blue is not a food

I recently realized that all the food I really like is orange.

Orange is also my favorite color. Coincidence??? Perhaps, or perhaps not.

After all, people seem to prefer their favorite color of every object, whether or not color actually affects functionality (Read: early Apple iBooks).

However, maybe food is different. People seem associate the "correct" color of a food with the food being good and unspoiled. So, while you'd think someone whose favorite color is green would like green-dyed cookies....

...It doesn't really work that way.

With kids, though, food-dyed objects are often a great success:

My theory is that we form very strong associations between food and colors as we grow up. Foods that look a certain way should also taste a certain way. (Kids are awesome, because they don't really have this association totally solidified yet.)

I actually think many foods of certain colors fall into certain taste/health categories:

The colors shown above align like this, to give us The Colorful Food Map of Colors:

I like the color orange, and I also like sweet healthy foods. So this makes sense. But is perhaps coincidental, because I know many people who like the color green, but prefer foods in the brown/unhealthy/sweet category.

The most obvious thing about this chart, though, is that blue is missing! I honestly couldn't think of any foods that were naturally blue, other than blueberries. And Quadrant I was already getting crowded, so I decided to leave berries off the list. So sad.

Sorry, blue!

classification of inanimate objects

People always accuse me of mis-naming things.

But some things are confusing! I understand that I am supposed to see objects like this:

Also, that's what everyone else calls it.

But instead, I see objects like this:

Objects have many different characteristics. I find this confusing. Thanks to the SAT, I also often mis-name them.

When I was a middle schooler, it was decided that all the 8th graders should try their hands at the SAT. And so it was that I read a reading comprehension passage about Carl Linnaeus, and became fascinated with the accurate classification of objects.

This is actually a part of a larger chart, simplified here:

I usually use "popsicle" as the order name for "cold things on a stick," although it typically is also associated with the more traditional frozen-juice popsicle. My technical name for an ice cream bar is "popsicle ice cream" whereas the technical name for a traditional popsicle is "popsicle popsicle." I usually shorten this, unless specificity is needed, to just be "popsicle."

Classifying stuff this way makes me feel better, but it doesn't really help when people accuse me of mis-naming things.

Oh well.

mushrooms

I have no problem with mushrooms. I think they are delicious and nutritious and even aesthetically pleasing. So I do not know why mushrooms keep making me nauseous when I eat them. It's probably because I am allergic.

But, still, my allergic tendencies have not obscured the greatness of mushrooms. Every time I see mushrooms on a menu, I kind of want to order them. They are really cool and tasty, and often come on a dish that tastes delicious in other ways. When I want to order a dish that might have mushrooms, I weigh the pros and cons.

Usually, reviewing this list leads me to the conclusion that I should not eat mushrooms. But sometimes, a mushroom laden dish just looks too tasty. It looks so tasty that having only one item in the "con" column makes the list feel empirically imbalanced. At these times, I have to think of at least three more reasons to not eat mushrooms in order to make it an even contest.

Here are some reasons I have used in the past.



Mushrooms looks like guys in hats.

Thanks to Disney's Fantasia and the Mario video games, I am constantly anthropomorphizing mushrooms. I just think of them as little guys in hats.

It doesn't help if the mushroom has been cut up. If you cut the mushrooms, it's like a ton of little guys in hats that have been massacred on your plate. :(


Mushrooms make pigs into scary animals.

Pigs are really cute. Generally, I like them. But a truffle mushroom is afraid of pigs, because pigs eat truffles. They hunt them. To a mushroom, a pig and its owner is a terrifying hunting dog and an impassive master. Mushrooms, you have ruined my image of pigs.

To a mushroom, a pig apparently looks like a dragon.

Mushrooms look like houses.


When I was a kid, I thought that fairies lived in mushrooms. So every time I go to eat a mushroom, my inner child thinks I am contributing to fairy eviction. Somewhere out there, there is fairy standing at her address, surprised to find herself entirely homeless.

These three reasons allow me to balance out my pro and con list.

Confronted by the ideas of mushrooms as people or houses, and pigs as evil, evil creatures, even the tastiest mushroom dish doesn't seem worth it.

Sometimes, I still feel grumpy about missing out on mushrooms. I comfort myself by drawing pictures. Like the one below.

