When humans started transitioning towards agrarian ways of life around 10,000 years ago, it wasn't just the types of food that changed. It wasn't just about more reliance on grains and less on meat, but about a fundamental change in the food system. True hunter-gatherers literally live day to day, not storing any food for later use. Horticulturalists started manipulating the forest so that they could have living stores of certain things like cassava and also started fermenting various plant and animal foods. As the human species moved into the arctic (LATER ON in our evolutionary history, contrary to some polar pushers that are popular "paleo diet" authors) and started living in more marginal areas in general, we developed smoking and salting as methods of preservation.*

But with agrarianism came the widespread processing and long-term storage of foods, particularly grains and legumes. 

This opened up humans to all kinds of new vulnerabilities from rancidity, molds, and bacterial contamination during storage. We've largely forgotten about these things because science has eliminated so many extreme acute examples. When was the last time you heard about someone getting ergotism? Ergotism is caused by a fungus that grows on rye. In the past, a contaminated harvest could terrorize entire towns. A lovely description from 857: "a Great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death."

While antinutrients and rouge plant proteins tend to get a lot of focus in blaming such foods for the poor health of ancient agrarian populations, such contamination also probably played a role. In developing countries, aflatoxins, a type of mycotoxins, still remain a serious health issue. They are something to always be aware of when parsing epidemiological data from agrarian cultures. 

While few people in the US seem to be suffering from gangrene because of mold, whether or not even low levels of contamination and rancidity are an issue remains debatable. Regulatory agencies have different standards for what is spoiled. In Europe, the standard for Patulin, a toxin produced by P. expansum that shows immune system damage in animal products, is 10 μg/kg for children's apple juice. The action level for the US FDA is 50 µg/kg. 

In terms of rancidity, I notice a lot of industrial food producers are adding antioxidants like Vitamin E to oils vulnerable to oxidative damage, so someone is aware that it's a bad thing. But I think a lot of restaurants even exhaust the antioxidant additive's abilities by using the oil to fry stuff over and over again. In animal models at least, feeding oxidized fat is a great way to induce inflammation. There is mounting evidence they are a health threat for humans. 

And possibly because such types of spoilage is relatively evolutionarily novel, most humans seem to be unable to detect it simply by taste or smell. This is made worse when one is used to consuming sub-par food. The Chicago Tribute today had an article that noted that many immigrants find US peanut butter tastes rancid, but to most of us it tastes delicious. Also a study showed that 44% of Americans actually preferred the taste of rancid olive oil.

Many people I've talked to report that they feel fine eating "bad" foods in Europe. I've had that experience myself and it's very interesting. It's perhaps a testament to the EU's higher standards.

When I think about the diet I eat now vs. the diet I ate in the past, one thing that stands out is that almost all of my food is now in the fridge or freezer rather than in my cabinets. My cabinets are actually just full of tea and underused ktichen appliances. Of course, solve one problem and another one pops up- there is a hypothesis that Crohns could be caused by bacteria that thrive in fridge temperatures. 

*which have their own particular health risks that could make up an entire post

 I've been listening to a little bit of the Paleo Summit and today I listened to Nora Gedgauda's presentation on "safe" starches. You can still catch it for another hour or so I think, but let's just say it wasn't my favorite presentation in the world. 

If you've read this blog long enough, you know I have an interest in fiber. One thing that is interesting about early "paleo" books, Boyd Eaton's 1989 The Paleolithic Prescription, is that they recommend an absurd amount of fiber. That's partially because some estimates of fiber intake based on fossilized poo, known as coprolites, were just simply absurd, as high as 150 grams a day, which no known human culture even approaches. So I've spent a little time arguing against that, because the coprolite analysis for fiber isn't even very accurate in the first place. 

So when I hear more info about coprolites, my ears perk up, particularly if it's totally outside the realm of anything I've ever heard. In Nora's presentation she cites a paper that she says shows that a wide-ranging sample of paleolithic coprolites shows that they weren't eating any plants. What?

