Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
A moment of hospitality in Django Unchained . . . until the raw ugliness of slavery appears again and all hell breaks loose. Slaves weave in and out, a mouth articulates racist physiognomy and all around plentiful, elaborate food. This fictional scene echoes history, voices letters from the past. In Culinary Conversations of The Plantation … Continue reading Southern Hospitality: Then And Now
It’s the first poem I read by Tomas Tranströmer. My teacher at Wayne State University, Edward Hirsch suggested Tranströmer’s lyric sweep of history would appeal to my eye for detail and a poetic line setting deep within a panoramic view of space and time. Baltics (ÖSTERSJÖAR) a slim collection of poems casting a haunted eye … Continue reading A Simple Meal In Stockholm
It’s a dinner party. Wine passed down the table. Angels have appeared at Abraham and Sarah’s door, and as good hosts the old couple provide food and drink. And the LORD appeared unto him by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted … Continue reading Night Thoughts For North Carolina
The first thing you notice about Pieter Aretsen’s painting A Meat Stall With The Holy Family Giving Alms (1551) is all the meat–an ox head with eyes staring at us, pig trotters on a cabbage leaf, whole side of a slaughtered pig split cleanly down the spine, a large ham shank, sausage, smoked fish, herring; … Continue reading Thinking About Who’s Sitting Down To Dinner In North Carolina
The old stories tell of a bride . . . and then a war, and as always, banquet after banquet. Remember Helen? Daughter of Zeus and Leda. In this Peter Paul Rubens’ version (there are two) Leda and the Swan (aka Zeus) may share a kiss or you could also interpret that she’s asleep, either … Continue reading Thoughts Toward A Lecture In North Carolina: A Swan, Bride, And Fatal Banquet.
This beautiful looking cow heart you’re gazing at appears courtesy of Regula Ysewijn, who blogs under the title Miss Foodwise. Stuffed with kale, bacon and mushrooms this hearty repast reminds us that any body part in a human we probably dine on when it comes from an animal. More about this fabulous dish later, for … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Heart and Blood
Look at it. So beautiful. Firm, bright color, everything you would want. Consider Harold McGee’s view of skin in On Food and Cooking. Usually cooks don’t welcome large amounts of toughening connective tissue in meat. But taken on their own, animal skin, cartilage, and bones are valuable exactly because they’re mostly connective tissue and therefor … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: Skin And Flesh
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.