But the mushrooms do not thank you, all you non-allergic people. They do not thank you at all.

cooking

Cooking is weird. There are a bunch of things that naturally taste good, like nuts and berries and other fruits and raw vegetables. Or even cooked vegetables. But cooking seems to specialize in making totally inedible stuff taste really good.

The evolution of this art puzzles me.

It's almost as confusing as the evolution of beer.

Lately, some of my friends have been asking me about cooking and how one cooks well. I'm not really sure, since I don't consider myself to be a cook. But, from what I can tell, cooking just means adding as many tasty things as possible to something which is naturally untasty.

When I cook, I often must decide whether or not to add a particular ingredient. When this occurs, I ask myself: tasty, or untasty?

If tasty, I add. If untasty, I do not add.

There are some exceptions to this rule. One must use common sense: will this tasty go well with the current level of untasty?

Note: In the case of tasty bacon (pictured above), the answer is almost always yes.

how to date a baker

Are you dating a baker?

Does your significant other enjoy making delicious desserts, rather than dinners?

Does your boyfriend or girlfriend bake elaborate cakes, delectable brownies, and perfect cookies, but then eat a frozen pizza for dinner?

If so, you may be dating a baker. Being a baker, I have some helpful tips for how to date one of us.


Keep a well-stocked pantry.
Flour! Butter! Sugar! Fine kosher salt (not coarse salt)! Semisweet chocolate chips! Keep these kinds of things around, and your baker will be drawn to your apartment like a bee to a field of wildflowers.

Learn to cook.
Many bakers don't cook. Cooking stresses us out with its wishy-washy imprecision. Chances are, if a baker is making a savory dish, it's not in the way that any normal cook would.

If you learn to cook, your baker will think you are awesome. You do something that the baker does not, and therefore are interesting. Since you cook, you also provide sustenance that a baker cannot provide for him or herself. If a baker is a monkey, you are like a banana tree. Basically, you are the best thing in the world.

Make sure your baker is not stressed.
Since baking well is fairly time consuming, some of us do it only when we have time, and many of us do it when we don't have time but are incredibly stressed. If your baker is making cookies at an illogical time, make sure to talk to him or her, to determine if something stressful is going on.

If you do so, your baker will think you are an incredibly sensitive and awesomely observant individual!

Also, don't be a dirtbag (general good advice for any relationship) by stressing your baker out on purpose just to get baked goods. I've never heard of anyone ever doing this, but I do wonder if it happens since so many bakers I know produce cookies when stressed. We are like some kind of oddly evolved animal with a TERRIBLE survival mechanism.

When purchasing baking things for your baker, use caution.
Baking is practically a science. The people who like it are precise about their ingredients and picky about their tools. If you want to get your baking significant other something for the kitchen, make sure to take requests before you go out and buy something. Otherwise, your baker will feel like a pirate who has received a not-very-piratey hat.

Follow these tips! Be good to your baker, and you can look forward to a relationship full of delicious cookies, amazing pies, and awesome cakes. Good luck!

cake spectrum

I like making cakes. Here is a picture of a cake I made one time.

Cakes are fun. I like everything about them, from designing the flavors to playing with the leftover batter in the sink like a five year old before I wash everything. Designing the flavors, though, is arguably more difficult than playing with batter in the sink. Luckily, people's taste in dessert generally follows their taste in normal food.

I tend to think of food as lying on a spectrum of low-fat and crunchy to high-fat and creamy.

Normal foods look like this:

Desserts look like this:

You can use someone's taste in normal foods and other desserts to figure out what they might like in a cake.

For example, my mom is a low-fat liking person who likes crunchy textures. This means she likes salads, hard candy, and crispy cookies like tuiles. Since there is no crunchy kind of cake, the kind of cake she likes is the lowest fat cake (sponge cake) with the least creamy frosting (Chantilly cream, a lightly sweetened whipped cream). If possible, it is great to dress it with fresh fruit.

My boyfriend, on the other hand, loves peanut butter based foods, as well as macaroni and cheese. In terms of cake, it is smart to get him a cake that is fairly higher-fat. However, I know he does not like completely creamy textures (he does not go for non-chocolate puddings such as creme brulee or panna cotta). So, I usually go with a torte or molten chocolate cake for him, with a chocolate ganache or a fruit glaze for contrast. I can also make a light chocolate sponge cake, but I have to fill it with a heavier frosting such as buttercream. German chocolate cake can also be a good compromise.

Cake math is really fun. Try asking your friends what food they like, and see if it corresponds to desserts! It actually works fairly often.