So I tracked down this paper. Turns out it's not a paper, it's an article in a magazine, though I admit that Scientific American is definitely a quality magazine.

So your homework assignment for the night is to read the "paper" and figure out where it says any of what Nora says at all

Spoiler: it doesn't say any of those things at all. Nope, none. Hilariously, a lot of the article is in fact devoted to the Pecos basin hunter-gatherers I've written about, but they didn't live in the Paleolithic and they ate a massive amount of various plants.

Bonus point: find ANY paper that supports what Nora says. 

Nora is trying to fight Paul Jaminet's mainly bio-chem based arguments about starches with anthropology, but she doesn't have much ammo. The idea that homo sapiens was forged in some kind of arctic ice age goes against all the existing genetic and archeological evidence that exists. When we are talking about the influence of the last ice age on homo sapiens, it's more about forests dying off and becoming grasslands and savannas, than people plunged into some polar darkness in which they could only eat mammoth.

Nora then cites the isotopic evidence. Nope, she doesn't cite one of the many papers on the subject, she cites Dr. Eades, who is an MD, not an anthropologist. Probably because in those papers they try to make it clear that isotope analysis cannot tell us that ancient hominids were eating like foxes. It can simply tell us the trophic level of the protein consumed, which is similar to foxes in SOME cases, but we are not foxes. We are large-brained primates with the ability to eat a vast variety of foods, so the trophic level cannot rule out other foods being consumed, nor can it tell us the amount of protein in the diet. John Hawks put up an assortment of posts on isotopic analysis in response to an email from Chris Masterjohn.

As for the ketogenic babies, I think babies are really the reason that most humans can adapt better to ketosis than most other mammals, which I learned from Stephen Cunnane's excellent book Human Brain Evolution: Influence of Freshwater and Marine Food Resources:

There are two key advantages to having ketone bodies as the main alternative fuel to glucose for the human brain. First, humans normally have signifi cant body fat stores, so there is an abundant supply of fatty acids to make ketones. Second, using ketones to meet part of the brain ’ s energy requirement when food availability is intermittent frees up some glucose for other uses and greatly reduces both the risk of detrimental muscle breakdown during glucose synthesis, as well as compromised function of other cells dependent on glucose, that is, red blood cells. One interesting attribute of ketone uptake by the brain is that it is four to fi ve times faster in newborns and infants than in adults (Robinson and Williamson, 1980 ; Cremer, 1982 ). Hence, in a sense, the efficient use of ketones by the infant brain means that it arguably has a better fuel reserve than the adult brain. Although the role of ketones as a fuel reserve is important, in infants, they are more than just a reserve brain fuel – they are also the main substrate for brain lipid synthesis (see Baby Fat – The Reserve for Brain Lipids section).

I have hypothesized that evolution of a greater capacity to make ketones coevolved with human brain expansion (Cunnane, 2005a ). This increasing capacity was directly linked to evolving fatty acid reserves in body fat stores during fetal and neonatal development . To both expand brain size and increase its sophistication so remarkably would have required a reliable and copious energy supply for a very long period of time, probably at least a million, if not two million, years. Initially, and up to a point, the energy needs of a somewhat larger hominin brain could be met by glucose and short - term glucose reserves such as glycogen and glucose synthesis from amino acids. As hominins slowly began to evolve larger brains after having acquired a more secure and abundant food supply, further brain expansion would have depended on evolving signifi cant fat stores and having reliable and rapid access to the fuel in those fat stores. Fat stores were necessary but were still not suffi cient without a coincident increase in the capacity for ketogenesis. This unique combination of outstanding fuel store in body fat as well as rapid and abundant availability of ketones as a brain fuel that could seamlessly replace glucose was the key fuel reserve for expanding the hominin brain, a reserve that was apparently not available to other land - based mammals, including nonhuman primates.

