Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Still a ring of water, a mirror for the sky amidst the ice, but more and more melts each day now and shadows have the sun to thank for shedding its grey veil. A shadow now has its rock. In reading W.S. Merwin’s “The Widow” from The Lice, the first lesson is humility. How easily … Continue reading W.S. Merwin And A Walk Into The Deep
Early 1960s America and Nietta Dunn defies Jim Crow laws by sitting at the H. Green lunch counter in downtown Lexington. African-Americans may buy food, but they may not sit at the counter. Here’s the thing, food doesn’t work well with fear and hate–not when planting, not when harvesting, not when cooking, and especially not … Continue reading Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.
In the HBO series Westworld, androids also known as “hosts” struggle to achieve the most fundamentally unique experience of the human species, consciousness and all its attendant wakefulness and awareness, or so we’d like to think about ourselves, but hosts like Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay become alert to themselves and the world around them, distinctly … Continue reading Banquet World: “These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends.”
Ah, if only our bodies featured an ever-growing fruit basket a la Arcimboldo, then food distribution would be at our hands, from our faces. Exploring the metaphysics of food includes the portrayals of its production and distribution. The seed I hold in my hand has a real growth potential and biochemistry to its existence; just … Continue reading Metaphysics Of The Food Labyrinth.
Philippe de Champaigne’s painting Saint Augustine (1645-1650) presents the image of a burning heart in the theologian’s hand to emphasize his burning love of knowledge, truth and God. A smoking heart has much to do with a love of taste, and with that, a few words about taste from the Journal of René Redzepi: The connection … Continue reading Smoking Heart Of Love.
In the early sixteenth century, Leonardo Da Vinci sketched many anatomical drawings and wrote many notes concerning the human heart. Nature has made the cords on the back side of the fleshy membrane of the three gates with which the gateway of the right ventricle is shut; and she has not made them on the … Continue reading Eating A Burning Heart Of Love.
Ah, ginger beef tripe from Yum Yum Cha Cafe. Though no longer a fixture of Rice Village, many a Sunday morning the Harvey/Maya family traveled to its storefront window and entered in search of dim sum. Beef tripe comes to us from the muscle wall of the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. The … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Stomach Our Cultural Engine.
The year begins with champagne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (circa 1880-81) and new dietary guidelines. Well, something like that. Marion Nestle at Food Politics offers a review of the impregnable document: The 2015 Dietary Guidelines, At Long Last, while Mother Jones points out that climate goes missing in the document: There’s A Huge … Continue reading A Week Thinking About What We Eat
It’s 1977 and I’m wearing silk shirts, bell bottom pants, and attending my first rock concert: Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue tour. All pretty happy and wonderful, though little did I know what was going on with food. In January of 1977, the United States Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs … Continue reading Not Much Has Changed Since 1977
This featured image features one of may favorite places in the world, Revival Market, and where I graze on wonderful headcheese and whiskey pâté. Let’s begin today’s menu with a perfect fall, comfort food recipe–Pumpkin Kale Mac and Cheese from cookingwithawallflower. I know, I know–another article about eating insects, but when the little critters are … Continue reading All The World Is Cured Meat . . . And Insects.
