Lifeblogging Food Bits

Warren Ellis has an excellent post on/example of lifestreaming. I deal with the geekier aspects of it over here, but contained in the post are also some excellent foodie resources:

Right now, I’m eating jerky and drinking a cup of coffee. Neither of these came from objects with a net presence, of course. I have to photograph them, curse the really fucking cranky camera in my phone, and upload them. What’s the information? What is the context?

If my camera wasn’t playing silly buggers, you’d doubtless be able to make out that the jerky comes from the excellent Martin’s Jerked Meat. You can’t find the Lewis & Clark Expedition 1804 jerky on the site, they don’t make it any more — I bought the last of it a few months back at Cressing Temple. They made it according to a recipe actually employed on that expedition — one of Martin’s specialties is “historical” jerky.

What do you divine from this? Other than that perhaps I earn too much money? Well, even in the crappy picture you can see the coffee is El Paraiso Lot 20, a first-harvest ground coffee sold by Fortnum & Mason.

...in the summers I start saving money, to make Xmas a bit of a production for them. I get a goose ordered in from David Harrison, Lili gets to pick a tree from the Hawkwell Tree Farm (unless she decides she’d derive more amusement from watching us try to assemble the stupid, massive, electrocution-risk artificial tree we got given a few years back), I get a crate of champagne and some edible gold and silver leaf to sprinkle in it… and I order a hamper and a fruit basket from Fortnum & Mason to be delivered on Xmas Eve. And that can of coffee was in the hamper this past Xmas.

And the jerky? Lili has always loved doing the country fairs, and Cressing Temple hosts the Essex Food Fair twice a year. Martin’s Jerked Meat were exhibiting there. Lili had never tried jerky before — that’s why she loves these things, she gets to try new stuff and have a go at local arts & crafts, plus there are usually horses and she’s been riding since she was two and so is besotted with the shit-deploying bastards. We came away with six bags of jerky varieties, plus some fruit leathers.

(Fruit leathers she knew, since we once attended a banquet consisting entirely of medieval foods, as orchestrated by the marvellous Stuart Peachey. I hugely recommend his books, for those with an interest, on Tudor- and Stuart-period food. Apparently we couldn’t leave without lots of fruit leather too.)

Jerky! Fruit leathers! Christmas geese!