But I don't think that means it's optimal for adults. If anything, it's possible adult's ability to be in ketosis is a relic from infancy. Perhaps that's why some people seem to do better on ketosis than others, because like lactase persistence, the persistence of that ability varies from person to person. But I don't really know, it's just an idea and unlike some people I don't claim to know what everyone else should eat. 

As for the Inuit not eating plants, it's 2012 and I think there is enough information on the internet available, like my own blog posts, that put that misconception to bed.

No, but people take this stuff seriously, as you can see in the comments:

As far as Nora's presentation goes, it's backed up by more science and understanding of human physiology than any of the pro-carb messages I've seen.

If you want to listen to a better talk, I'd suggest Mat Lalonde's. I wish he'd write a book. We know paleo can work, science can help us figure out why and knowing why can help us target variations of the diet to individuals. I firmly believe that a successful diet involves acknowledging the normal distribution and trying to "pin the tail on the donkey" to find your place there (or your range dependent on other variables) through self-experimentation and other tools. It's clear he does that in his own life, so he's talking the talk and walking the walk. I do differ in opinion in that I have tended to think that issues with grains aren't issues with proteins, but issues with carbohydrate malabsorption. But I'm open to both ideas being right.

Most importantly, Mat calls us to be rigorous in our use of scientific evidence, which is something many other speakers at the Paleo Summit seem to be unable to do. Their readers, who do not have access to academic journals by and large, take them seriously without ever knowing the truth. 

As for the idea that those of us who are skeptical of the anti-starch stance just being addicts, I really do laugh because I remember a comment a militant vegan relative of mine posted on the blog. He accused me of making up evidence for meat being healthy just because I think it's so tasty. Ha. Anyone who knows me knows that when I started trying "paleo" diets, I did not like meat very much, though I do like it now. 

As for starch, the idea that I'd be addicted to the mediocre bland peasant-like tastes of things like cassava or green plantain is absurd. I really challenge anyone who thinks such things are addictive to go to their nearest ethnic market and purchse a true yam. Then boil it and eat it plain. Have fun! 

If I promoted a diet based on what I crave, it would be based around caviar, bone marrow, and butter. Through, it is quite funny that all of those things are quite good for you. 

 This week I spent almost my entire food budget for the month on one meal and it was completely worth it even if it means I have to eat just ground beef from my dad's farm for the rest of the time. 

I grew up on Chick Fil A and Kraft, so I didn't really discover fine dining until I was in college. I think my first date ever was probably at Cafe Luna, one of Champaign-Urbana's few fine-dining establishments, with a graduate student much older than I was. Fresh in my abandonment of veganism, I'll never ever forget the lamb shank I ate there, the way it melted in my mouth. This restaurant was where I was baptized into a love of truffles, duck confit, and aioli. I learned that pleasure from food didn't have to involve overeating, that it could involve more complex emotions, flavors, and aesthetic experiences. My taste and my food budget has never recovered.

In terms of the delicate avant-garde Kaiseki-influenced modernist cuisine that now dominates the upper tiers of fine dining, my first experience was probably at Manresa, in California. After that meal, I wondered if it is possible to become addicted to novelty? I suppose if that is possible, I do suffer from a terrible case of neophilia. The next day after a meal like that, my regular food seems so pallid and devoid of life. It's no wonder so many people who enjoy modernist cuisine are spurred to improve their own cooking skills. 

Getting Next tickets was no small feat. I think I am either enormously lucky or very fast at clicking things. It felt good to be one of the thousand that won out, out of many thousands more who tried. Which was surprising, since this year's headlining meal is the most expensive that NEXT has ever done, because it is a tribute to elBulli, which was considered the greatest restaurant in the world before the head chef closed it so he could do other things. 

Because I knew this was going to be a long, expensive meal, I vowed to get the most out of it. I read a book called A Day at elBulli, watching the documentary (though really it's mostly raw footage) Cooking in Progress, and watched Anthony Bourdain's episode on the restaurant.

