That Gormandizer Man

How I Eat

I visited the inaugural Stoke Newington Literary Festival over the weekend. It was great - some great speakers; great debates; great venues; great topics.

One of the events I attended was this one:

Eat Your Words: Niki Segnit, Pete Brown, Elisa Beynon and Ian Kelly
There are only a handful of words that really describe taste and flavour, but collectively we have a seemingly limitless appetite for reading and writing about food and drink.  The author of The Flavour Thesaurus, Britain’s leading beer writer, the winner of the Waitrose Food Illustrated writing competition and the biographer of Anton Careme, the world’s first celebrity chef, discuss their struggle to pin flavour to the page.

It was bloody brilliant. For lots of different reasons. I'm a Pete Brown fan and have read a couple of his books, so it was great to finally meet him and hear what he had to say about the difficulty of explaining how things taste - beer specifically for him.

The point of this post is inspired by something Niki Segnit said though.

She was talking about five things that make up the flavour of things. I can't remember all five, but I do remember the first and last - which is useful for this post. She expressed that everything we eat has these 5 factors, and she expressed it by talking about concentric circles.

At the middle of this circle are the tiny atoms that make up the item. So it's science, it's rational - it's about the tiny little things that collide that we can't see that helps make a strawberry taste like a strawberry.

Now, for the outside of the circle is the emotional stuff. You see, one of the other things that helps a strawberry taste like a strawberry are the social things going on around you - the ephemeral stuff. And it's true - Pete Brown expressed it better than I can:

"I like to ask people what their favourite beer ever was. They always answer the same way. They'll say something like: "Oh it was amazing. I was on a beach in Greece. I'd just watched England play - Shearer was amazing - and I had some pistachios..." They never talk about the brand - they talk about the stuff around it that made it special."

So, if you eat a strawberry at home alone in winter watching Antiques Roadshow it'll probably taste different than if you were with your family in a beautiful garden in summer.

Right - so what does all this have to do with you Mark? Well, I think without knowing it, she's explained exactly how I eat on a daily basis.

I'm from a working class family in the North East. (Sorry if you're bored of hearing that, but it is important to the post... and it's true.) Food when I was growing up was this very very simple equation:

[Reformed meat product], chips and beans. Slice of buttered white bread if you're still hungry. Maybe a tin of fruit cocktail with condensed milk once a week for pudding.

That's no slight on my parents at all. My mam used to make a wicked Panacalty once in a while - she was a great cook - but she worked long hours. My dad worked long hours. Sometimes I'd get home from school and I'd do the cooking because of this.

For this reason, food was there as sustenance. To fill us up. There was no thinking about nutrition as such, just what do we want? ('Want' from the stuff available in the pantry.)

It was Quantity then Quality.
It was Emotional then Rational.

Due to this, I always want to eat food such as mashed potato, chips, soft white bread, reformed meat stuff, fried eggs, cheese on toast... ooooh I love a bit of cheese on toast.

But I don't. In fact I very rarely eat much of that stuff up there even though I want to. I'd probably go so far as to say I'm a bit OCD when it comes to food.

You see, I find it very difficult to eat anything that doesn't have any nutritional benefits. I need to know that what I'm eating is going to do me some good. Sure I can eat a bag of chips but I'll feel ill after.

What's more, this has changed the way I look at food and the way I select it. I'll regularly eat an item on the menu I don't want but is more beneficial nutritionally to me. Not just occasionally, but most of the time - probably about 90% of the time.

So now:

It is Quality then Quantity.
It is Rational then Emotional.

(Ironically I probably spend less on food than my mam spent on me back then - it's not necessarily expensive to eat stuff that's good for you.)

As I said though - it's gone a bit too far. When walking out of a restaurant I worry less about whether I enjoyed it and more about whether it was nutritionally beneficial to me. I'll poo-poo restaurants if they don't have a selection of food that is nutritionally beneficial. (Why has no pasta/ pizza restaurant got a 'wholemeal base/ pasta' option? Wagamama has wholewheat noodles but that's it.)

- I never order pasta with a creamy sauce - it's always a tomato-based sauce because tomatoes are good for you.
- I never order pork as a main course due to the fat - I'll always go for grilled chicken.
- Even if I want a main course of lamb - I'll probably order the fish if it's an oily fish.
- I never buy Heinz beans in the shops - I always buy reduced sugar/ salt beans.
- My cupboards are always bloody full of tinned mackerel and sardines...
(The only anomaly to this is cheese... I still eat too much cheese...)

But after the talk at the weekend I really feel I'm missing out on stuff. I'm limiting myself to such a slim portion of the menu everywhere I go. Where my dad would automatically ignore things on the menu due to price - I'm now doing the same for anything that doesn't have an apparent nutritional benefit.

