As I have mentioned many times in the past – both here, and in my Market Share column - when it comes to cooking Indian food, there are few better guides than Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid in Mango & Curry Leaves. And so it was to them that I turned for ideas. In the end, I decided to make the tok (or sour) Bangla Dal with a Hit of Lime, but what really made the meal was the wonderful contrasts in heat, texture and taste between the main course and its accompanying dishes: date and onion chutney, and cucumber pickle.

I started with the chutney, and though I stuck with the recipe for the most part – which is true for all of the dishes – I made a few changes based on the ingredients on hand and my tendency to follow my own instincts when it comes to cooking.

The chutney is also super easy: chop one large red onion and start it cooking over low heat in some sesame oil – about a teaspoon or so. When it has started to soften and brown, add as many chopped dates as are necessary to create a balance between the ingredients. The recipe does not call for water, but I really wanted it to become jammy, so I added about a half a cup and some red chilies and then let the whole thing just simmer over low heat until it reached that jammy consistency that I was looking for (about 30 minutes). You can keep it warm, or refrigerate it until the rest of the meal is ready.

The cucumber pickle was by far the most interesting dish because the ingredients were quite strange. That said, because I did not follow the recipe closely, I may have given it a slightly more Western twist (actual mustard, rather than mustard oil, which for some reason,  I mistrust). For the cucumber, the recipe suggests scraping out the seeds and pulp before chopping, but since I used the small Lebanese cucumbers, there was no need. I had a few cherry tomatoes on hand and so added them as well, chopping them finely.

For the dressing: take about a tablespoon of sesame seeds, a half teaspoon of cumin seeds, some fenugreek and some red chilies, and roast them in a dry frying pan. When they are toasty and fragrant, let them cool and then grind them into a loose paste. Mix the paste with equal parts lime juice and Dijon mustard – enough to make a sauce – and season with salt and pepper. The recipe also calls for nigella seeds, which add to the beauty of the dish and impart a slight bitterness. Chill before serving.

All you do for the dal is throw a half a cup of masur (red) lentils into four cups of unsalted water, bring it to a boil, and then simmer it for 20-30 minutes. You want it to stay soupy, so if it starts to dry up, just add some more water. When the timer rings, turn off the heat and just let it sit until you are ready to add the tempering.

Meanwhile, drop a thumb-sized chunk of tamarind into some boiling water and let it soak. Then chop up another red onion and about four cloves of garlic and cook them slowly over low heat in vegetable or sesame oil. You will need to have a spice mixture standing by that contains two teaspoons of coriander and one teaspoon of cumin (ground), one teaspoon of tumeric and another of red chilies.

When everything is good to go, add the spice mixture to the onions and garlic and cook until the spices become fragrant. Meanwhile, squeeze the tamarind pulp to make sure all the flavour is in the water, then strain. Pour the tamarind water over the onion mixture, add the dal, and stir. Let the dal come to the desired consistency by either cooking off the water, or adding more to create more soupiness.

Serve with rice, chutney, cucumber pickle, fresh cilantro, and lime wedges – for that hit of lime.

It has also got me thinking about Gary, the former-New-York-real-estate-magnet-now- New-Orleans-hippie-yoga-teacher who befriended me at the French Quarter dog park and who told me that if my hankering for a move down south was real, he could help me find a shotgun-style duplex in the range of thirty to fifty thousand US. Yep, you read that right: 35-50 thousand bucks for a double shotgun, the long narrow houses that are common in the city, named for the fact that if you stand at the front door and fire a shotgun, the bullet will travel, unimpeded, straight through to the back door; 35-50 thousand, at a time when a duplex in a low income Montreal neighborhood will run you ten times that much.

Of course there is no one on earth who is going to tell you that buying a house in New Orleans is a smart investment choice, but when you think about spending a year or two in the city, and consider the short-term rental income you could have coming in from the other side of the duplex, it starts to seem like a not-too-bad idea.

And there are so many neighborhoods to choose from. We stayed in the 7th ward, which borders Treme to the West and the French Quarter to the south, and though it had little to offer in terms of immediate amenities, the folks were friendly and welcoming and it was only a short bike ride to get coffee and groceries. This is one of the neighborhoods that was underwater after Katrina; in fact, the house two doors down from us remained empty even seven years later, still with its FEMA writing on the exterior wall. But a majority of the houses were inhabited and well-cared for and the streets were quiet and (relatively) safe; this is New Orleans after all.

