My Building Has No Hot Water

This title has no deeper significance, our water heater just went out and I’m angry about it.

For reading response 7, we read four different articles, but I’m cold and tired so I’m just gonna talk about the one I found the most interesting: The Art of Food Plating.

The inventive and aesthetically pleasing ways people have managed to develop to plate food, frankly, boggles my gourd. I will readily admit that most of my experience with haute cuisine comes from Netflix baking shows, and the nicest restaurant in my hometown still puts ruffles of parsley on a garnish on their plates, but in the growing world of food photography, these still stick out. They look almost too pretty to eat, which, in real life, would probably fill me with some sort of impotent rage, but through the medium of photography, these plates become miniature works of art.

I’m a fan of the zen arrangements, there’s something reassuring about the simplicity. It’s not a tower of meat, it’s just a food, with some sauce in a nice shape, on a plate. I’m a simple girl with simple needs, if I see a plate with eighty-five garnishes and some neon blue sauce, I’m not going to want to pick through the leaves to figure out what it’s actually supposed to be. Some of these look more like avant-garde flower arrangements than a food you can actually consume. (I do also rather like the geometric ones, there’s something very appealing about simple shapes.)

I have never once in my entire career of making food for myself to eat considered plating it nicely. Most of the time, “making food” is me making mac and cheese out of a box and just dumping in into a bowl so I can eat it while I rewatch a John Mulaney special. Maybe I need to be doing more?

I have yet to hear any complaints from me though…