While Jen from
Modern Beet and I were
foraging in Seward Park, we discovered a bizarre coincidence.
She mentioned her homemade lemon marmalade. I asked her if she’d ever had the meyer lemon marmalade from
Frog Hollow Farm in Northern California, where she lives. She said she had.
I told her about how I’d discovered the marmalade over a year ago on a trip to the San Francisco farmers’ market. I’d never had lemon marmalade and was amazed how good it was, full of thin strips of exquisite meyer lemon peel. I’d brought a jar back to Seattle, where I kept it in my work refrigerator, savoring it on occasional pieces of toast or crumpets with vast quantities of butter, until the workplace fridge-cleaning bureaucracy ignored the note I’d stuck to it and threw it away. Upset that I hadn’t written down the name of the farm, I turned to the Bay Area discussion board at
chowhound.com, a fantastic source of advice-sharing among food enthusiasts. Luckily, I told Jen, someone knew the answer and pointed me in the right direction.
There was a pause. “I think that was me,” she said.
She’s since emailed me to confirm; she went back to check the post. She really was the one who answered my question back then, before either of us had a blog.
The odds that not only this would be true, but that I would happen to be telling her this story, seem very small. I’m not sure whether to take this as a hilarious coincidence or as a sign that the world of people obsessed with locally-produced food isn’t actually so big as I was starting to think it was. Probably a little from column A and a little from column B...
I’ve had coincidences like this before. Last summer it happened with neuroscientists. At Burning Man, I was talking to a neuroscientist friend of my neuroscientist parents about my apparent tendency to collect neuroscientists in my life. Out of 38,000 members in the Society for Neuroscience, the one single neuroscientist he casually mentioned in our conversation turned out to be my friend Ben’s father. I’ve mentioned the study abroad program in Thailand I attended in college, only to find out that someone else at the table went on the same program, which hosted only about six people a year for just a few years. I’ve realized my Seattle friend Shira nearly attended my small Passover seder in Thailand, years before I actually met her. Coincidences happen more than I expect them to.
So, maybe it’s not just the food world. But like most other small-world coincidences, there’s more at play than just random chance. A lot of our social, regional and educational networks are insular, divided by things like privilege, circumstances, interests and existing connections.
The bad news for the food world is that those of us sharing a food-related or nutrition-related message might be preaching to the choir. That’s fine as long as the choir isn’t the only group we’re reaching. We also want to make sure we’re learning new things from people outside circles of like-minded groups too. This happens on its own through internet serendipity, as people find new websites and blogs, but we should also make it happen intentionally.
Of course, there’s something to be said for like-minded people too. If we’re both puzzling out similar theories of nutrition, looking for a local ingredient in a particular area, or trying to perfect a certain kind of recipe, it can be extremely helpful to have people with whom to share ideas, or who can point us in the right direction to find something tasty.
You never know; they may have already pointed you there years before.
Permalink:
http://www.gofrolic.org/gofrolic/food_blog/Entries/2008/9/4_Small_food_world.htm
She mentioned her homemade lemon marmalade. I asked her if she’d ever had the meyer lemon marmalade from Frog Hollow Farm in Northern California, where she lives. She said she had.
I told her about how I’d discovered the marmalade over a year ago on a trip to the San Francisco farmers’ market. I’d never had lemon marmalade and was amazed how good it was, full of thin strips of exquisite meyer lemon peel. I’d brought a jar back to Seattle, where I kept it in my work refrigerator, savoring it on occasional pieces of toast or crumpets with vast quantities of butter, until the workplace fridge-cleaning bureaucracy ignored the note I’d stuck to it and threw it away. Upset that I hadn’t written down the name of the farm, I turned to the Bay Area discussion board at chowhound.com, a fantastic source of advice-sharing among food enthusiasts. Luckily, I told Jen, someone knew the answer and pointed me in the right direction.
There was a pause. “I think that was me,” she said.
She’s since emailed me to confirm; she went back to check the post. She really was the one who answered my question back then, before either of us had a blog.
The odds that not only this would be true, but that I would happen to be telling her this story, seem very small. I’m not sure whether to take this as a hilarious coincidence or as a sign that the world of people obsessed with locally-produced food isn’t actually so big as I was starting to think it was. Probably a little from column A and a little from column B...
I’ve had coincidences like this before. Last summer it happened with neuroscientists. At Burning Man, I was talking to a neuroscientist friend of my neuroscientist parents about my apparent tendency to collect neuroscientists in my life. Out of 38,000 members in the Society for Neuroscience, the one single neuroscientist he casually mentioned in our conversation turned out to be my friend Ben’s father. I’ve mentioned the study abroad program in Thailand I attended in college, only to find out that someone else at the table went on the same program, which hosted only about six people a year for just a few years. I’ve realized my Seattle friend Shira nearly attended my small Passover seder in Thailand, years before I actually met her. Coincidences happen more than I expect them to.
So, maybe it’s not just the food world. But like most other small-world coincidences, there’s more at play than just random chance. A lot of our social, regional and educational networks are insular, divided by things like privilege, circumstances, interests and existing connections.
The bad news for the food world is that those of us sharing a food-related or nutrition-related message might be preaching to the choir. That’s fine as long as the choir isn’t the only group we’re reaching. We also want to make sure we’re learning new things from people outside circles of like-minded groups too. This happens on its own through internet serendipity, as people find new websites and blogs, but we should also make it happen intentionally.
Of course, there’s something to be said for like-minded people too. If we’re both puzzling out similar theories of nutrition, looking for a local ingredient in a particular area, or trying to perfect a certain kind of recipe, it can be extremely helpful to have people with whom to share ideas, or who can point us in the right direction to find something tasty.
You never know; they may have already pointed you there years before.
Permalink: http://www.gofrolic.org/gofrolic/food_blog/Entries/2008/9/4_Small_food_world.htm