Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Fire, wood, smoker and flesh equals Smoking Houston, and smoking I have done with and for family and friends while sitting in the backyard at 2408 Cortlandt. A favorite has been pork belly marinated in apple cider, brown sugar, honey, molasses and herbs seasonings. Smoking the inner organs of animals like this cow heart brings … Continue reading Smoking Houston
Cooking Houston has been a way of life for me the past thirty years, and now that I’m moving overseas I think it’s a good time to reflect over the next few posts on my kitchen, ingredients and loved ones. First loved ones. The hearth and all its cooking utensils exist to feed the family, … Continue reading Cooking Houston
Give this day O Lord to Sister Doris Engelhard who crafts beer 80,000 gallons annually, as brewmaster at Mallersdorf Abbey in Germany. Contrary to my thoughts on the distance of God in my last post, Sister Doris speaks of a close relationship with the Almighty. She always felt that she had an intimate relationship with God. “I have … Continue reading Nuns Brew And Drink Getting Closer To Thee, Though Not Quite Close Enough, And Thoughts on Woman Made in God’s Image . . . Or Is That God Made In Woman’s Image?
Another Eduard von Grützner painting and another pour of beer. He’s a happy looking monk isn’t he, well so am I, and so are bishops, monks don’t just have all the fun. And yet when it comes to reaching the Lord, of course, he, she, it, them remain forever out of reach despite voices in our … Continue reading Bishop’s Barrel #21 Lifts Me To Heaven, While God Remains Ever Out Of Reach. Part Two:Wings.
Take a study of natural forces, add a healthy pour of figurative language and delicious fragments from the natural philosophers from the eighth and seventh centuries BCE throughout the Aegean, especially in the Greek letters of Heraclitus. Consider, Fragment 7: εἰ πάντα τὰπάντα καπνὸς γένοιτο, ῥῖνες ἂν διαγνοῖεν. Transliterated into our alphabet, and we read: … Continue reading Heraclitus On Smoke; Hervé Smoking.
Louis Vincent Palliere renders in bright colors the infamous Slaughter of the Suitors” by Odysseus and Telemachus, note those gorgeous capes tripping hues between orange and red. I love cooking sausages. All sorts of sausage. Beef, chicken, lamb and pig; andouille, bloedwurst, boudin, bratwurst, chorizo, hot dogs, kielbasa, knackwurst, linguiça, longaniza, merguez, morcilla, saucisson, soppressata, … Continue reading Sausages And Cooking Murder.
John Hurt as Krapp in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape carefully, cautiously, contemplatively and then completely eats a banana, at first by letting it hang out of his mouth, just hanging there, caught between the air and its fruit shorn of peel, and the inside cavern of Krapp’s mouth, and then biting it off and … Continue reading A Comedy Of Eating: Watt And More . . . Including Sex. **Warning. Adult Views Of Eating Expressed.
Pedro Páramo and I walk into Gallo Pelón in downtown Raleigh. He insists that to read his pages I need to drink in earth and water of Oaxaca, and I need to do it now before I let my eyes fall on his first page, his first words. We tell the hostess we’re serious about drinking mezcal, … Continue reading Drinking Mezcal With Pedro Páramo.
I’m rereading Samuel Becket’s novel Watt, while also listening to Dermot Crowley voice the Singing Master’s words on Audiobook. In the opening pages, we do not meet Watt directly but through Mr. Hackett and Mr. and Mrs. Nixon who sit at a bus stop and observe someone or something disembark from a tram, variously described … Continue reading Cooking Beckett: A Stew For Mr. Knott.
Somewhere in Memphis, I had my back to a very large river and my friend said, “Let’s eat some BBQ Spaghetti.” I like my friend. I like his ideas. So I said to myself, Okay Harvey, You’re a tough guy. You’ve been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you’re crazy … Continue reading A Film Noir Weekend In Memphis With Friends And Peter Lorre, BBQ Spaghetti, Mezcal And Rye, And The Lorraine Hotel, Followed By My Own Memphis BBQ Fettuccine While Listening To Little Junior’s Blue Flames.