A Day at elBulli is mainly pictures, which are important for getting a sense of what the restaurant was actually like. It was in a somewhat out of the way part of Catalonia, nestled along a picturesque coastline. Seeing pictures of that place, I experienced a wistfulness in my heart, one that I am familiar with. I remember I first felt it one very rainy day in New York City, when I was sitting on the Subway. I had just moved there from Uppsala, Sweden, and was trying to get my bearings. I looked up at the ads that are on the ceilings of every train. One was for Delta, advertising flights to Japan, Brazil, and all sorts of other places. It was almost like that feeling you get when you get a call from someone who you are yearning for. But this feeling was infused with wanderlust. New York City might be the greatest city in the entire world, but in that moment all I wanted to do was experience, once again, the feeling of waking up somewhere new. Perhaps that's why I lived in Manhattan, then Brooklyn, and finally Queens before I left. 

If I haven't figured out how to eat in a way that made me healthy, I might have never left Illinois. I was supposed to study abroad my junior year, but one of the reasons I didn't do it was that I honestly didn't know if I could make it. I didn't want to be sick in a strange country. But I got healthy, and I went to Sweden. And it was good that I was pretty healthy there, because my roommates informed me that people didn't go to the hospital there for frivolous reasons. Eventually I did wear my health down a bit with booze and cake, necessitating a cleanup of my diet towards the end, but I never once needed to see a doctor.

Sometimes I wonder if my newfound health is as much about what I do eat, rather than what I don't eat. Sure I feel best when I leave certain things out of my diet, but I'm not particularly delicate. It took months of boozing and caking around Central Europe before I really started to feel it. It reminds me of one study in which they successfully treated GERD with melatonin (I think sleep is important in the causality of GERD) and vitamin and amino acid supplements. My diet when I had GERD probably didn't just have some terrible foods, it really honestly didn't have anything good. I probably didn't get many nutrients that are used to build the linings that protect our gut from potentially injurious constituents of food (any food can be an issues). I've gone from being a delicate flower (at one point I was so sensitive to histamines that I couldn't even have fermented foods) to someone who can really take a punch and keep going. Nothing was as gratifying as going to the allergist and testing positive for NOTHING this fall, when in the past I tested positive to almost everything. Inflammation makes you react to things, good and bad. Once you've got that down and repaired your digestive system, things get easier for many people. 

Which is good. Because honestly, god knows what I ate at Next. There were certainly some innovative dishes that used other ingredients in place of things like pasta (cauliflower couscous and a ravioli made out of cuttlefish), but honestly, there were lots of things I ate that I would have trouble eating if I hadn't cultivated some resilience. The restaurant was explicit that this was one cycle where food allergies could not be accommodate. I'm lucky I don't really have any. 

When dining, a guest can experience pleasure on four different levels. First, there is a purely physiological pleasure which comes from satisfying hunger; it is the most fundamental pleasure, but no less important for being so. Secondly, there is the pleasure perceived by the senses, which tells us, for example, if a dish is 'delicious,' whether or not we like it, if it is too salty, if we have tasted better in other restaurants or at another time, and so on. Third is the pleasure connected with emotions: everything related to the occasion, such as the attention and generosity with which a guest is treated, the company around the table and the guest's own expectations. Most restaurants are able to satisfy these three types of pleasure.

However, there is another kind of stimulus which is directly related to reason. It is the intellectual pleasure derived from judging the meal according to parameters that are not strictly gastronomic, in which other elements come into play, such as sense of humour, irony, provocation, childhood memories, or -- a very important point -- the appreciation of the level of creativity of a gastronomic proposal. These are aspects which the guest does not expect to find in a restaurant, but in fact they form an integral part of the dish and of the menu. This is what is known at elBulli as 'the sixth sense.' When a new dish is created, the aim is that the guest will enjoy it on all flour levels, and experience all the pleasures that the act of eating can provide.- From A Day at elBulli.

