and so it begins...

There comes a time in every ex-pat's life when you feel that you ought to write a blog. The vague expectation of documenting various exploits, bizarre shennanigans, and tragicomic scenes for one's distant friends and family to vicariously experience, commune in, and enjoy, is not an unreasonable prompting, nor one wholely without merit. However, I do not intend that to be the basis of this blog. This one, instead, will be primarily occupied with one man's epic quest for the simplest of human joys: bread, and conversation.

"Breaking Bread" is a term that has fallen out of favor; yet there is something deeply intimate, stimulating, exciting, and personal about sharing a meal with another person. With few exceptions, my best conversations occur over a dinner table. This blog will document those conversations, the tangential references that they beget, and the meals that, through some mysterious channel, inspire them.

To begin, I want to beam out to a TED talk on bread. If TED talks are new to you, the basic premise is that a noteworthy individual gets 30 minutes, and only 30 minutes, to talk about whatever they want. After their rookie appearance, they are never invited back for a second shot. It's all or nothing, in 20 minutes. To my great delight, Peter Reinhart, an artisan bread baker/theologian, felt the need to wax lyrical on the subject of complex carbs...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/peter_reinhart_on_bread.html
(if it seems slow, jump to minute 8)

Listening to Reinhart talk about bread is like listening to a filmmaker discuss porn - it's interesting, but leaves you with the feeling that you should really be doing something else...

enjoy,
BB