What is Food Desco?

It started out as a joke, like so many of my projects. I was talking with some friends and we were coming up for alternative names for objects.
"Chair!", I said.
"Butt sling!", my friend said.

"Food desk!", I said slapping the table.

And so it began.

The domain "Fooddesk.blogger.com" was already taken (and it's a pretty interesting blog, but the last entry was in 2009, so I'm a little miffed that I can't have the domain for what I hope to be a good on-going project), so I decided to go with "Desco" which is Italian for "table (containing prepared items)" and/or in the Urban Dictionary means "Descent, not too bad." Desco originates in Latin for "discus". It also has a meaning in "Desco de Parto" or "birthing table", which shows that life is connected to tables where you eat, and live. Here's a famous discus/desco de parto from the 15th Century. It's apparently a mysterious work.

Masaccio birth scene, c. 1420

Food Desco works on so many levels.

Linguistic, historical, and allegorical levels (I can't be the only one who always has to look up "allegory" when I use to ensure I'm using it correctly).

(Quick caveat, I wonder if the connection between the Desco de Parto and Desco, and all the food connections had something to do with imprinting baby's hands and feet into salt dough? Interesting thought...)

And on their 18th birthday, they have to eat it!

So, what I'll be writing about is food in general. Maybe health benefits, nutrition, unhealthy deliciousness (because sometimes you have to throw cholesterol-caution to the wind), some of my own recipes and different stuff like that. Also, I studied theatre , so of course I'm going to have some art in there.

The Theatre, the Theatre, what has happened to the Theatre?

A lot of art is pictures of food, right?
Let's explore that.
There are some really interesting things you can learn from a painting about food. Food is sacred and always has been. There is an entire symbolism code in paintings of food. All about life and death and consumption of both by which we are all sustained. I will explain in a later post.
Pretty fun artsy stuff, though.

"'Faisans et Bécasses sur une table en marbre', huile sur toile de Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894, France)" Or, "Dead Birds and Lemons"

There's also going to be posts about actual food you can actually eat that's beyond the raw art stage.

But, as a warning, I like pretty strange flavors, and I am, by no means, a professional with food, so if you have any suggestions for me improving my technique, please let me know. I try to learn new things from YouTube and such, but one can only watch someone else make mouth-watering dishes so many times before you just get impatient and jump right into the task. One also can only extract so much information from text instructions before going dead behind the eyes,

"First, pull the dough, then cut it, then roll it, the pull it again, the egg wash all sides and slightly toast it, roll it out, stamp your crest in the dough, roll that out again, smell the butter, smell it some more, go outside and throw it around, air it out, take it for a walk, punch it, tell it you're sorry, spend the rest of your life gaining it's trust again, etc..."

My point is, I usually do some research, but sometimes, depending on many factors, that research does not yield comparable results. Amount of time spent on research (or reading/writing instructions) does not correlate to how good the food will taste. At least, not yet. Maybe I'll get better at it.

Also, you can't taste the food on the internet, so really, do we ever know if we're doing it correctly?
We only have visual and verbal cues about the food.
How powerful the eyeballs are. The nose and taste buds are more powerful, though, but they haven't invented WonkaVision in real life yet, so here we are, banging out words on a keyboard to capture the essence of something that never comes close to a real experience.
Isn't that so much of life?

Okay, enough about life and the internet. Without further ado, my first entree (get it? Entree/Entry) onto the Food Desco.
Enjoy!

-Hannah