And it was all worth it. I can say I've often regretted buying things, but I've never regretted a journey or experience. In fact, without these, I feel diminished, as they are a major source of creative energy for me. I wish I could find this creative energy elsewhere, in some god or some romance, but it has never been that way for me, though these things also influence me. After a meal like the one I had at Next or a trip like the time I went to Big Sur, I feel broadened and sharp. I feel like all kinds of experiences I have had before have been coalesced and made more clear to me. 

I'm not a materialist, I don't care for things. I don't like cars, I hate things that can be exploited. I live a simple life. The only luxuries I have in my life are travel and food. I don't even own a car—I use a small car that is here. It's not even my car. I use it to come to work sometimes. Really, to get from place to place, I just take a taxi. I have a cell phone that I use a lot. I use the phone to get organized, but on July 30, when I start a new life, I'm going to remove the phone from my life."- Ferran Adria

A tidepool, lying by the ocean in the sun, the curling bark of a tree I found in a park in Madrid, the colors in the drunk dream sequence in Dumbo, the way the first fish I ever caught smelled, a kiss you were not supposed to take, scratching the skin of a lime in my cousin's orchard, playing in my mother's garden when I was eight, sitting with friends in a smoky bar in Europe, the scent of the forest floor in Sweden, seeing El Greco paintings for the first time, a dream I had about Japan. Things too little to be easily remembered, except when the senses are tantalized. 

cauliflower cous-cous with solid aromatic herb sauce

When I got home I was somewhat drunk (which is why this is pretentious and rambling) and I thought about what a meal would be like if it were such avant-garde cuisine, but influenced by the Paleolithic. What if you did a meal that went beyond the banal and really reached into the depths of that era. The dish above was a big influence because of the variety of vegetal flavors surrounding the "cous-cous." Some of them were unfamiliar, even alienating. 

The concept of alienating food entranced me because one thing I find is that people are often unable to conceive of the fact that the diet of ancient hominids was enormously diverse, containing foods that most people have never even thought of as foods. Many of the foods and flavors you find in paleobotany are profoundly alienating to the modern consumer. Some of them were multi-purpose as well, with the lines blurring between food, medicine, and recreational psychoactive substance. I would include such alienating flavors to emphasize the remoteness of the era. Of course maybe I wouldn't include so many psychoactives for safety reasons. Cocktails could stand in. 

However, despite being strange and alien, the meal would also serve to humanize ancient hominids. Evidence shows that ancient hominids used natural materials not just as tools, but as decoration, utilizing shells, natural pigments, and feathers for aesthetic purposes. Some of the plants they used also don't seem to have much purpose, beyond imparting flavor. In incorporating these ideas, the meal would fight asceticism with aestheticism. Such associations would be emphasized with references to Japanese Kaiseki, which is a notable form of cuisine because many plants that were used in the Paleolithic are no longer used in modern cuisine at all...except in Japan. This also emphasizes the complexity and diversity that characterizes both Japanese and Paleolithic edibles. 

Oh, also with inspiration from The Knife's electro-opera about Darwin

Some papers I read while drunk included:

Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing

Neanderthal Use of Fish, Mammals, Birds, Starchy Plants and Wood 125-250,000 Years Ago

Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets

Of course I had to substitute some things and even then, this menu includes things that would require a lot of foraging to procure, since they have never been commercialized. The format is mainly based on botanicals in Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing. 

