I’m not entirely sure how I found this first video, but it’s not the traditional professional food video you might expect.
Instead, it features a dozen women in matching pink headscarves and flower-print outfits. They’re sitting around a banana leaf mat, chopping fish and garlic into pieces. Together, they handle almost comically gigantic pots, spooning sauce with leg-sized ladles.
I am pretty sure they’re in Bangladesh or Eastern India and if it weren’t for the occasional subtitle I wouldn’t have any idea what they were saying.
Still, you don’t need language to understand what they are doing:
Cooking what looks like a mouthwateringly delicious meal for their community. Watch until the very last second to see who came to eat. (8 minutes)
The internet is full of videos like these, filmed by unseen camera people and edited by unknown editors. Simple homemade videos that can vastly expand our understanding of how we think about food.
Dianxi Xiaoge is another one of those amazing people behind the camera.
The former police-woman turned food influencer films intricate and stunningly gorgeous cooking videos in her home village. You gotta watch at least one of them. This one on corn, or another on tomatoes, will give you a better idea of just how much artistry she incorporates into making a meal.
Since our previous video didn’t give us a peek behind the camera, I want to show an English interview with her where she tells the story of how she started cooking, why she moved home from the big city, and her motivations for making everything from scratch. (11 minutes)
To have turned her traditional upbringing into modern virality is its own wonder. In 6 years she has amassed almost 12 million subscribers – that’s almost as many as Fox News (14 million). And to think she became popular by making a hamburger from scratch.
By scratch I mean literally baking the buns, growing the tomatoes, chopping her own ground beef… you get the idea.
When I go to a restaurant and order a hamburger it just sort of appears. I don’t often give much thought to what it would take to make it from scratch. Xiaoge changed my perspective completely. And it applies to everything!
Most of us don’t wander out into the fields to gather fresh artichokes or to dig up mushrooms.
We go to the grocery store without even thinking about how those things end up on our shelves.
I guess that’s what made me so excited about this next video that dives into just that. Not only the science, engineering, and logistics that go into making everything available to most of us most of the time, but the people behind the products on the shelves. (28 minutes)
I loved learning about the short history of supermarkets. The “artificial winters” in particular – giant warehouses designed to trick apples into thinking it’s time to hibernate – blew my mind.
But the human and environmental cost behind something as simple as shrimp really is making me rethink the way I see the abundance on the shelves.
For all three of these videos, I hope we can think about and enjoy food with appreciation and perspectives.
That’s all for today.
Do you have a favorite food video?
– Francisco