I have also been thinking a lot about the food, of course, and about the fact that, for some reason, I never did get around to writing my post on the gustatory adventure we had in the city. And what better time than a snowy January day to think about these delicious forays.

After our most disgusting food discovery, the Breakfast in a To-Go Cup–a porky parfait of cheese grits, hash browns, sausage, scrambled eggs, bacon and gravy–I realized that the only way for me to survive our visit was to have fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and something more gourmet for dinner (meaning eating somewhere that vegetables were more likely to make an appearance). In doing this, I would be able to keep lunch open for more hard-core delectables of the meat and fried fish variety.

One of our fancy outings was at a restaurant called Cochon, a much-talked about joint in the foodie press, though in the Duplass Brothers’ film, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, it is a symbol of everything that is wrong about the new New Orleans. To be perfectly honest, I was not overly impressed. The cocktails were good–I had the Trotter Jennings (Smooth Ambler Vodka, Adrian Adami Prosecco, St. Germain, lemon juice )–though we had better at the classic French Quarter creole joint, Arnaud’s, where our waiter looked fourteen, but was nonetheless impressive in his white shirt and tux. Cochon did allow us our first (but not last) chance to eat alligator, and the Louisiana cochon with turnips, cabbage, pickled peaches & cracklins was superb, but there was something too conventional in the decor, and the gourmet take on classic Cajun food seemed entirely unnecessary in a city where the straight-up old-school take is so damn good.

A better meal was had at a place called Dick & Jenny’s where we had bourbon cocktails, alligator sausage, fried oysters and the best collard greens I ate during the visit–as they remain my favorite food, I ate them whenever they were on the menu. However, the best meal we had was at a quite bland looking restaurant in a not-very-well-decorated house on a street that looked quite yuppified (though we later discovered that it also housed one of the Uptown neighborhood’s great brass band venues). The restaurant is called Dante’s Kitchen, and their thing is that they make everything–and I mean, everything–in house: pickles, cheese, bread, crackers, bitters, booze, custards, etc. We had small plates with an emphasis on vegetables: home-made charcuterie with pickled onions and fig jam, collards, a salad of watermelon, haloumi, black olives and parsley, an oxtail stew, and a heap of potatoes roasted in duck fat. Oh, and Sazeracs, the classic New Orleans cocktail.

Not-pictured: arm-sized po’ boy.

But it was those lunches that really got us going and were the most memorable: insanely huge shrimp and oyster po’ boys, fried catfish, red beans and rice, gumbo AND jambalaya at Crabby Jack’s (we had to try them all); amazing fried chicken and stewed green beans at Willie Mae’s Scotch House (this was the winner in the fried chicken category. From what we’ve heard, the secret is the Coca-cola brine); and some not-too-shabby barbecue from a place in the Bywater/Marigny quarter called The Joint.

We also had some delicious vegan Korean food on our first night in town from a pop-up restaurant in the kitchen of a dive bar in the same neighborhood. I likened this meal to the time we drove into the desert outside of Palm Springs after a week of high-fat eating and stumbled upon a macrobiotic restaurant that appeared to us as an oasis. Never again have I eaten such amazing brown rice and seaweed. It was food to cleanse the palate and soothe the soul, and I had a similar sense of well-being after eating this take-out. But the high point of that sticky hot evening was when we went to get the food and discovered in the cool of the bar’s front room, a teenaged brass band practicing for a gig; a scene that to us in that moment captured everything that we love about New Orleans.

The first dish was the one that I mentioned in my previous post, the chicken roasted with clementines and Arak. I wish I had taken pictures, as this is a really beautiful dish. And though the chicken is cooked with the skin on, the juice that gathers in the bottom of the pan is somehow much less fatty than expected. Is there something scientific going on here, something to do with the amount of alcohol in the dish?