1. Alchemilla vulgari = medicinal plant in rose family

Rosehip cocktail with bitters

2. Pine-smoked oysters with various pigmented powders and seaweed "feathers"

3. Brachypodium ramosum = bunch grasses related to oats=

Oat crusted deer tenderloin with wild mushrooms and edible fried smoked insects

4. Arctium lappa = burdock, Anthriscus caucalis = relative of carrot

Japanese burdock and wild carrot salad

5. Bromus secalinus= relative of rye

boar liver pate on rye cracker with foam of blood and small edible flowers

6. Cyperus badius = relative of chufa =

Spanish Tigernut Horchata cocktail

7. Persicaria hydropiper = water pepper, tastes similar to Sichuan pepper, though water pepper is actually eaten in Japan, but I'm not sure I could find it here =

Sichuan pepper & salt crawfish

8. Scirpus lacustris = bulrush

Bitter sprouts and bamboo shoots, eel, cooked in bison fat butter with a garnish of fried fish bones

9. Sparganium erectum / : Typha angustifolia / Typha latifolia= bur reed (medicinal) / cattail rhizome =

cattail flour/buckwheat blini with roe, hazelnut “sour cream,” and yellow cattail pollen “golden” powder

10. Botrychium ternatum = fern root =

bracken starch mochi

Also, the table is decorated with wood chips and lamps made from small animal skulls hang on strings from the ceiling. On this menu is printed:

From Nabakov’s Pale Fire
What moment in the gradual decay
Does resurrection choose? What year? What day?
Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?
Are some less lucky, or do all escape?
A syllogism: other men die; but I
Am not another; therefore I’ll not die.
Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,
A singing in the ears. In this hive I’m
Locked up. Yet, if prior to life we had
Been able to imagine life, what mad,
Impossible, unutterably weird,
Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared!

Coming soon: My new book, the opposite of Paleo Comfort Foods, which will be titled Pretentious Postmodern Molecular PaleoGastronomy. All the recipes will require a fully equipped laboratory and ingredients that can only be found in remote mountain wilderness. However, I have been having trouble finding a publisher. 

 Dr. Lustig's recent moralistic tirade on how we are all so fat and unhappy because are trying to get pleasure from food reminded me of exactly why I love food. For me, gaining a better relationship with food meant learning to enjoy it as an experience rather than just a rote vaguely pleasurable activity. The pleasures I get from food now are far more multi-faceted than just a reward-axis compulsion driven by the unholy combinations of salt, fat, and sugar. When I think of great meals I've had, I think of the beautiful places I ate them in, their presentation, complex and unique flavors, and the people I shared them with. 

Strawberries in Sweden

I know what you are thinking- that this is not a "meal." But it was at the time. I had just arrived in Uppsala, Sweden and I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I didn't even know where a grocery store was. But there are these stands in the summer where they sell just strawberries. And these were unlike any other strawberries I'd ever had. You know strawberry flavored candy? These tasted a little like that, but better. I said to myself "this is what a strawberry should taste like." Ever since then I've been unable to enjoy the bland giant watery things that pass as strawberries in America. Occasionally I can find strawberries like these at the local farmer's market, but they are a rare seasonal treat.

"Wolf fish", potatoes, and mussels with a cream sauce at Pingvinen in Bergen, Norway

Bergen is an incredibly beautiful place. My friends and I spent our days hiking the majestic fjords and afterwards were happy to find that Norwegian cuisine is simple, delicious, nourishing, and hearty. Pingvinen is a lovely little pub that specializes in traditional Norwegian food. Nothing fancy, but completely filling and satisfying to eat by the cozy fire as the dusk turned cold.

Pork knuckle somewhere in Krakow, Poland

Another gorgeous place I visited while backpacking across Central and Eastern Europe. There are a variety of places in the city that serve cheap, simple, peasant food. I don't remember what this place was called, but my vegetarian friends enjoyed it as much as I did. The pork knuckle was fatty and tender. I was happy to have the mustard to cut a bit of the greasiness though. It also reminds me why I love traveling in winter, because that's when comfort foods are really comforting.

Fresh cod in Iceland at the Blue Lagoon

Another boon of traveling in the dead of winter is that nothing is really that crowded. The bad part is that in Iceland we didn't get that many hours of daylight. We spent those horseback riding, glacier climbing, and hiking. On the last day we went to the hot spring for a spa day (we were there right after the currency crash, so we were quite rich even though we were just students). Afterwards I enjoyed this perfectly-cooked meal of fresh cod.

