I was straining pretty hard trying to find something to talk about tonight. I like to think that I throw interesting idea up here, and I certainly wanted something thought-provoking.

   Nothing came up immediately, so I flicked over to YouTube and said, “Eh, I’ll think of something.”

    As I was rolling through YouTube, I noticed that one of my favorite channels, Extra Credits, had put up a new video. For those of you who don’t know, the Extra Credits puts out weekly videos based around various aspects of video games- design, writing, storytelling, mechanics, marketing, the industry, etc. As a bit of a gamer and literature/history nerd, their videos frequently get me rather intrigued in aspects of art I hadn’t truly devoted much time (or thought) to. For example, they have done videos on Horror characters and monsters, character development using the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator, a crash course in symbolism, and even a quick and dirty (but interesting and informative) overview of the “hero’s journey” narrative. I highly recommend looking them up if any of that appealed to you- or indeed, if you like games, writing, or business at all.

     Their most recent video discussed something that, as a writer and wanna-be storyteller, I never realized had a name- the magic circle. The magic circle, in brief, is an atmosphere created that “draws people in”- that lets the audience divorce themselves from the real world and enter the world of the story. This can be generated by a number of things- the presence of music, stirring and startling visuals, the hint of the mysterious, even the physical location and conditions the audience is in. It’s whatever qualities in a story or it’s performance that let the audience lose themselves in the world and invest in the story.

     As I was watching the video and listened to the Extra Credits crew discuss examples of how it works and where it can be found, I got to thinking about something else I had read recently that made mention of very similar notions- a book I had picked up on Judaism.

    Rabbi Niles Goldstein’s excellent book Gonzo Judaism was suggested to me by my older sister. Having grown up in a pretty secular Jewish family, and part of a religious congregation we had roughly ZERO interest in, we had both spent quite a lot of time in recent years debating and evaluating our identities as Jews- if that’s what we would even call ourselves, what it would mean if we did, what it would mean if we DIDN’T, and so on, back and forth. In the book, Rabbi Goldstein calls for a change in what seems to be the dominant atmosphere of American Judaism and calls for younger, questing, vibrant souls to confront Judaism in the same spirit that Hunter S. Thompson confronted journalism (creating what he called “gonzo journalism”- hence the book title.) One chapter in the book discussed how a “new” Judaism didn’t need to (and, in fact, couldn’t) completely divorce itself from the old, and how some congregations have been looking backward- digging up old, forgotten, esoteric prayers and rituals from Judaisms past and breathing new life into them. 

   Regardless of which religion you come from, or even no religion, the impact and effect of ritual cannot be denied. Rituals, performed properly, and with full faith and knowledge of their meaning, are not just superstitions and chores, but SYMBOLS. Even if you are not religious, you have certain habits in your life that MEAN something. When you come home from work and take off your tie or put on comfy clothes, that is a ritual- one of making the transition from your work self to your home self. Inversely, when I was working at a hospital, it didn’t matter if I had arrived early for my shift and was in the building for 30 minutes already, clipping on my ID badge felt like I was “officially” on the clock, and at work. Even the simplest images and actions can have power if we give it to them- then they become rituals.

When several rituals are used together, they create an atmosphere- something that draws us out of ordinary life and into the holy moment we are experiencing. Lighting candles, lighting incense, singing certain songs, wearing particular clothes- all work in concert to draw us into something different.

In other words, they create a magic circle.

Anyone I haven’t lost by now is probably nodding and going, “Ok, great- rituals are important. I thought this was a food and dining blog.”

     Well… what else is food? What else is sitting together at a dinner table? The smell of dinner coming in from the kitchen… the taste of THAT roast chicken your family ONLY makes on Friday night. How are these anything BUT rituals? How is that anything BUT a magic circle, dividing Friday night dinner from all the other dinners you had that week? 
Restaurants spend an incredible amount of money on creating ambience- decor, music, lighting, furniture, uniforms for the staff- all of it based around a certain theme and meant to convey a feeling- creating a magic circle in which you are physically and emotionally enveloped in a single story- the story of you having dinner. As Warner LeRoy said, “A restaurant is a fantasy — a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.”

     In Gonzo Judaism, Rabbi Goldstein gives suggestions on how to approach rituals- creating ones for yourself that will create a separation for you: a division between the sacred space and moment in time you want, and the rest of the mundane world. Lighting incense, putting on certain music, fixing particular foods- all serve to bring you mentally and emotionally to somewhere far, far away from where you are. 

    Meals do not need to be, and perhaps were not meant to be, just necessary pauses in the day to shove nutritious material into your body.

     Nothing NEEDS to be “ordinary”. Every day doesn’t NEED to be “same shit, different day.” All it takes is the desire to make it different, the awareness of how, the attentiveness to make it happen- and just a bit of the magic we place into anything that matters.

