the elephant in the room.*

This wee blog has been around for what, five days now?  And I haven’t posted a single food photo until now?  Amazing.  Way back when, I waxed, in my characteristically muddled-but-no-I-have-a-point-just-listen fashion, about why I photograph what I eat.  You can read it here, though the bit about “[a]nd it’s partly out of sheer technological ease: I probably wouldn’t do this with a regular film camera” is clearly, well, not true anymore.   The ongoing recovery from a darker, less healthy moment remains true, though the impetus to photograph food has taken on an added dimension, one that I suppose has always been there, but is truer, and more significant now: the joy of sharing said food with friends.  Schmaltzy?  Maybe.  I’m getting old and sentimental!  You cried during Up?  Whatever!  I cry whenever I watch The English Patient!  (Er…..)  But it’s quite true:  my desire to document what I eat is also a desire to remember the fact of having said meal with [insert very indispensable, very patient friend — and I’m amazed sometimes that I have so many of you — here].  Food tastes better when the person across the table from you is also grunting rapturously; terrible food is made all that more inedible (and hilarious) when your dining companion likens it to gnawing on pan-fried dog collar.

Of course, sometimes I photograph food because really, no one would believe me if I told them that at Keflavik Airport outside Reykjavik, Iceland, I ate “Cool American” flavored Doritos.

* For the record, I don’t eat elephant(s).