Welcome (back) to la Cocina

- on a recalibration. a (re)welcoming -

by douglas reeser, August 5, 2023 

 

d00g in his "cider kitchen" in 2023

I don't really know when i have the time to write. It's infrequent. probably. And i sometimes tend towards the abstract. weird. absurd. I write in different ways at different times. It's more fun this way. but I also have a touch of academe. the work of the phd does not shed easy. and so, the kitchen...

The kitchen - la Cocina - came about because of eating, drinking, cooking, co-cooking, creating, consuming, enjoying. Food.

Thinking. Ideas, talking, sharing, creating. Food has always been social - and personal. We feed each other, and we taste distinctly.

And so i like to eat. and drink. and cook. and ferment. and create. I often read, listen, and think about food and beverage. These days in particular, my work is mostly about working with local food, and creating beverage. And enjoying the experience. Much of my current obsession is about cider. And cider is so good with food. so...

life. it's food and beverage.

And there’s this here blog, La Cocina… There’s something about writing here. Something nostalgic maybe? It’s an old sight that was once pretty active. In 2023, this feels like… what does it feel like?

Old.

Blogger. I think this format went out of wide use in the aughts. Earlier? But it’s still free. And I started writing here back when people were still reading “blogs” – I think it’s all just websites and social media now. I mean, social media sites have really taken over where most people spend their time online. But blogs were once “trending” (which was not a widely used term at the time), and were sort of almost a thing. I can remember at the top of blogger sites there was an arrow or something, and you could scroll from random blog to random blog. It was like an early version social media. Almost.

It was also it’s own thing. It was a widely available means for people to express and share, and it was free to use. And so it was for me. A blog was a place to write. November 15, 2007. My first post was just a couple of bad pictures of a dish that I made at the Greenbriar in St Petersburg, Florida. I was living there for a good part of my graduate career. The plate in the photos gives the location away – old diner-style plates were left there from the days when it was a boarding house. I can’t say the pics are inspiring, although the prickly pear chutney looks and sounds interesting. I guess I thought it all looked good at the time. It’s still the first post on this site.

La Cocina stayed focused on food for a while with descriptions of some dishes I made, some recipes. I was still working on my Master’s degrees then – a dual degree that gave me an MA in Anthropology, and an MPH in Global Health. I was learning to write, and I wanted to write for the public. The new-at-the-time blog thing was a perfect fit. I also liked food and being in the kitchen. La Cocina.

I wrote here sporadically through my Master’s work and into my PhD years. There were a few pieces about beer, and then some more interesting writing about my Belizean food adventures. I spent a total of two years in Southern Belize, working on research about health, and also living, eating, drinking…

More recently, I began writing here in hopes of reviving my writing work generally. Food remained a theme, but there were other topics too. That will probably continue. I struggle most with what I want to write about. And how. And where. From this point in time in 2023, I’m hoping to offer something a bit more regularly. Once a month is a goal. I envision that posts will be a bit memoir, a bit reflection, a bit commentary, and a bit of real time experience from my current life as a cider maker and cider & food purveyor.

We’ll see where it all goes. This urge to write seems to have been with me always. At least the last 30 years. But it also stems from my anthropological training in which we have a mandate to write, to share our work, our training, with the public. I believe in that. And so here we are. An ex-academic, currently working in the food industry, looking to keep and further develop a thread between the two.

I hope to write something interesting. Maybe compelling. Hopefully useful in some way. I hope I find some readers.

Either way, the blog lives on….