Paul Cuenco, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Paul Cuenco
Predicament: What is Mike Cooking? 3/16/2012 9:06:40 PM
Oh boy, PDX Mike is typing away on his blog, “What is Mike Cooking?” One night he asked me with whom I published my blogs. I said that I publish it with numerous outlets but I guess Blogspot is the first he should explore. So he conjured up topics he would be publishing, showed them to me and then started writing.
Mike is prolific with food. He would describe food to me like I am hearing it for the first time. He tells it with excitement that I get excited myself, although ordinarily, I would skip the food section of The Oregonian or New York Times. He would describe things to me even though I don’t understand them; and patiently, he repeats it even though I asked the same questions. He minced his language with French or Parisian terms that makes the dishes ever more complicated but palatable. But it’s nice to hear, like escargot or foie gras. All it meant, my dear readers is snails and duck liver. So whenever we talk about France or Paris, all reverts to food or he would inject something about food (or wine or cheese.)
First night, he prepares a long list of items to talk about. I suggested that he should publish them every two or three days because he might run out of topics to discuss. But I supposed he publishes one a day. I suggested that he mixes them up. For example if you have a set of numbers one to ten, and a set of letters a to z, don’t arrange them from one to ten or a to z. Mix them up like one-a or one-k; c-nine or m-seven. In short he should not discuss food like it was geared towards the first graders.
So, he showed me his opening Salvo. It was impressive. He wrote about knife lessons, to cutting up chicken or a pig and to preparing soups with photography to boot. His photography was fantastic. Along with food, it whetted you to want more from him and what he wanted to say. He gave you an opening statement and then showed you a step-by-step way in order to achieve a balanced outcome.
He told me that we were lucky to be in an area where we have wine, cheese and salt; salt of all things. Salt for example is applied in pork and bacon. And the type of salt should be fleur the sel. They bloom and are very clean. But why should we concern ourselves with where salt comes from? He says that all over the world, the seas are different because of the animals and the biology of the water. Our water comes from the South Pacific, the Philippines and Japan and it flows to the Northwest. So our salt comes from this area. Girond in France was the first one in the world where salt was made.
Tonight, we were comparing notes on Blogspot where we have the highest readership in terms of subject matter; and by happenstance, he noted that his “Gluten Free Fried Chicken” got the highest number of readership. One question he had was how to cut up a chicken. He sent her a message referring her to his article on “Cutting up a Chicken 101”. He mentioned that he would repost it once he could better illustrate it; with a new tripod supporting his camera.
Yes, every night, PDX Mike and I are blogging away like we didn’t know each other. We would stop only to breathe and say hello to each other; and sometimes, compare notes on what had been happening in our worlds.
Other literary work, search Paul Cuenco in: www.lulu.com, www.kindle.com, www.amazon.com, www.nook.com and www.bn.com