So, from now on, once in a while I'm going to not look at anything from a nutritional point of view. I'm not going to box myself in a corner. I'm going to indulge in the best equation of all:

I'm gonna be Quality then Quantity.
I'm gonna be Emotional then Rational.

5 things I thought about in Mumbai

I was in Mumbai recently. It's a mad, busy, noisy, sweaty, sprawling city. It's a city of contrasts. The 'haves' and 'have nots' aren't so much in different parts of the city as right next to each other on the street.

I loved it. The people were friendly, the food was amazing and it was a great learning experience.

People have asked what I think about India. The answer is I don't have a clue. I visited Mumbai so I couldn't possibly talk about India as a whole. It's like people visiting London for a few days and then saying they've visited Britain... that really gets my goat.

So I thought I'd share a few little things that caught my eye in Mumbai.

Upcycled products always catch the eye
This is a watermelon (and something else I can't remember) juice in Mocha Mojo in Bandra.

 

It's in an old jar.

This is not a new concept, but it's one that I always notice. Recycling things is good, but upcycling is cool. I don't want my drink in a branded glass that's been designed for the purpose. I want it in something that is equally suitable, that was designed for something else, that makes me appreciate the experience around me. If you're a brand, upcycle stuff that's relevant to your brand and I'll notice your branding, your product and the experience I'm having.

We all love fish and chips in a newspaper, so why can't we have Innocent smoothies in upcycled jars or something? Stella are producing awful advertising at the moment about their 'green' efforts - what about upcycling something, Stella?

Give people context, and give them a choice
This is a bottle of water:

 

That isn't a Sell By date, a Display Until date, a Best Before date or a Use By date. It's a Produced On date. It's that simple really. Why give them lots of confusing pieces of advice (which we all ignore when we want to) when you can give them the context of the product?

I know a sealed bottle of water will last me a long time if it's looked after and was only produced a few months ago. Beer manufacturers are doing this and calling it a Freshness Date.

There are two keys to the success of this shift: 1) Education and; 2) Confidence.

People need to be educated about how to best look after the product they've bought. If they look after it well, they then need to know when to make their own mind up about when to discard the product. That's part two - giving them the confidence to make that decision.

Space can overlap and be successful
They like a game of cricket those Mumbaikars...

In England, a patch of land where someone is playing cricket is a very precious space. You may get the odd couple of kids on the outfield with a small bat and ball, but when the game is in progress the accepted rule is to keep off the oval. All parts of the oval. This doesn't apply in Mumbai.

 

That's something I sketched out just after I'd walked through the Oval Maidan.

It's trying to explain the utter carnage that was apparently happening all around... but in fact it's showing a very intricate set of rules about playing cricket in a busy space.

On the left is a game of amateur cricket in England. The playing area is a hallowed turf but there may be the odd little infringement on the outfield by a couple of kids or a small energetic dog. This is as far as it goes though, and any infringements on the field further in are strictly prohibited and frowned upon.

On the right is a rough sketch of what was going on in Oval Maidan. (It may not be 100% accurate - I drew it in temperatures in excess of 5 trillion degrees, after a few Kingfisher...) What it's meant to show is that it's possible to play lots of games of cricket at the same time. It's fine if fielders overlap from lots of different games, so long as the pitch at the centre of the field is unobstructed. When space is at a premium, really question whether you can bend the boundaries... excuse the pun.

One downside is you have to make sure you don't get hit by loads of balls, and not just the one in your game...

Food in beta
When nationwide branded restaurants change their menu, you sometimes get an email telling you. When an independent local restaurant does it, the chances are you won't notice until you go there again.

 

And when you get there, maybe you won't notice it unless they flag it up well. 

I really like this - the latest version of the menu. It's not for the benefit of a printer or a client - it's for the benefit of the customer. It's letting you know the menu is constantly being reviewed and improved.

Food in beta. That's my kind of restaurant. The next step is an interactive menu that gives people the opportunity to comment on each individual dish.

Unusual media space
I really noticed this cutlery when it was placed in front of me.

 

I noticed it because it's different. This cutlery succeeded where many an ad campaign falters - it got my attention. It did it simply by experimenting with the norms: shape and scale.

It also made me think about cutlery in general. Ubiquitous, but one thing we truly engage with several times a day. If I were a manufacturer of disposable cutlery, I'd think about that and I'd think about using it as a media space for relevant brands... chewing gum anyone? Toothpaste? Coffee?

Five things the weekend taught me

1.) Being spontaneous is what life is all about

So I'm sat in the pub with a group of friends. Me and Rory are saying that it'd be great to go to New York together. We've been all over the place together; we always have a laugh, learn loads and it's great to go running all over the world.

But we've never been to New York. Why have we never been to New York? Well, all the usual reasons: never have the money; always too busy; not enough holiday days blah blah.

