“You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.”
- Anthony Bourdain
Eating is essential. Sharing a meal is fundamental. Cooking is human. Food, along with all of its associated terms (à la gastronomy, cuisine, etc.), is a Gordian knot of politics, physics, society, culture, evolution, geology, psychology, health, wellbeing, and chemistry that we can physically interact with all at once. It is the greatest equalizer in this world, perhaps second only to oxygen. Everyone has a relationship with food, or sadly, with its absence. By sitting down with someone at the table, you learn more about this relationship from their perspective, which in turn makes you reflect on your own bond with food.
The name of this blog is Polymorv, which is a reference of the six forms, or polymorphs, that the fat in cocoa butter can solidify into. Depending on how and to what temperature to which it’s been melted and cooled, it can melt at room temperature or have the perfect snap and melt at body temperature. This latter and most desirable form happens to be the fifth polymorph, or polymorph V. While the other five forms are delicious, they aren’t what we’re looking for when we grab a Ghirardelli bar. I think the same is true for our food system: many forms have worked throughout human history, but we want to find the polymorph that hits everything we long for and deserve. I chose this name because this blog will take many forms and touch on many different topics within food. It will talk about recipes, food psychology, food product design, dining trends, and food system changes.
No one wants to read another blog about food. They can err on the side of haughty, talking about how a microgreen was tweezed in the wrong spot for a $500 meal. Worse yet, they can cram an ethos down your throat about what you need to eat to lose x, save y, or before the whole world burns. Instead, I want Polymorv to be a resource for the financier-turned-financier baker to inspire new and interesting products that can benefit us as much on our taste buds as in our soil. I want this to be a place peppered with article and book reviews you may otherwise never have considered reading.These posts won’t be hard-hitting journalism and will fall more in the realm of surmisals. The biweekly releases will start on my Hierarchy of Needs for Food System Change and branch out into other subjects from there.