collaboration. I have to execute the staging dictated by the stage director. 

But I am ranting...and if I allow myself the opportunity to go on, there is no telling where this blog post, originally intended to engage the topic of science, chemistry, quantum physics, food, and alcohol, would wind up. So where was I? ... a deep, hobbyist's interest in food science. A fascination with fragrances, odors, scents, textures, flavors, and taste. A fascination that led me to look into esters, congeners, phenols, fermentation, pH, fungus, bacteria, carbon, molecules, atoms, thermodynamics, magnets and other constellationally related science-y terms.

Like a river's mouth or delta, my interest has a source. Naturally, I harbor quite a bit of hereditary interest in food and cooking, as well as that innately human curiosity. Alton Brown, the cable food chef, and childhood chemistry sets also share the responsibility for stimulating this passive interest. To be clear: not surprisingly, I was a mediocre - if not poor -  chemistry study. I remain a poor student of chemistry... my aptitude for the subject hasn't hindered my curiosity. Gluttony and epicury [my word], formerly the traits of an elegant sounding term bon vivant, have also been motivating factors in my interest. Yet, there is also - as I mentioned earlier - human curiosity. What is this? Why does it taste this way? Why do I taste? How do I taste? What happens when I...? More than curiosity there is the Darwinian approach that some many middle/lower middle/poor people enacts in our search for comfort, happiness, and enjoyment - poisoned by the media and society of materialism. That Darwinian approach is a replacement or substitution approach. I want to eat or drink this thing, but I can't afford, can't find, or don't have the tools, time, or resources... how can I make it work? Lastly, a final impetus has been the necessity to work in the food service industry. I, he says with an air of disappointment housed in a smirk, am not one of the lucky singers/artists/musicians who has been able to support their life through music alone. The last motivator is survival, and learning to have an interest in ones quotidian circumstances can relieve some of the misery of one's status.

Thus is my origin story and I am hesitant to continue or start here on the science part... consider this your Part 1 to my thoughts, bewilderment, and research into Science, Chemistry, and Alcohol. Until the "imminent and extemporized" third post, thank you for reading.

- J