Paper Palate

Washington Post writer Jane Mengenhauser entertained me last week with a list of recent culinary slang terms or coined words that she has come across in the media and on the ‘Net, with definitions and citations as to where she has seen the term used most recently.

Some of the terms are really silly ones, like “afishianado” for a chef who enjoys cooking seafood, or “breastaurant” as a euphemism for places like “Hooters” that feature scantily clad waitresses. (And here, I was hoping it meant a restaurant that was friendly toward breast-feeding Moms–oh, well. I mean, why would “Hooters” need a euphemism–the name says it all to me.)

Others are clever and useful, like, “flexitarian” for a person who is mostly a vegetarian but who now and again indulges in some sort of meat. “Out-Saucing,” meant to indicate the use of a canned, powdered or frozen sauce mix, is equally cute and funny, two indicators that point to its origin in an old Shoe comic.

Still others are unwieldy and inelegant constructions that are meant to sound professional, but end up sounding more like a little kid mangling Greek. Witness “paleocuisineology” an attempt to convey “food anthropology” in one polysyllabic mouthful. Just call it food anthropology, for goodness’ sake. Please. “Cuisineology” just sounds and looks made-up; however this hasn’t stopped several universities from granting degrees in the discipline, which combines food science with culinary training. A “Cusineologist” is a chef/food scientist.

She did leave out a few obvious coined food-related terms that have been in the media recently–“freegan” is an obvious one, though perhaps she didn’t want to give the dumpster-diving anarchists anymore media legitimacy than they already have enjoyed. A freegan is a person who chooses to subsist off of the food products discarded by restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses, though some hard-core freegans will also snag the food left on other diner’s plates in restaurants.

“Locavore” is another new food term that has seen a lot of use in the traditional media and in the blogosphere. Pertaining to a person who tries to consume as much food as possible from local sources, often within 100 miles of the locavore’s home. The term gained a great deal of use through the efforts of The Locavores website, and through the August Eat Local Challenge that took place last year where bloggers from around the globe ate locally for the entire month and blogged about it. A book on the experience is forthcoming. (This year’s eat local challenge is set for May.)

Of course, this got me to thinking of some words that I use that relate to food that perhaps deserve to be in wider useage.

A “foodophobe” is a person who has issues with food. Either they are very picky, very calorie conscious, they have an eating disorder (yes, I know how serious eating disorders are–I suffered from anorexia once), or they are just neurotic about food. For whatever reason, food induces anxiety and a whole range of unpleasant behaviors are exhibited as a result, from refusing to eat what is set before them, to picking food apart before eating it, to simply existing on a diet of air, water and saltine crackers.

I have known a few foodophobes in my life, and in fact, have been known to cure them. Constant temptation with lots of really good food will crack the toughest foodophobe in my exeperience.

“Sacrilicious” has to be my favorite food term, but I cannot claim credit for it; was my brother-in-law, Daniel is the progenitor of that particular word.

You see, my husband’s family are all Jewish, and they don’t keep kosher. And they all really like bacon. A lot. So, one day, when we were having breakfast and they were reveling in the wonderful smoky-chewiness of that particular batch of treyf (treyf is unclean or non-kosher food, for the non-Yiddish speakers out there) we were consuming, when Daniel uttered the classic line, “It’s sacrilicious, isn’t it?”

Indeed, it was. Even I, mere shiksa that I am, could see that the bacon was indeed sacrilicious.

The one food related term that is in wide use that I would very much like to get rid of is “foodie.” It sounds trivial, silly, trite and perky, all at the same time. As I write a food blog, cook all the time, went to culinary school and talk about food constantly, I cannot escape having this word applied to me, but I still dislike it intensely.

I just wonder what other word we could use to describe the food obsessed such as myself? (I am partial to “culinary nerd,” an appellation that was bestowed on me in culinary school by a fellow student, but I can see where others would dislike it as much as I hate foodie. Besides–it would be replacing one word with two, which is not elegant.)

So, does anyone else have any ideas for a word to replace “foodie?”