Life seen through Search: Cooking on the road

Prologue


I can't remember why I searched Google for cooking on the road - I have no trip planned, and besides, I rarely cook on the road. I may buy fresh fruit for snacks, or pastries to go with my coffee, and occasionally, when decent food choices are not readily available, I get milk and cereal for breakfast or dinner. But I generally consider the local grub an essential part of the travel experience, and find cooking on the road a detriment to fully enjoying the trip.

But no matter why I searched, the results turned out very different from I had expected. A clear and vivid example of the socio-economic divide in the United States of America and the chasm between social classes emerged. The same was the case with the corresponding Amazon book search.

Logue

Let's start with Amazon. The search results feature Cooking on the Road with Celebrity Chefs which somehow comes above Cooking on the Road - a book by a cycling enthusiast. Also on the list - Spain, a Culinary Road Trip (Mario Batalli, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Bittman and a stunning Spanish actress whose name evades me, drive about in Mercedez Benz sedans, followed by camera crews, and explore Spanish architecture and cuisine - available on DVD) and The Original Road Kill Cookbook. 

In other words, Amazon's audience range from sports fanatics to celebrity chef enthusiasts, from those who scavenge for food, to watchers of famous people dining at posh restaurants.

The Google search is even more varied, with the following entries making it to the top:

• Mark Bittman (again), making a soup from salad bar ingredients at the Sundance Festival, possibly using the coffee pot. Ingenious, delectable, and decidedly upscale. Recipe included, assuming you can find a hotel with a fresh salad bar.
• Michael Ruhlman's equipment list for cooking on the road. You know you are in trouble when you have to lug along the PolyScience Standard Immersion Circulator, but how else would you prepare short ribs, cooked sous vide 48 hours at 140F/60C? I have two things to say about the list - you'd have to be a magician to get it past the TSA (especially those pretty chef knives), and the La Creuset Dutch Oven might tip you over the luggage weight limit. Again, pretty upscale.
• The Rough Guide's article on cooking on the road - this guys left his immersion circulator at home, but did bring a spice bag. Practical suggestions for budget travelers.
  
• THE UNDETECTABLE HOMELESS - one in a series of blog articles about interviews with "(mostly) women who live out of RVs, trailers, trucks, cars..." - with " “camping recipes” that are not only delicious, but cooked in creative ways." Decidedly less upscale.
• Flexible Cooking on the Road: One Recipe Fits All - Go Budget Travel's lord of the dishes, a recipe to rule them all, for the budget traveler: Cajun Jambalaya. Bring your own spice bag. Cheap and practical.
• And finally, a microwave red lentil soup recipe from the Cooking Manager, which may be tough to make (try finding red lentils outside the Middle East), but at least is Glat Kosher.

Again, we see a range of audiences - from the rich and famous, through the middle class, to the broke, to the down and out. Microcosm in a page.

 Epilogue

As was recently pointed out to me, classes have been around for a long time, and the fact that they show up in search results is not all too surprising - it is just a reflection of the normal distribution curve. Still, you don't find this distribution when you search for "Cooking French (British, Indian) Food".