The NYC Fancy Food Show, Best Buddies, and NPR

I have a best friend. (I have a few best friends, but let's not confuse things.) Because of this best friend, I am blessed with the chance to propose crazy outings and find my suggestions met with enthusiasm. I do the same for her, so hopefully it's all relatively fair. I'll call my best friend "Ethel".

Why would I call her Ethel? Honestly, I've been wanting to use the name ever since my previous dog, Babe, wound up in the pound after getting loose from my yard. When I went to pick her up, I found that her "pound name" was Ethel. Weirdly, I could totally see where they got that. So, in tribute to the good people from the county dog pound who saved my dog when I was stupid, I shall call one of my best friends Ethel for the duration of this story.

The thing I proposed to Ethel, the springboard of this story, was a community college outing to the Fancy Food Show in NYC on June 28th. I have occasionally taken cooking classes at this college, and they were offering a one-day trip, leaving at ungodly 6 A.M. and returning at ungodly 11 P.M., up to NYC to attend this rather broadly named exhibition. I was intrigued. If there's anything in the world I like, it's food, and if people are calling it fancy, I want it. Ethel, as per our friendship agreement, enthusiastically agreed.

We had no idea what to expect. And what we encountered was different, sometimes in surreal ways, from what I anticipated. But it was an experience we enjoyed thoroughly, both for its good parts and its bad, because both contributed rich material to our store of shared experience.

It's now nearly a month later. I was attending a technical conference that let out early the other day, and because of that, I heard a story on NPR by Fresh Air about a mass grave in Afghanistan while I was on my way home. Because that story was only halfway through and had me by the ears, I turned on NPR when I walked in the house, which is rare for me. Normally NPR is strictly a car thing. Because I had it on in the house, I happened to hear a listener complaint on All Things Considered about a weird Planet Money piece pretending to stage a reality show at... the Fancy Food Show in NYC. The listener panned the piece, but I, of course, muted the radio and leapt at my computer to hear the archived segment. (Have I mentioned how deeply I love the Internet?) I listened to the half hour broadcast, which can be found here: Planet Money's Fancy Food Show Contest

The segment is, admittedly, a little trite. In particular, I thought the part about including a mythical creature was just stupid. Aside from that, though, the notion of pulling three economics stories out of the Fancy Food Show, and making a contest out of it so that the story would also include commentary from the judges about story quality... well, I thought that was quite interesting. It may seem disjoint, but to me, pondering the workings of our economy and pondering the workings of a good radio story are things of a kind, and I felt like they blended just fine with each other.

My own vote went to Adam Davidson, and during this story, I'll explain why.

Adam wrote a piece on discovering, tucked in a back corner of the food show, a long table of four or five Palestinian food distributors. I remember this table. Unfortunately, I tried none of the food, and the reason for that was simply that I was more full than I believed a human could be. Ethel and I hadn't paced ourselves at all. When we arrived at the food show well before noon, our eyes bugged out on stalks at the sight of the convention floor. There were booths as far as the eye could see, arranged in neat rows, many with nationalities displayed above, and we firmly believed that we could sample every single thing that was on offer. After all, each booth would surely only offer bite sized treats, yes?

We were in for a bit of a surprise. First of all, I had thought the word "Fancy" modified the word "Food", but we soon realized that wasn't the case. "Fancy" modified the word "Show". Much as Adam described in his piece, each booth was dolled up far beyond what I had been expecting, with rich paneling and sophisticated decorations, marble countertops, silver bowls, attractive and slightly hostile hosts and hostesses. This phenomenon was independent of the food being offered; many, many people looked down their noses at me that fine Sunday, and not a few of those people were manning booths offering rice crackers and crispbreads. We would sidle up to a booth hoping for a treat, and the booth host would look down at our badges, see we were from a community college, and don a look of unmistakable disdain. Ethel, bless her heart, was immune to this look. I, on the other hand, took to fabricating elaborate stories about the exact status of my "studenthood" and my role in the world of culinary excellence. At various times I was considering starting a business, hoping to work at an organic-foods restaurant, or planning for retirement and a second career. I couldn't help trying to make at least the occasional host doubt his snap judgment about me, though I surely fooled no one, especially when my fairy-tale-spinning led me to hand one fellow my "card" for a follow-up consultation, and he saw I was an engineer at a technical research firm.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that nobody actually wanted us to eat their food, we did, and it turned out that if you eat bite sized pieces of everything you see, you get quite full in about an hour. Especially if the first row you walked down was mostly bread, and you didn't have the foresight to realize this was all part of a master plan to keep the neophytes from eating the expensive stuff. We actually overheard someone complaining that the real buyers must have "given all their tickets to their family members, who have all just come here to eat the food", as if that was somehow... wrong.