I went to the market in the afternoon to pick up some ingredients, but could not find a small bottle of anything anise-y at the liquor store. Then I remembered this undrinkable 69 proof absinthe that friends gave me a few years ago for my birthday–undrinkable because I was afraid of having it come in contact with my internal organs after seeing what it did to the finish on our hardwood floor. And though I could not find anyone on the internet to approve my substitution, I gave it a try and was pleased with the results, though I must warn you: let some of the alcohol burn off before you stick your head into the oven to see how things are looking. It was hard on the eyes.

Again, because you can find the recipe here, I will just summarize the steps: a few hours (or up to a day) before, make up a marinade with 3 tablespoons of clementine juice and 3 of lemon, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, 6.5 tablespoons of absinthe, 2 tablespoons of grainy mustard, 2 teaspoons of smashed fennel seeds, and salt and pepper. Pour it over some cut-up chicken parts (bone-in, skin-on), some thickly sliced clementines and some large chunks of fennel. When it comes time to cook, preheat the oven to 425–the recipe says to cook it at 475 but I wanted to put the eggplant (see below) in at the same time. Roast for about an hour or until the fruit is gorgeously charred and the chicken cooked.

The recipe says to remove the chicken and vegetables from the pan and reduce the liquid, but I could not be bothered. There was plenty left in the pan, along with a few pieces of fennel, and I am planning to turn them into some kind of New Year’s day soup.

The second dish was lamb-stuffed eggplants, but I wanted to modify it for the vegetarian in our group. This is an equally straightforward dish, and one that goes surprisingly well with the chicken, even though the flavours do not seem so complimentary.

For this, you simply cut a few medium eggplants in half lengthwise, lay them skin side down in a baking dish, brush them liberally with olive oil, and season them with salt and pepper. They roast in the oven at 425 for about 20 minutes while you make the stuffing.

Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a frying pan. While it heats, make a spice mixture of 1.5 teaspoons of ground cumin, 1.5 tablespoons of sweet paprika, and 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon. Add half to the oil along with about 2 cups of chopped onion and saute for about 8 minutes, adding water if the mixture starts to stick too much. When the onion is browned, add about 1/4 cup of pine nuts  and about a 1/2 cup of smashed walnuts.

The recipe calls for you to make a kind of sauce that you put in the bottom of the roasting dish, but I forgot this step and simply added the remaining ingredients to the saute pan: a few teaspoons of sugar, the juice of one lemon, a chunk of tamarind paste softened in 1/4 cup of water, and salt and pepper. I also added 1/4 cup of currants to add more sweetness, and then realizing I still had the second half of the spice mixture, dumped it in too.

When you are ready to go, simply spoon this mixture over the eggplant and wrap the dish tightly with foil. The recipe says to cook it at 375 degrees, but I put it into the oven at 425 degrees with the chicken and it was totally fine. The end result is slightly caramelized and sticky and was a perfect compliment to the chicken.

Happy new year!

I always enjoy reading The New Yorker’s food issues, though I found the last one a little fluffier and puffier than usual, in particular, the portrait of Israeli-born, London-based super-chef, Yotam Ottolenghi.

Perhaps I have just had enough of the chef-love. Sure the stories differ in detail, but they basically lay out the same narrative: Dude (most often, still) discovers aptitude for cooking when on (genius) path to something else (art, philosophy, skateboarding, meth addiction). He spends some time hanging about with other super-chefs, opens eponymous restaurant at an age when many of us are still sleeping on futons and trying to pay back our student loans, and “changes the way that people [in a particular town, country, continent)] eat,” (though in ways that are never made explicit).

Or perhaps I am just jealous.

What I want from The New Yorker food issues are stories about places that I will likely never travel to and things that I will likely never eat. Though I aspire to be adventurous in my journeys abroad, I tend to return to the places that I have already loved: New Orleans and New York, Paris and Italy and Berlin. I am, by nature, too anxious to stray far from the comforts of the West, too afraid of getting sick, too vulnerable to things that nip and bite.

What I need is something that my parents have found: good friends who venture abroad and then invite you to come and join them once they have settled in and figured things out. Not only does this ease the anxiety of the new, it allows you to experience the new from a more local perspective; sleeping in apartments rather than hotels, shopping and cooking meals rather than eating in restaurants.

