My Foodprint

When I worked in the coffee and tea industry there were several books regarded as sacred texts. Among them were Espresso Coffee: The Chemistry of Quality, worshipped by baristi as the seminal work on the intricacies of espresso coffee. The books of Kenneth Davids were looked up to as well. But scanning the bookshelf at my old job, there was one book which had something the others did not, and this was Corby Kummer’s The Joy of Coffee. The Joy of Coffee, while an in-depth study of coffee like the others, had the clear advantage. It was written, not documented. It was scribed with a sense of style and artfulness in mind. While the others approached coffee from a coffee lovers point of view, Kummer is a writer and a food lover.

Kummer’s book was inspired by a series he did for The Atlantic, where he is a senior editor. His work at The Atlantic ranges far beyond coffee, however. A most recent article about apples reads like an adventure log into the orchards of Maine where one man, John Bunker, is working to salvage varieties of endangered apples. His prize, and Maine’s prize, is the Black Oxford. As Kummer describes it, the apple is “colored a lustrous dark cordovan, purple-black with firm, cream-colored flesh. The flavor was refreshing, smooth, and all apple…” Adding to his dynamism, Kummer has also taken up with the Slow Food-ists and endorsed the movement with his latest book, The Pleasures of Slow Food. For those unaware, Slow Food is an ideology dedicated to eating local ingredients, and preserving the cultural value of food. It began in Italy in 1986 and has now spread worldwide.

Kummer’s writing and belief system, an involvement with food as a cultural necessity and a credible field of study, is one of the many reasons this blog exists. We need more people who look beneath the veneer, those who examine taste and origin, fact and humanity, all with the larger picture in mind.

–Nick