It didn't take us long to notice that there was something odd about the food show. In something like ten acres of booths, there was surprisingly little variety in the offerings. We joked that next year, we can save ourselves the trip: all we have to do is set up, on one of our kitchen islands, a buffet comprising a bowl of olives, some finger-sized bread, some cheese, a fruit flavored tea, some high end chocolate, and a hunk of sausage. Each time we finished, we'd have Ethel's husband rearrange the dishes and we could go down the row again. Every third pass, he'd replace the olives with some other random pickled antipasto. Every fifth pass, he'd replace the chocolate with some other kind of candy. Every tenth pass, he'd throw in a random ethnic item like honey, flavored instant rice, or anything soy flavored.

This is the first reason I liked Adam's story best: it was actually about the economics of the food show itself. It didn't take long for Ethel and me to begin wondering aloud what the Fancy Food Show was really all about. Who were really the customers of this show? We tried to picture exactly what sort of business would cross half the continent to taste a hundred different varieties of only eight foods. Sometimes, we'd get a glimpse, maybe a prim looking woman wearing a Whole Foods badge. We'd occasionally see two business-suited people sitting together at a side table earnestly discussing matters over someone's stern leather organizer. But such sightings were rare; mostly we appeared to be amidst an enormous number of exhibitors eating each other's food. So, while I didn't try any of the food at that back-corner Palestinian display, I appreciated Adam's explanation of what on earth those people were doing there, what they hoped to gain from exhibiting at the convention. I think he characterized the intended audience as restaurant suppliers and food distributors. In other words, not chefs and cooks and caterers, but the people who supply them; not the people who taste and eat the food, but the people who ship them the food. Which meant, perhaps, that the overriding criterion for whether a food fit in at the Fancy Food Show was its bulk shippability. This is what jars of pepperoncini and fancy gift chocolate have in common; they are things one might want to buy in bulk and resell. This is why the occasional spice display didn't feature its products by preparing delectable imaginatively-curried chicken bites; delicious chicken bites say "yum", not "ship me!" Instead, they displayed their spices dry, in bowls, because their potential customer puts flavor much farther down the list of must-haves than Ethel and I did.

The second thing I liked about Adam's story was the bit where he told the Palestinian Bugle-imitator that his chips were very good, when they were in fact horrible. This turned out to be quite a problem for Ethel and me. Neither one of us wanted to be rude to any of the booth proprietors, so we were loathe to admit to anyone's face that we didn't like their product. But it soon became woefully apparent that we had limited space in our stomachs, so if one of us tried a sample, it was imperative to know whether said sample was actually worth the stomach space it occupied. Many times, one of us would say complimentary things about a taste of whatnot, and that would lure the other of us into trying it, and then only after walking away would it become apparent that neither of us had enjoyed the experience. Later in the afternoon, when stomach-space considerations got dire, we finally decided we needed a code. We agreed that, if one of us proclaimed a morsel to be "delicious", that meant it was to be avoided.

This seemed like a foolproof plan, but it encountered an unexpected hitch. For the next twenty foods we tried, we never had to resort to the code word. They were all pretty darn good. So it was more than an hour later when we finally wound up at a Swiss non-fat chocolate energy drink booth, where I gamely tried a swig. Ethel, it must be realized, loves chocolate. In spite of the absolute deluge of chocolate products at this food show, Ethel was still interested in this Swiss drink. As I quaffed the offending beverage, I could see Ethel leaning towards me slightly, in physical anticipation of my judgment. I smacked my lips, pretended to appear thoughtful, and said, "Wow. That is delicious."

And just as the booth attendant began to look pleased, Ethel's face crumpled in visible disappointment and she plaintively said, "Awww, really?" I held my breath, because the only thing worse than Swiss non-fat chocolate energy drink on one's tongue is Swiss non-fat chocolate energy drink up one's nose. I affirmed, "Yeah, delicious!" as I wheeled smoothly away from the booth, pretending to sip appreciatively at my drink. I crossed the aisle to gain some distance and collect myself, pitched the container into the trash, and wheeled on Ethel.

"What the hell is the purpose of a code word if you're going to totally give away its meaning the second I use it??!" I hollered.