My friends live in Paris and London and Berlin. Not that I am complaining…

I was moved to read the article on Ottolenghi after checking out his (and partner, Tami Samimi’s) admittedly gorgeous cookbook, Jerusalem. My mother-in-law had received the book as a Christmas gift after making one of the recipes that was reprinted in the Montreal Gazette: a seasonally-apt and unusual sounding dish of roasted chicken with clementines and Arak (a Middle-Eastern anise-flavoured aperatif). She declared it delicious.

As is my new practice, I took out my iphone thinking I would photograph a recipe or two that looked good, and give them a try before picking up the book myself, but as I flipped through the vegetable section, I found myself wanting to photograph every page. What struck me first was the emphasis on raw vegetables, the diversity of tastes and textures on the plate, and the abundance of fresh herbs like cilantro, parsley and dill; just the thing to balance the body and soul after a week (or month) of Christmas eating.

I made a recipe from the book that was simply named: Basmati and Wild Rice with Chick Peas, Currants and Fresh Herbs. You can find it here. Just scroll down to the bottom.

Though I am trying to be better about actually following recipes, having put aside my recipe snobbery, and recognized the benefits of acquiring new approaches and techniques, I forgot to look at the recipe before shopping (and during cooking) and so ended up with something that was quite good, but different than what was on the page.

Since the link to the recipe is above, I will just tell you what I did: I simmered 1/3 cup of wild rice in salted water, and steamed 1 cup of brown basmati (for your health!) in another pot. Then, in a cast iron pan, I sauteed 1 teaspoon of ground cumin seed and 2 teaspoons of “Oriental” curry powder (it was all that could be found) in olive oil, added some thinly sliced garlic, a can of drained and rinsed chick peas, and 1/4 cup of water. When they were all done, I mixed them in a bowl with salt and pepper, 1/3 cup currants, and fresh parsley.

What really makes the dish is the crispy browned onions, but since I neglected to notice that we were out, I had to make due with some charred scallions.

But the best part of the meal were the two chopped salads: cucumber, scallion and fresh dill with a simple dressing of apple cider vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper; and carrot and beet with scallion, the same dressing and a healthy sprinkling of sumac.

It was even better today for lunch, though as you can see here, we ate most of the beet and carrot salad last night and so had a slightly less balanced meal in terms of colour, sweetness and crunch.

With an eye to seeking out (and figuring out what the hell to do with) the unusual foods that are available to us in this culturally diverse city, Market Share was originally driven by what was available from the farmers and foragers at the Jean Talon Market. Now that the season of farmer’s markets is behind us, I will be searching out the unknown quantities that grace the shelves of our grocery stores and depanneurs, and looking at the different and sometimes surprising things you can do with familiar ingredients.

If you would like to check out what I have been up to so far, here are some quick links to the Market Share posts of 2012.

August: kohlrabi and purple beans, Lillet, almond flour and amaranth.

September: chanterelles and white baby turnips, skate and ground cherries.

October: black olive salt and Romanesco cauliflower, Sichuan peppercorns, curry leaves and tomatillos.

November: cilantro root and Gruyère, walnuts and beets.

December: coconut, Mazavaroo and Brigadeiro.

Market Share will start up again in the new year.

Let’s get right to the point: Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant by Anthony Myint and Karen Leibowitz is awesome. Awesome. And by that I mean: a smart, funny and incredibly inspiring read that is aesthetically-pleasing, feels good in the hands, and has a recipe for one of the easiest and tastiest desserts I have ever prepared: white bread, spread with butter and sugar, run under the broiler (or blow-torch) until it is brown and bubbly, and served in a pool of condensed milk and cream.

The authors are obviously responsible for much of the book’s originality and charm, but so too is the publisher—McSweeney’s Insatiables, which is also behind the fantastic Lucky Peach.

Myint, a line cook, and Leibowitz, a humanities scholar, were newlyweds when they decided to rent a taco cart (or “roach-coach”) and spend their Thursday evenings selling gourmet sandwiches like the PB&J (pork belly and jicama) and King Trumpet (mushroom, garlic confit and thrice-fried potatoes) from a street corner in San Francisco’s Mission district. They called the enterprise Mission Street Food.

Thinking that a handful of people might wander by, the couple were overwhelmed when on that first night, the line-up for sandwiches snaked around the block, assisted by the tweeting of a well-connected friend and a preponderance of food bloggers and culture vultures.

