NEW VISION FOR FOOD

As the world unites, I see the dire need for a food categorization system that is based on the pure “encounter of” the food. With no prior knowledge, in the manner of a pre-emptive food archeologist, the encountered food is fit into an easily recognizable and delicious category.
The system is based on the dish as it is served.
The encounter itself becomes the important aspect, leaving behind notions of preference and cultural pretensions.
Food, regardless of cultural or geographical origin, can only be arraigned for presentation in a few, finite, globally leveling categories.
In our New Global Society we need never be wary of what the hell the new obscure dish in town is, because it is sure to fall into a recognizable spatial relationship.
As all cultures and foods insinuate themselves in all places, this system will speed up the cultural assimilation process and allow us to keep our bellies full, and our minds open.

The New Food Categories:

1.Food Pile
(Any dish of “sauce over rice or pasta”, most curry dishes, stir fry, salads, risotto stroganoff, all soups, chili, any collection of different food ingredients united by a tasty viscous medium cooked then piled together. This is a very large category)
2.Cooked Food Pile
(Any dish prepared by lumping ingredients into a pile and baking, broiling, searing, or grilling it into its final form. This includes all breads, cakes, casseroles, quiches, pies, pizzas, soufflé, and most baked goods in general. )
3.Food Inside Other Food
(There is a great tradition in many cultures of wrapping food with food. This takes care of all dumplings, blintzes, stuffed meats, rice balls, croquettes, stuffed buns, some sushi, or any dish with a simple outer covering of food that is then cooked.)
4. Sandwiches
(The sandwich is another great leveler of man. This is any arraignment of food in layers. Its self-explanatory, but it does share with other categories, such as with wraps, burritos and sushi rolls. Usually the outer layer is a bread dryer than the internal layers. You know a sandwich when you see it.)
5.Just Food (Prepared)
(This category is for the dishes that consist of just one or two food ingredients that has been prepared but is pretty much in its original form. Steak. An apple. Beans cooked in lemon. Etc.)

The categories are in a Venn diagram relationship, with many dishes exhibiting qualities of two or more categories. Sushi could be food inside other food or just food or even a small food pile. A plate of Buffalo wings is just food prepared (each wing) and then piled together (food pile). Ravioli is essentially a little dumpling (food inside other food) that is then usually mixed in sauce and served in a pile. A calzone with anything in it is food inside other food (as its prepared) but quickly becomes a cooked food pile after the final preparation.

This system is also a set out a framework for developing new dishes, and pre-supposes that when new dishes are developed they usually develop within a movement from one of these categories to another. Want a new twist on a beloved dish? Put it in a big pile and cover it with sauce. Not feeling yet another sandwich? Cover it in food and cook it.
As we reconfigure our relationship to food as more variety becomes available, these large easily definable categories will be useful for keeping an open mind and ensuring that we try not just different cultures and flavors, but different social food arraignments.

The categories are malleable, and invite discussion of their details over dinner with friends. Ever try to eat Ethiopian food with strangers? Do you realize what percentage of your food intake are sandwiches? “Oh no thanks, sorry, I only eat piles of food.” Giant international buffet style dining is a good place to see the use of categorizing food according to this new global vision. Delicious.

Money As Food

A large part of our money goes to eating. This is one of the great uses for money, one of the reasons we have it. But lets dial the relationship back a bit, we are screwing ourselves out of time and money and food, the economic culinary matrix could be simplified and enlivened. It would require changing all of society. But perhaps we should be able to eat our money. Would making change be a matter of breaking off a chunk of the dollar biscuit? Or perhaps we could use different nuts or small candies to break a dollar. As to what the food money would actually be, it would be important to acquire a substance of average deliciousness and hypoallergenic status. “I’m sorry, I’m allergic. Do you have any fifty dollar bills?”  This would make strip clubs a different experience all together. Farms and restaurants would be banks. You’d have to cook for three weeks to buy a computer. It would plunge us into a new Dark Age. This is a hilarious terrible idea, but something must be done.

Food Time Machine

The idea is that you'd never go hungry again. Food would just appear out of no-where. Here’s why; you could send food back and forth through time. Just food. And just to yourself. When you are at buffet or pot-luck where the bounty spills out over the table and could never be all consumed by the attendees, you could take the overflowing pile of pork chops or the beet salad dregs and dump it into the time-box and send it forward in time to yourself holding the time-box in your bare kitchen, your belly rumbling. Or if you remember being hungry and you have regretted it and you remember the headache or the vacant food shaped place in your tummy, you could send that last burger no-one wanted from the bar-b-q back and it would plop out of the air into you box. Time travel being what it is, as you moved through time from the present to the future present you could start depending on your past and future self to keep the food coming, you would mindlessly open the time-box to see what delicious vittles may be there, you could almost hear the time jump from the other room. You would start salivating in bed with out knowing why and then ten minutes later you'd smell it wafting in, a taco salad from ten years later.

Tasty Wettner: The Scale of Desirability
The wetter food is, the more desirable. Breads must still be moist. Condiments, sauces, glazes are all for the extra wettening to prepare it for the final saliva soaking on its way down the throat. We cry out for wetter food. Glistening, an aspect of wetness, is what we want food to do. Our favorite fruits are just bags of pulp soaked in delicious fluid. If you can’t eat something, try wetting it. From infancy onward, we experience the world by wetting it and then consuming. If you like something, cover it in gunk.