Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Drinking Houston means great beer, spirits and wine procured at Premium Draught and Spec’s. And the great Islay pour I first experienced at Warren’s Inn in Old Market Square downtown, remains the great dram I pour in my library. Ah, Laphroaig! Especially the Cask Strength. Drinking Houston with books has been a mainstay for me … Continue reading Drinking 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?
A.E. Housman in “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff” from A Shropshire Lad has much wisdom to impart, but none of more magnitude and maltiness than the above lines; while Eduard von Grützner oil painting of Monks Drinking Beer In A Cellar portrays our current post out quite nicely–beer and God. Let’s start down below; let’s start with … Continue reading “And Malt Does More Than Milton Can To Justify God’s Ways To Man:” Theological Speculation With Many Great Brews. Part One: Death And Kokytus.
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.
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.
It truly amazes me how some Americans view this country, a group of states built from immigrants over and over across the centuries, and yet these cultural critics never appreciate nor understand. Now with Donald as their mouthpiece, some outrageous delusions appear on my newsfeed, leaving me speechless but definitely hungry. Take the Coney Island … Continue reading “Yes Donald, Immigrants Do Change Cultures, So Do You Want To Send Back The Coney Island?”
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.
I read Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics after spending many years with Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Anne Carson, Gabriel García Márquez, and Virginia Woolf which means I understand Kant’s metaphysics through those authors, through The Metamorphosis, The Circular Ruins, Autobiography of Red, One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Waves. My … Continue reading Prolegomena To Any Future Ragù.
Gustave Doré portrays one of the most famous acts of chewing in literature. At the end of Dante’s Inferno, the Poet and Virgil walk upon on ice amidst the very, very damned as we read in Robert M. Durling’s translation. . . . I saw two frozen in one hole so that one head was a … Continue reading Thinking About Chewing