"Was I that obvious?" Ethel asked. I imitated her response and she cracked up and shrugged. "It's not like we're going to see these people again anyhow," she submitted. I begged to disagree. I am odd enough looking to be highly memorable, and I have had people walk up to me a decade after some event and describe in detail not only my presence at said event, but exactly what I was wearing. Ethel pretended to be chastened, but I could tell she was faking it.

My point is, I could totally relate to Adam pretending to like those fake Bugles. He should just be thankful he didn't have Ethel with him to blow his cover.

The final reason I liked Adam's piece best was the fact that he incorporated his mythical beast reference in Arabic. As I said at the start, I thought this story requirement was silly and extraneous, so the fact that he managed to fulfill it without annoying me with it was a stroke of genius.

I had gone to the food show fully expecting to spend my day in the Asian foods sections; they are my favorite cuisines. That's because I had envisioned steaming samples of gourmet pad thai and be bim bap and loc lac, not packaged soy crackers and brochures about freeze-dried mushrooms. The real show being what it was, it turned out that the jewel in the geode was the cheese section, with an acre of fabulous blues and gorgonzolas and washed-rind-this and goat-that. This was where Ethel and I returned after a long, long day on our feet. These were the last bites we crammed down our completely overtaxed gullets. And this was where we felt at home, because this seemed to be the most reliably welcoming corner of the exhibition.

It was good that we ended our day on such a good note, because our community college bus trip home featured a five hour ride in our wholly inadequate death-trap of a vehicle, complete with a very loud woman in the back intent on detailing her thoughts on everything from her resentment of her stepmother to her husband's shoe-insert size to her friend's upcoming wedding shower. If there hadn't been duct tape holding the emergency exit window in place, Ethel and I might have eased her through it.

Being Green During the End of Days

I'm a child of the 70's. By that I mean I was born in the 60's, and thus had many of my formative experiences during the Carter administration. Thanks for your condolences. For those of you who don't remember the 70's, or weren't alive yet, I can summarize it like this: it was just like the late 00's (only more genuine). We had a recession. We had an energy crisis. We were internationally unpopular. We were under constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Financial watchdogs were publishing dire warnings about our impending federal insolvency. The country, as a whole, had very low self-esteem. I actually wrote to Jimmy Carter and suggested that many of our problems would be solved if we scrapped the automobile and returned to traveling on horseback. The fact that I was horse-crazy had nothing to do with it, of course.

As you probably know, 9/11 and our other modern troubles have caused a real "return to religion" for many Americans. It wasn't too long after that that the field across the street from my neighborhood sprouted an Islamic school. Which was a weird thing in itself, because I felt really conflicted about it: on the one hand, I believed many Muslims were suffering bigoted societal backlash daily, finding themselves lumped in with terrorists through no fault of their own. On the other hand, I instinctively eyed the school as if it was a bomb-making den, raising my eyebrows whenever I saw lights on at night. Apparently, our psyches contain multitudes.

Not long after the Islamic school appeared, an Evangelical church began construction in the same field. Nature abhors a magnetic monopole. A year or so went by, and we watched the church rise, and we watched both the school and the church gain more congregants, and at the same time the economy was faltering, our Iraq efforts were neatly balanced between embarrassment and travesty, and "global warming" was being traded in for wholesale "climate change" because things were apparently just too awful to predict.

Right about when gas hit $4.00/gallon, three cheerful teenagers, two girls and a boy, showed up on my doorstep. They wanted to tell me that the Evangelical church was open and would be holding its first service that coming Sunday. I welcomed them to the neighborhood, and I mentioned that we'd enjoyed watching them all work together to build the church. They asked me if I thought I'd be attending. I said, "Well, I may come by for a service just to meet you and welcome you, but I'm unlikely to be a regular."

"Do you not believe in God?" asked the girl on the right.

"I certainly believe in some kind of God," I replied, "but it's probably not one that your church would recognize."

"Really? In these times, you don't think we need Jesus more than ever?"

"No, not as such. Sorry," I said.

Then the young man spoke up. "You know, the End of Times is coming, can't you feel it? With what's going on in the world, the climate, the wars? We're running out of resources?"

I smiled at him reassuringly, and said, "I won't argue with you that things are serious these days. And I understand why you're feeling as worried as you are. If you believe things are that dire, I can't really dispute it, because you may be right."

"But you don't believe it?" he asked.

"No, I don't."

"Why not?"

"Because this is just like the 70's," I said. "And after the 70's, we had such a run of prosperity and good fortune that most people don't even remember the 70's happened. Seriously, it was just like this. so it's hard for me to get too worked up about it."