The story of Mission Street Food (and its current incarnation, Mission Chinese Food) has taken on epic proportions, assisted in part by this book, and by the plethora of food writers who have chronicled its journey from lowly food cart to, as Mark Bittman wrote in the New York Times, one of the country’s three “hottest destination restaurants.” As legend goes, by month’s end, the crowds had become so enormous that some property-owning jerk had called the cops on them.

To avoid further hassles, and to be able to meet demand, Myint and Leibowitz did something that was pretty much unheard of at the time: they set up a kitchen-sharing arrangement with an unremarkable Chinese restaurant and started serving dinner there on Thursdays and Saturdays.

The book is structured as an oral history, interspersed with witty and articulate meditations on subjects as diverse as Popeye’s fried chicken, Orientalism, and the “sportification” of food. There is also an unnecessary but nevertheless charming graphic interpretation of the battle with J.J. Vanguard (the aforementioned jerk), an excellent primer on buying and preparing meat, and a dozen or so recipes for some of MSF’s most beloved dishes—I am particularly tempted by the marrow-stuffed squid, and friends have reported that the Brown Butter Financier, a light and crunchy almond cake, is excellent.

The book closes with a DIY guide for aspiring restauranteurs, but as our own Cookies Unite and Grumman’s Taco Truck make clear, the message has already been loudly and widely received.

Picking up Susan Semenak’s Market Chronicles: Stories & Recipes from Montreal’s Marché Jean-Talon after MissionStreet Food is like sitting down to dinner with your in-laws—especially if, like me, your in-laws happen to be fabulous cooks and passionate locavores—after a week on the road in the company of rockstars and hipster foodies; more grown-up, not quite as fun, but satisfying nonetheless.

Though primarily a cookbook—there are recipes with enticing images, though I cannot say whether they will produce the desired results—what resonates here are the short essays on the folks who grow and produce the magical bounty of food that greets you every time you visit. From Steven Finklestein, who sold chickens from his family farm before the market banned the sale of live animals, to the globe-trotting spice hunters, Ethné and Philippe de Vienne, the people whose stories enliven these pages are, as the book reminds us, part of our community; a community to be nurtured, sustained and celebrated. And who knows—with any luck, my Fish Chowder with mussels, shrimp and a chunk of Charles and James Henry Atkin’s smoked mackerel will taste as good as it looks.

Of course, what comprises plug is a deeply subjective thing. This was made evident to me while listening to a recent CBC interview with a Hormel executive. Did you know that the international demand for Spam is so high that the factory has to remain open 364 days a year, closing only for Christmas? It’s true. And did you know, that Spam, that gelatinous porky treat, is so beloved in Maui that it is practically the national dish? Also true. On a trip there last May we attempted to enjoy a fist-sized sushi-like Spam Mitsubi, but it was unbearably salty, despite the copious amount of sticky white rice.

I am also reminded of the subjectivity of plug when I see my teenaged students sitting in the halls before class, lavishing affection on their burgers and fries. But though I might feel a bit queasy in these moments, having not walked under the golden arches since our last dirty south road trip in 2009, I can at least recognize a kind of nostalgic value here, remembering my father’s mortifying habit of ordering styrofoam-encased Big Macs and then complaining to the hapless cashier about the sogginess of the buns.

For me, what is even worse than the worst of the fast food chains are the generic family diners that are the interstate traveler’s constant companions: the Denny’s and Friendly’s and Applebees, with their garish patriotic decor, their antiseptic smells, and their bland and characterless food. M would argue that Waffle House–whose appearance on the horizon, it has been said, is a truer signifier of the south than crossing the Mason-Dixon line–is somehow external to this categorization. But after eating a decidedly plug-like breakfast in a WH outside of Memphis, I suspect that its symbolic value will not be enough to draw me in on our next visit. Fortunately, with a little prep work, it is extremely easy to travel around the country without eating at any of these joints.

Revelation #3: You can eat well and still get to where you are going.

The last time we hit the dirty south, M did some research on Road Food, that paeon to all things sandwichy and mom & pop that grew out of Jan and Michael Stern’s book of the same name, and dug up some amazing stops. This time, because I knew that having Coco along would mean a different approach to eating on the road, I went to work, determined to find good, local, one-of-a-kind joints with reasonably-priced food that could be eaten outside, in the car, or on a dog-friendly patio. I was mostly successful.