While we're discussing this I go onto my iPhone secretly and book two tickets. Done. If we had anything else sorted for those dates, we'll go to New York anyway - what's more important than going to New York with a good mate? We're off mid-June and we're looking for interesting people to meet. Drop me a line with ideas.

What this taught me: The excitement of doing something without planning it to the Nth degree is really inspirational. There's only us stopping us doing stuff, people. That thing you've been putting off for ages? That thing you're thinking about next year? Do it now. The reason you have for not doing it is probably not a real reason at all.

2.) A small amount of pain is worth it for a larger part of happiness

I hate injections. Needles in general. In fact, any kind of pain. I may be a stocky, rough looking northerner, but I'm a bit soft. As my mam used to say: "Stop being a big girls blouse, Mark like..."

I'm off to Mumbai in two weeks. Another place to experience, another lifestyle to learn about, more new food to eat, societies to try and understand - I love travelling. Unfortunately, so do lots of bugs and diseases.

On Saturday I had to be innoculated against Tetanus, Polio, Hepatitis A and Typhoid. That's three needles. The Typhoid one bloody stung I can tell you...

I closed my eyes, talked bollocks for a few minutes to take my mind off it ("I work in advertising... yeah, we do categorise people... sometimes by age... sometimes by mindset...") and then it was done. Done. (Besides the dead arms I had for a few days after - I resembled Keyser Soze.)

What this taught me: Doing things you don't like is fine if the thing you're doing it for is worth it. If the ultimate goal never seems to be getting closer, or if the pain that's getting you there is too painful then the balance is wrong.

3.) Art that truly moves you is a magical thing

As I've mentioned before - I'm a big Pink Floyd fan. Their music is such an important part of my life. More than that, the story of Pink Floyd is important too. A big part of this story is their artwork.

For me, the way they portray their music visually is very very important for a couple of reasons: 1) Their music is such an emotionally-led, multi-layered experience that it gets the imagination going immediately. If my brain is showing me this image when I listen to 'Dogs', what was in their brains? Their artwork gives me an indication of this. 2) Most of them met at Architecture school. I studied a degree in Architecture before getting into Advertising. So I think in pictures like they do. When I listen to their songs and close my eyes I envisage walking through spaces.

So over the weekend I visited the Idea Generation Gallery to see Storm Thorgerson's exhibition about his album art - for Floyd and other bands. It was excellent. (I'm quite happy they didn't have an original print from the Animals cover as I would have bought it and I'm skint...)

What this taught me: When something moves you, it transcends the human senses.

4.) We can all learn from Newcastle United

I'm a Newcastle fan. We got promoted at the weekend. It's easy to say this now we've been promoted - we're a cut above in the Championship, but not good enough for the Premiership.

In previous seasons we've had a bigger wage bill, more star footballers, more flair in our play and managers that love the limelight.

This season we've cut our wage bill, we have no star players, we're effective in what we do (but still play attractively) and a manager that is there to manage effectively.

You see - this season we're a team. In previous seasons we've been a team based around one or two individuals.

What this taught me: Success is achieved when everyone pulls together in the same direction, with the same ultimate goal. Sure, there'll be differences of opinion along the way, but if you're in it as a team you stand a much better chance of succeeding. Agencies take note.

5.) I look better with a dummy

 

What this taught me: I don't suit yellow. Oh and my dental bill will be huge one day.

Not putting it off

Ok so after seeing Sir Ken last week I've decided to add a new category to the blog:

Not putting it off.

This is inspired by something Sir Ken said that struck a chord with me. He talked about when he watched a gig that his brother was playing back in his native Liverpool. After the gig he sat down with the band and was chatting to them. During the conversation he made what he thought was an innocuous remark to the keyboard player:

Sir Ken: "I'd love to be able to play the keyboards."
Keyboard player: "No you wouldn't."
Sir Ken: "Erm, yes, I would love to play the keyboards."
Keyboard player: "No you wouldn't."
Sir Ken: "Excuse me? What do you mean?"
Keyboard player: "If you would love to be able to do it, you would be doing it."

In life, we all want to do things and whilst some of them are more difficult than others, there are things that we stop ourselves from doing. I know there are several things in my life that I have wanted to do for a long time but haven't. Through no fault of anyone's but my own. I just haven't done them. I may have been distracted by other stuff in my life, I may not have been able to afford it, it may not have fit in to my plans, or I may just have bottled it.

Well, this new part of the blog is hopefully going to get some of that stuff out and done. I'm going to at least attempt to do a lot of things I always said I'm going to do. Some are quick things, and some may take planning, but instead of just talking about them I'm going to take steps to do them.

Keep your eyes peeled for Not putting it off part one - it's already under way and I just need to write it up soon...