The Unreal Meal

It occurs to me that if one wants to write a food blog, one actually has to, you know, write.  It’s totally the small, obvious details that get me sometimes.  So with that, I present you my first real post (I’ve no idea if anyone’s actually reading, but we’ll see).

There’s a lot of things that probably go into someone deciding to start a blog of any kind.  I’ve always been one of those “weird internet people,” involved in this community or that, so writing about various and sundry things often feels somewhat second-nature to me.  However, moving away from “yo, this is what I did today” type nonsense that can be interesting to my friends and toward a more specific niche requires a bit more focus and refinement.  Time will tell if I’m able to pull that off effectively.

What made me ultimately decide to give this a go was a dinner party that I hosted earlier this year.  It’s no secret that anyone who knows me (or even talks to me for two minutes) can tell how much I love food.  It’s not just eating, it’s the act of creating and crafting good meals that appeals to me on a very basic level.  Perhaps it’s about ego — who doesn’t love seeing people enjoy something delicious that you made? — perhaps it’s just the nature of cooking and seeing things come together and transform.  Whatever it is, it’s what I love to do, and because of that, I sometimes seek to do completely insane (well, insane for a home cook, anyway) elaborate things for my roommates and friends, and this dinner party definitely falls into that category.

A couple years ago I cooked a small, intimate five-course dinner for my boyfriend and I, and it turned out really well.  It wasn’t particularly elaborate, but it was particularly delicious, mostly because I put a lot of thought, effort, and care into it.  It’s become a total cliché that you hear on every competitive food show these days, but there was a lot of love that went into it.  Afterward, I started thinking about how I could do something more involved, so I got a wild idea to do seven courses.

Something to know about me — I get these ideas to do things from time to time, and pretty much nothing can stop me from achieving my goal, no matter how ridiculous, costly, time-consuming, or just downright odd it might seem to others.  When I was a little girl, my Nana used to call me “Pigfoot” because I was so stubborn, and my mom endearingly referred to me as “truculent.”  I can see how, in trying to rear a child, those would be occasionally troublesome qualities, but as an adult they serve me well — I like to consider it determination.   This determination led me to believe that I could easily put together a seven course dinner, and nothing was going to deter me from executing that.

I decided that the dinner needed a motif, and posted to a LiveJournal community to brainstorm theme ideas (see? I told you I was one of those weird internet people).  Lots of interesting things were posited ranging from ideas that incorporated the number seven (the seven seas, seven continents, seven wonders of the world) to individual types of cuisine for each course.  Someone suggested seven deadly sins, and I loved the idea, so I took that and ran with it.  People who have been loyal watchers of Top Chef know that this isn’t necessarily a unique theme, but I had never watched that show before about midway through the 4th season, and I was confident in my ability to bring this to fruition with in my own way.  I’ve actually still never seen that episode, nor even really read anything about it — I didn’t want it to influence my own choices.

At some point during the summer 2007, I started writing down notes here and there about things I could potentially use for the eventual 7DS dinner.  I’d focus on it on and off, creating spreadsheets and lists with possible course ideas, wine ideas, and even tableware.  Sometimes I’d go months and months without looking at it, then I’d think about it, and I’d say to Alex, “You know, I should do the Seven Deadly Sins thing…”  He’d drool a little, agree, and then it’d fall by the wayside again.  Until eventually it didn’t, and I decided it was time to make it happen.

And so on April 25, 2009, my roommates and I had four of our friends over and started eating and drinking at about 5 pm.  We finished somewhere past midnight, having successfully enjoyed every single bit of the following (click the image for a large version):

Seven Deadly Sins

As a result of that meal, a dear friend of mine encouraged me to document everything.  ”You could create a website — call it The Unreal Meal,” he told me.  Much like my decision to make the meal, I took that and ran with it, and here we are.  Stay tuned for more about 7DS, and about all the other unreal meals that I can invent.  They won’t all be so elaborate (most of them won’t, in fact), but I promise that they’ll all be unreal in some way!