What is great about the Road Food website is that it is curated, unlike many of the vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free sites that simply identify restaurants based on a specific set of criteria, but make no attempt to evaluate the quality of the food produced (on one such site, the first half-dozen restaurants listed in Dayton, Ohio, are Olive Gardens). Of course a curated site is only as good as its curator (some people do actually like the Olive Garden).

With Road Food, you can feel confident because folks with good taste and a passion for regional fare are at the helm. This is a very good thing. However, as the name implies, Road Food is about just that, road food, which tends to be hearty, meaty and deep-fried. If you are looking for fried chicken (we were) and barbecue (check), there is no better source, but one must reach further if one wants to eat a vegetable or two along the way.

For this I turned to sources like The New York Times’ “36 Hours in (enter city)” section–which, incidentally, was also useful in helping identify interesting neighborhoods to spend the night in–and the blogs of friends and trusted sources, sussed out over days of leisurely surfing. Conducting this kind of research at the last minute is stressful and feels like work. Better to start perusing as soon as your trip is conceived so you can take pleasure in the process and have time to cross-check reviews and map routes in advance. This is key if you want to embark on a culinary expedition and still make your destination each night. Though having an iphone means having GPS and google at the ready, what saved us time and energy was knowing exactly how to get to where we were going.

So what did we eat?

There was some pretty good Cambodian in Kingston and pizza with friends in Toronto; a bacon and egg sandwich with hoisin sauce at The Yeti in K-W; barbecued chicken and ribs and mac & cheese at Slow’s in mid-town Detroit; cod fritters on the patio of the friendly–we were sitting on the sidewalk until they ordered us to bring Coco and sit at a proper table–but otherwise forgettable, Olive, in gritty downtown Dayton; and a massive plate of eggs, sausage and grits at famed Louisville breakfast joint, Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, which we ate in the parking lot, in the shade of a broad, leafy tree.

A side of pickles from Prince’s Hot Chicken

There was Prince’s Hot Chicken and a slab of home-made banana-walnut-pineapple cake in Nashville, and some perfectly acceptable white woman vegetarian sushi in a decidedly unhip “hipster” neighborhood in Memphis; the aforementioned Waffle House breakfast; and a delicious Southern Sunday brunch buffet of chicken-fried steak, fried catfish and okra at Two Sisters, in the depressed and depopulated downtown of Jackson, Mississippi. Here too, as in Louisville (and Nashville) there were nearby parks with shady trees for us to hunker down in and eat our lunch. In Nashville, there was country music in the air and a truly bizarre life-sized replica of the Parthenon in the distance. In Jackson, to our great discomfort, we were watched over by an elderly gentleman who sat nearby, a presumably loaded gun holstered at his waist.

On the way home, we had to change our route at the last minute and so had to keep our eyes open and our fingers crossed. As a result, our meals were less interesting and less palatable; once again, a testament to the value of planning things out in advance. There were burritos (and more burritos) and a hamburger at a mom & pop diner in Delaware that was inexplicably served without condiments on a plain, dry bun. Though we did eventually manage to acquire some mustard and ketchup, our request was met with eyebrows raised. Luckily, we had friends on route who kept us well fed. We had an excellent dinner in the very cool town of Athens, Georgia–I had a tasty Southern Bouillabaisse–but missed out on what seemed to be an excellent diner breakfast as we were anxious to get on the road and not able to wait for the hungover kitchen staff to get things going.

If there was one major disappointment in the food department it was discovering on our second-to-last night that we were in a house without the internet–you heard me right, no internet–and therefore unable to research a lunch stop on Chesapeake Bay. Still, with the abundance of crab and clam shacks on route, and the visual and olfactory delights that met us at every turn, we were able to sate our hungers if not wow our palates. We also had bellies still aching from the food orgy that was our time in New Orleans (more on that later) and so headed back to Canada feeling quite satisfied with our journey.