All three of them just stood on my porch blinking at me. After a bit of awkwardness, I put in, "Really, welcome to the neighborhood. You have a lovely church, and I'm sure you will enjoy it very much. Best of luck to you all." That broke the spell, and they muttered goodbyes and wandered off in search of the next door.

It left me pondering, though. Any time history repeats itself, it never repeats exactly. It's always a variation on a theme. I've noticed the many similarities between then and now, but I've also noticed differences. It's hard for me to know whether these differences are real, or whether they're just the difference between the child-observer I was in the 70's and the adult-observer I am today. I was a very earnest, patriotic child. I am a more laid back and cynical adult. But it seems to me as if, this time around, we're kind of... pretending. Pretending to be worried about the environment. Pretending to have a recession.

Obviously, lots of real people have lost real jobs are are really struggling. What I'm trying to say, though, is that, in general, I get the same sense of fickle self-obsession off our "crises" as I got off the preceding glory years. People talk about economizing and cutting back, but these are the same people who just finished remodeling their entire house even though it didn't need it to begin with. They're not really economizing, they're just at a good stopping point. They're not talking about buying a bunch of townhouses to flip for easy money anymore, sure, but that talk was hot air all along. They whine about the drastic decline in their 401k's, but since most of them aren't near retirement, it's just whining. They aren't buying a new car, but that's because their current SUV is only three years old.

And "going green"? Surely I'm not the only one rolling my eyes at the faux-greennness running rampant in stores these days. I thought it was all just advertising glitz until I decided to replace my kitchen floor this year. Now, remember: I'm a child of the 70's. So while I'm attracted to the idea of buying a "green" floor, I know that the absolute best "green" move you can make is to not throw things out before they're used up. So I'm not replacing my kitchen cabinets and countertops. Or my kitchen appliances (though I realize one could have a debate about the fridge). I'm not replacing the carpet in the rest of the house even though it may only have a few years left. I'm keeping the wood foyer. So all I'm doing is pulling up my vinyl flooring, which has an intriguing mold colony growing in it, and replacing it with cork and tile flooring.

Now, to me, this is huge. This is the biggest remodeling thing I've done on my house since I moved in over ten years ago. I'm very excited about being able to get a new floor. But, the thing is, it's not turning out to be that easy. Because I don't want to do this myself, I want to hire someone to do it. And since we're all just pretending to have a recession, it has been very hard to get anyone to call me back or show up to give me an estimate. Maybe it's just my recession-proof area, but as soon as people hear I have a mere 350 square feet to redo, they practically hang up on me. The one estimate I have in hand is quite high, as if they've slapped a "tolerance fee" on, hoping I won't bother them by actually hiring them for my petty little job.

Meanwhile, I hear on the radio that people who are wanting to "go green" and "get back to basics" by growing some of their own food are hiring companies to come out and build them a garden. They interviewed a young couple who had a company come out, test the soil, till a 10 x 10 foot area, truck in more soil, pile in a few chemicals, and give planting and cultivating advice. They were happy to have paid over $1,200 for this service. Now, look, if you want to spend over a grand getting some dirt dug in your back yard, that's fine, and I hope you get lovely tomatoes. But don't try to tell me you're "economizing" or being "down to earth". I have no problem at all with you enjoying a luxurious dabble in the new fad of home vegetable gardening (which is also, by the way, a total reprise of earlier fads -- remember Victory gardens?). Just don't try to tell me the recession made you do it, or that you were motivated by your deep concern for the environment.

So you can tell I'm a little crabby. That's because, when all this gloom gathered, a whiff of my old 1970's earnestness came back to me. I hoped people really would get back to basics a little. I remember when we'd buy a new car, and all the neighbors would stop by to see it and admire it. I remember when hiring someone to do a few handyman jobs was routine, and a giant remodel was something only rich people did. I remember when lawns just had to be mostly green and mostly mowed, with a few nice flowers by the front bushes. I remember life before weed whackers and obligatory mulch.

We've come such a long way since then -- more energy efficient homes and appliances, a better awareness of our impact on the environment, a sort of democratizing of luxury -- but we had lost any sense of moderation. I was hoping that these "troubled times" would bring the moderation back into the equation, so that we could enjoy these improvements with less stress.

I fear now, though, that this all really is just like the 70's, and that now, like then, when our good intentions meet the tedious aspects of meaningful implementation, we'll declare our impatience with such drudgery and will go out and have the 80's all over again.

And I'll be stuck with this moldy vinyl floor.