Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Certainly one of the most famous severed heads belonged to Louis XVI as depicted in Georg Heinrich Sieveking’s copper plate engraving from 1793. Simon Schama in Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution narrates the final moments of this most unfortunate king. The steps to the scaffold were so steep that Louis had to lean … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Head And Face
It’s November 8, 1895, late at night, and Wilhelm Röntgen, Professor of Physics in Worzburg, Bavaria sits in a dark room. He’s enclosed a discharge tube in a sealed, thick, black carton. He lifts a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide in front of the discharge tube and the plate turns fluorescent. … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Bones
No, not garbage, nor a disturbing twig sculpture out of True Detective. Though, all in all, given where we travel in this essay, similarities abound. A male satin bowerbird crafted the construction at the top of this post. Why? I found the answer in David Rothenberg’s Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and Evolution. He’s … Continue reading “I Just Want To Make Love To You.” Actually, I Just Want To Make Art. Bowerbirds, The Faerie Queen and Etta James.
Yes, Cochon de Lait stuffed and roasted for six hours on Christmas Day; all deep brown and crisp with a fat-rich world inside waiting to pour out onto our plates. Let’s back up a moment, how did this come about? I prepped my mind for two days so I would approach the pig with the … Continue reading Cochon De Lait, Day Three With The Family, Andrei Rublev, László Krasznahorkai, August Escoffier, Julia Child, Montezuma, Demeter, Ian McKellen, Robert Fagles, Uncle Tupelo, James Joyce, Bob Dylan and The Band, Flannery O’Connor, And Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.
A simple table setting from Hannibal. Well, a simple precision given the layers of life and death unfolding between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. Consider this a dark bridge to the scene from Pan’s Labyrinth which ended the previous post. Fork and napkin on the left, knife on the right, wine glass also on the … Continue reading Cochon De Lait For The Three Graces, Day Two With Some Bollywood For Good Measure
The number of guests at dinner should not be less than the number of the Graces nor exceed that of the Muses, i.e., it should begin with three and stop at nine. (Marcus Varro) I have a suckling pig in my refrigerator. Over the next three days I’ll narrate his transformation from corpse to recipe … Continue reading Cochon De Lait For The Three Graces, Day One
We open with Gustav Klimt’s Garden Path with Chickens (1916). If a blog post is a path to a particular world of sense and sound, then this one includes a chicken. And a cow. And leeks. Let’s walk further down the path. The first words of a favorite novel open thus, “You are about to … Continue reading If On A Winter’s Night A Cock-A-Leekie
Miley Cyrus has a famous tongue. So do Mick Jagger and Albert Einstein. Merriam-Webster defines a tongue as a tapering flame, long narrow strip of land projecting into a body of water, a moveable pin in a buckle. François Rabelais has Pantagruel cover an army with his tongue to protect them from a rain storm. … Continue reading My Tongue As A Sandwich With A Glass of Burgundy
Ah, cocktail hour, that wonderful moment a wee past 4 in the afternoon when accomplishments of the day may receive reward, and upcoming night toasted. In the summer, this means the classic, the ineffable gin and tonic. Our featured image by Rachel Weber, Hendrick’s Gin and Tonic with Cucumber, uses the composition of a still-life … Continue reading Drinking Gin And Tonics With Nina Simone And Raymond Carver.
People around the country and in the nearby towns muttered a great deal among themselves, but said very little to the outer world. They had talked about dying and half-deserted Innsmouth for nearly a century, and nothing new could be wilder or more hideous than what they had whispered and hinted years before. Many things … Continue reading Cooking Fish With H.P. Lovecraft