Stay classy,

I am currently sitting in my girlfriend’s living room while she plays piano.

Me: “Hun, I’m three days late on a blog entry. What should I write about?”

Em: “Weren’t you talking earlier about eating and dining culture? Write something about that?”

Me: “That’s ALL I write about though- I need something else!”

Em: “How about you? Write about your roots and whatever.”

I knew I was dating her for a reason, ladies and gents.

     There is wisdom and warning in the classic saying, “Write what you know.” It reminds the writer that there are always ideas, and that one should always be able to write about their chosen topic knowledgeably and responsibly. The caveat, however, is that only writing about what you know discourages you from researching and learning more.

How does this connect to food?
Simply, and I will illustrate with a thought exercise.

Sit back and think a moment about some of your favorite memories. Moments that made you feel warm and loved- or maybe ones that made you feel invigorated and alive.
Recall every detail of those moments that you can. Every single sensation- touch, taste, smell, sound, vision.
The two that will come to you most readily and rapidly will be taste and smell. 

    When I do this, I can almost immediately recall the taste of my grandmother’s matzah ball soup and her corn pudding. I can quickly recall the smell of the whiskey and beer my friends and I had on a wild pub crawl through Manchester, New Hampshire late one night. (I also recall the aftermath, less fondly.)
     These moments stay with us, and we carry them our entire lives. Writers carry the inspirations and lessons of every book they ever read. Painters and photographers carry the same from every picture and all their favorite painters. In a way, we all have a sort of gallery in our minds, where the exhibits are memories and the library is full of ideas and inspirations.

 A chef’s gallery is full of food. Every table they ever sat at, every dish they were ever served, every restaurant, cafe, diner, and bar they’ve sat in- they can pull from that gallery quickly and vividly. They can pull from it and create.

The food writer Molly Witzenberg put it very well when she wrote:

  “When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It’s also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.”

In my personal gallery, I have my mother’s kitchen, and the smells of family dinners with my grandmother. I have every fine dining experience that was ever afforded to me. Whenever I am called upon to make a new dessert, I immediately fall back on those memories, so I might modify the saying to be “Bake what you know, and bake what you love.”

Just like the original saying though, there is a caveat.

If you want to cook well, you must first learn to eat well. Seek out and sample strange new things whenever you can- a culinarian has no place being a picky eater. If anything, get picky about quality. Life is too short to eat at McDonalds and the local diner every day. 

If you want to make amazing new things, do your homework, and expand your gallery.

Stay curious all and, of course,

Stay Classy,

“Adventurer? How do you know?” I asked with a bemused smirk.

She shrugged, “You just give off that air, and you ordered an Earl Grey.”

Off-topic? Not exactly.
This was more than kindness and levity with a customer- it was humanity. Especially around this time of year, whether or not one celebrates any holidays in particular, I’ve noticed people start to either compress and disguise their humanity or they put it out on display.

Perhaps it’s the chilly weather of this time of year, reminding some primitive, animal part of us of the necessity to huddle together for warmth.
Perhaps in the proximity of New Year’s, and we band together to recognize the incessant march of time- whether we see it as having survived another year, having lost another year on our way to the grave, or- in the best case- we see it as having lived another year and grown one year wiser.

As I hopped on the PATCO train into the city, I got one with a group of quiet fellow travelers, all of us keeping very much to ourselves to the next stop. At the next stop, a massive group of travelers came on board, including at least 6 very loud children and 5 very loud and excited adults. They were apparently on their way to a light show- a family tradition for them this time of year. At once, I could have imagined that most of my quiet companions would be irritated at the sudden raucous noise. Instead, as I looked around, I realized we were all showing the same knowing glance and smile, silently saying “Awww… what a happy family, traveling all together. It’s like a Lifetime movie!”

Chance smiles and words create warmth. I never met any of those people before, and probably never will again- but for 10 minutes, we were companions.

The title of this entry is Hebrew (written as “הכנסת אורחים.”) It is one of the 613 mitzvot (commandments enumerated in the Torah,) and literally means “inviting guests” or, colloquially “hospitality.” The commandment came from a time when companionship and kindness from strangers was not just something mannerly, it was vital to survival. It was no unusual act of kindness to give a stranger aid, or food, or a place to stay the night- it was a fact of civilization, as much of a commonplace rule as stopping for a red light.

This time of year, time, weather, mortality, religion, and society tries to nudge us toward remembering this. I’ve said before and again that feeding people is more than nourishment- it is a social interplay, and a meeting of humanity. As my great grandparents would say, “Hospitality is a form of worship.”

This time of year, in between the movie marathons, Road Warrior on the highways trying to get home, and last-minute dashes to engage in an orgy of gift buying- stop somewhere, sit awhile, and just have a kind word and smile for people.

And mean it.

See what happens- you’ll love it.

Stay Classy,