Category: Philosophy of Food

Posted on

Reading And Cooking Liver While Several Species Of Small, Furry Animals Gather Together In A Cave And Groove With A Pict.

Liver has pride of place in the human body in ancient texts as a producer of blood and a source of life.  The Etruscan bronze liver above with its inscriptions guides the reader of entrails through a large, meaty organ considered the basis of life.  The ancient Greek term is hēpatoskōpia, which means to examine the liver. … Continue reading Reading And Cooking Liver While Several Species Of Small, Furry Animals Gather Together In A Cave And Groove With A Pict.

Posted on

Smoking Heart Of Love.

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.

Posted on

Eating A Burning 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.

Posted on

Cooking Hannibal Through Thirty-Six Inches of Rainfall: It’s All About Love.

Rain falls for six days, rain falls for one hundred and forty-four hours, rain falls for eight thousand six hundred and forty minutes, and so on.  As with Aureliano Segundo who fights boredom during the four years, eleven months, and two days rain falls in Gabriel Garcia’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, I have … Continue reading Cooking Hannibal Through Thirty-Six Inches of Rainfall: It’s All About Love.

Posted on

More Alchemy And Travels Through Space And Time With Barbecue Sauce.

Houston like any city from Ur to Rome to Hong Kong tells its story through food and those who bring food traditions from around the world to their neighborhood.  A Brief History of Houston Barbecue offers such a tale, one where I stir a barbecue sauce in my Houston Heights home and wonder, whose sauce … Continue reading More Alchemy And Travels Through Space And Time With Barbecue Sauce.

Posted on

House Of Kitchens To Doctor Omelette: Cooking Strategies And Tactics.

A maid and a cavalier look out at us from a 17th century kitchen in Pieter Cornelisz van Ryck’s A large kitchen still life with a maid and a gentleman.  She’s scaling a fish and he’s pouring back some water or wine.  Practices of a day and time, very much like today, though the clothes … Continue reading House Of Kitchens To Doctor Omelette: Cooking Strategies And Tactics.

Posted on

Alchemy In The Afternoon

Alchemy is a chemical transformation of matter through air, earth, fire and water, a process characterized by melanosis (blackening), leukosis (whitening), xanthosis (yellowing) and isis (reddening), also known as nigredo (chaos), albedo (release, daybreak) and rubedo (intensity, sunrise); which means through the language of the opus magnum, alchemy is to cook, and specifically for these … Continue reading Alchemy In The Afternoon

Posted on

What Would Nietzsche Eat? Why Bagna Càoda, Of Course.

In his final work Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche reviews his life, draws conclusions, and emphasizes what he has learned about the art of living.  In this context, he writes about nutrition. I am much more interested in a question on which the “salvation of humanity” depends far more than on any theologians’ curio: the question … Continue reading What Would Nietzsche Eat? Why Bagna Càoda, Of Course.

Posted on

What Is Really In My Mouth? The Case For Cypher Over Socrates.

The Magician (1952) by Rene Magritte where the fantasy of a human with four arms navigating table to mouth contains a question for our senses–is taste, along with our other senses, a fantasy, an illusion?  This steak may not be a steak. We are familiar with questions about the veracity of our senses.  They’ve been … Continue reading What Is Really In My Mouth? The Case For Cypher Over Socrates.

Posted on

A Few Thoughts On Soup

Such a sacred tableau in Pablo Picasso’s 1902 painting La Soupe.  There’s a graceful, reverential bow on the part of the mother as she offers a bowl of soup to her daughter, who springs forward, ready to receive sustenance, ready to receive a gift. I love cooking soup.  A small, crafted merging of nature and … Continue reading A Few Thoughts On Soup