“You can’t just eat good food. You’ve got to talk about it too. And you’ve got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird
At a recent dinner, my aunt couldn’t stop raving about The Perennial Plate, a web documentary series that’s all about food culture. After indulging in a glass of wine and our wonderful organic meal, my taste buds were satisfied, my belly full, and my mind ready to research her recommendation.
Chef and activist Daniel Klein and James Beard award-winning filmmaker Mirra Fine — the duo that is The Perennial Plate — make quite the pair traveling the world exploring the people, complexities, and stories behind our global food system in these authentic weekly documentaries.
In season one, for instance, they spent an entire year creating short food films in Minnesota. In season two, they explored American food culture. In their current season, they’ve hopped to numerous countries including China, Turkey, South Africa and Ethiopia, where they’re digging up the roots of food culture across the globe.
Not only do I enjoy clips of Klein creating recipes, but the imagery of landscape, people, and food inspire me to seek out real food, and understand where what I eat comes from. On a larger scale, it connects us across borders with others who live vastly different lives and speak different languages, finding the common ground of what fuels each of our existence: food, landscape, and community.
Here at Experience Life, we aim to help you create healthier lives through many avenues, and food is one way to do that. In a time where reading labels and researching the language around our food culture can often be frustrating, The Perennial Plate reminded me of the root and essence of food, and how it creates a lovely array of season, color, taste, smell, laughter, learning, growth, and community. It reminded me that it’s worth the extra effort.
“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Tell Us: What are your thoughts on The Perennial Plate and our interconnectedness with others through landscape, food, and community? Do you have any favorite food quotes that inspire these thoughts?
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