Consumed!

1 HUMBLE PALATEFood!My favourite F word.

No, really. I don’t think there’s anything else that engages and invigorates all my senses at once, especially if someone else is buying it or making it.

My relationship with food is a love-love type of affair that sees me spending too much time, money (mostly more than is actually needed) and attention on this daily necessity that has borderline become religious to me.

Establishing a food identity as an individual is paramount in life, as it cuts away the fluff and eliminates the unwanted excess in the form of attention, from ‘foods’ that clearly have no space in your mouth, tummy or wallet.

Knowing what you like is part of this process, and don’t you dare come here with this “I like everything, no surely I do” tone of yours. It’s not kindergarten and your mouth is not a sandbox.

Consider it a stadium, where the greatest artists come to perform. Carnegie Hall, the Apollo, Royal Albert Hall, Unam stadium. All the greats go there. And so only ‘great food’ should make its way to your mouth.

How do you know it’s great? I’ll teach you. How I make it great, I’ll also teach you.

At the same time, we will gossip about other people’s food, comment about how they don’t know how to make basic sauces like they should, or if they overboil an egg!

Trust me, it’s going to be an interesting ride. We’ll get a few friends involved as well, have a party or two, but at the end of the day, we should come to the understanding of what makes good food.

Everyone, regardless of what their tastes are like, should be able to go into an establishment or pick up a few pots, pans and ingredients and enjoy what they consume.

It is a serious crime if you do not make the necessary effort to ensure that what you serve to people is the best. A pilot doesn’t decide to half land a plane, or do it with one hand on a cup of coffee – even though most wish they could. Ha! He needs to get you down, and do it well. Food is no exception. We don’t want half-baked here, unless it calls for it in the recipe.

If you are a homecook, and all you do is replay Masterchef episodes in your house as you take the peas out of the freezer, I’ll talk about things that concern you.

If you are a restaurateur, chef, maître d’ or have an eatery of any kind, I’m coming in for a visit, or maybe I already have. Also, you won’t know when I’m coming, and what I’ll eat.

I’ll tell the people about your food, and if it is below par, I will tell them as such. If it’s good, they will know; if it’s too expensive, well, we gotta look out for each other, times are hard here, because I feel Namibia deserves better than what some are offering at the moment.

I represent the palates of the humble, the overlooked, the somewhat forgotten in the culinary world.

So from the exceptional cut of beef, seared well with ocean salt and a crack of black pepper, to the bounty the oceans offer, and not forgetting the vetkoek stuffed with all things yum, and even Ouma’s malva pudding. I want to eat it and talk about it all.

What qualifies me to do all this? I am human. I have a mouth. I love food. I weigh 100kg+, so clearly food and I have been dancing together for a while. I have managed to combine good taste with the ability to type a certain number of words per minute.

I am, after all, but one humble palate.

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