We recently returned from a two-week road trip to the American south that saw us visiting friends not seen since our last visit in 2009. Since this time, we have produced one documentary, and two CDs: the first, a fully-realized album, the second, a collection of as-yet-unreleased recordings that were nevertheless burned onto little plastic discs for the purpose of friendly dissemination. But as we made our way, stopping here and there for drinks, dinners and sleeps, and dropping off said discs as thank yous and here’s-what-we’ve-been-up-tos, we noticed that there were very few disc players, be they audio or video, gracing the entertainment zones of our friends’ homes. Sure, there remains an ability to play a DVD in a computer, or a CD in a car stereo, but for the most part, our friends–with the exception of those who remain loyal to vinyl records–seem to have untethered themselves from their dependency on these once coveted objects.

I have never been much of an audiophile, lacking the ear to truly distinguish between that which sounds fine and that which sounds better. Or so I thought. On this same trip, I was browsing in a record store–we do have a collection of LPs and a turntable, though my innate laziness means I am more likely to load up my iTunes–when the shopkeeper put on a recording of “Punhat de Prata” by Alceu Valença, one of my favourites from the Brazil 70 compilation that came out a few years ago. But this was a different, unfamiliar version of the song: richer in tone and more diverse in instrumentation. Or, once again, so I thought. However, when I approached the counter to ask about its origin, I realized that it was simply a vinyl pressing of the same compilation. I was shocked, having heard the song literally dozens of times before and never imagining that what I was hearing was only a portion of what the song was actually about. This was indeed a revelation. I was reminded of this experience a few days later, while driving from Nashville to Memphis.

Though I liked the White Stripes as much as the next person–during their heyday, I was often compared to Meg White for reasons that made sense to me only in so much as we both had long brown hair and pale skin, and were often seen sitting behind a drum kit–I was never really a fan of Jack White. But all that changed after listening to Marc Maron’s interview with White on the almost-always excellent WTF, (I say almost because Maron seemed a little intimidated by White, and so the conversation lacked the easy rhythm that is characteristic of Maron’s interview style). That said, what I discovered during their conversation is that in addition to his obvious musical talents, White is also a funny, interesting and intelligent guy–the kind of guy you might like to have over for a beer or two. And though I had heard the pro-analog argument many times before, his articulation of the distinction was the first that really made sense to me.

In essence, what I took from White’s explanation is that the difference between analog and digital recording can be understood as analogous to differences in painting styles. Whereas analog recording coats the tape’s surface with a continuous band of sound–much like conventional brushstrokes cover a canvas–digital recording drops bits (or bytes?) of information onto the track. And so, as it is with pointillism, no matter how much information is deposited, or how densely it lays, there remains a blankness, a silence, an absence of information. And it is in this absence, no matter how fleeting or unnoticeable to the ear, that the loss of whatever you want to call it (warmth/richness/feeling) occurs.

Now, when I dream of the future, I envision the past: two wood-encased speakers, an old green carpet and brown sofa, a record player on a low coffee table, and a wall of LP-laden shelves. This is the living room that I see when I think of the late 80s, of the time when my friends and I started to move out of our childhood homes, bringing with us the rugs and furniture and lamps that our parents no longer wanted, and in many cases, the record players that our parents no longer used. Sometimes the couches were green or gold, and the carpets shaggy and brown, but what remained consistent was the primary function of these rooms: to talk, hang out, drink wine and listen to music. These were the locations of my musical education, where I heard Hunky Dory for the first time, and Fear of Music.

I could go on and on, waxing nostalgic about the past on a beautiful sunny day when I should really be down at the lake. So instead, I will return to the present.

For now, the CD tower is gone, but the CDs remain, tucked into boxes and hidden away from Coco and her insatiable appetite for hard plastic. How long they stick around is hard to predict. That they are insurable objects has always amused me because they are so obviously without value, yet this fact must play a role in our decision to keep them. That they remain cherished in what they represent–the 90s, our 20s, the early years of our life together–is also a factor, as is our fear that our computers will crash and the sound tracks of our present lives will disappear into the ether. Yet they are simply objects, and flimsy ones at that; the music exists elsewhere and everywhere, the memories it unlocks safe as long as we are young. At some point down the road I will look back and wonder when it was that we gave away the CDs, but the LPs will escape this fate; having escaped it once already, they can rest confident that their place in our home is secure.