A variety of mangalitsa (a fatty breed of pig) sausages (I skipped the bread and the raw onions) from a street fair in Budapest

If you ever have the chance to go to Budapest, don't pass it up. I didn't know that much about it when I decided to go, but it's an incredibly elegant city with a rich history. And if you like high culture, it has fantastic opera, art, and very good food and wine. I enjoyed some amazing meals at fine restaurants like Cafe Kor, but this simple "meal" of sausages when we were exploring the park was so luscious and satisfying that I'll never forget it. It's hard to find sausage as good as this in the US. 

Cocido at La Bola in Madrid

The food in Madrid is incredible and there are so many places that have different regional Spanish cuisines that are hard to find in the US. I ate very well there with my friend Nancy, who lived there at the time. Cocido is a traditional stew from Madrid that is very very very filling and delicious. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of my other favorite meal, which was at a bar specializing in Asturian food. They have a unique light sparkling cider that is poured from very high so it gets really bubbly. And you can also enjoy ham (which is everywhere in Spain), a rich blue cheese called Cabrales, and spicy patatas brevas. 

Indonesian food made by a friend

A vegetarian meal? Yes, but this was so good that I hardly noticed. The spicy tangy flavors of Indonesian food taste good on anything. Lots of tamarind, black pepper, and chili peppers. And this is also when I realized that the stuff they sell as "tempeh" in the US has a fraction of the flavor of the authentic homemade Indonesian stuff. Unlike the cardboard American tempeh, Indonesian tempeh has a nutty flavor and a bread-like texture. Of course this food was even better because I enjoyed it with friends!

Sorbet and Reindeer at Aed in Tallinn, Estonia

Some of my favorite flavors of Scandinavia. The creamy tangyness of sea buckthorn, the tart brightness of lingonberries, and the gamey savory flavors of good lightly-seared reindeer.

Pig's head at Fatty Cue in Brooklyn, NY

I ate this with Rhys from Let Them Eat Meat and his friend Joe. I promise it was better than it looked. Unlike a lot of offal that have a mineral taste that some people find unpleasant, pig's head is mainly just fat. Luckily, they serve it with sides like a tangy Malaysian curry that works really well with the fattiness of the dish.

Sous vide pork + chanterelles at Manresa in Los Gatos, CA

One of the first really fancy modernist-style meals I'd ever had. The 14 or so courses were all delicious and each dish was a unique experience. This one was one of my favorites because the chanterelle flavor was so strong and worked so well alongside the tender juicy pork. It was even better knowing that the chanterelles came from my cousin Gene Lester's farm. 

Bacon-cooked sea bass with citrus at Salt & Fat in Sunnyside, NY

I'm convinced that Queens is the most underrated part of NYC. When I lived there I was so happy with the variety of foods from around the world that were available all hours of the day. Salt & Fat is definitely one of the most creative restaurants in Queens right now, especially now that M. Wells is gone. The food reminds me a little of Momofuku, but it's more a home-style restaurant and the atmosphere is actually a lot more welcoming and creative than at any of the Momofuku restaurants. Of course I'm a little biased, because I love salt and I love fat and they do both brilliantly. Use of ingredients like exotic citrus prevents the food from tasting greasy. 

Pork Ribs at Spring Lake Farm in NY

This is a delicious meal I shared with my friend Ulla and her family on their farm in the Catskills. Ulla's father Ingi has been feeding their pastured pigs an increasing percentage of their diet as hay and grass. He told me he was able to do that better because he pellets the hay for them to fatten on. I don't know how that works, but I know I had a really fun time on their farm and I was amazed at how much the pork tasted almost like a really fatty delicious beef! You can buy their pork from our meetup.

I am hoping to eat another incredible meal this Thursday and I hope to blog about it then! I would note that all these meals were eaten after I was able to get my illness under control through eating a paleo-style diet, which gave me the robustness to be able to see the world and eat an occasional treat without suffering any consequences.