Cooking The Bog. Day One.

Think of a community of the living and the dead, mingling together in water, jostling back and forth with each other; bones and flesh, blood and fin, and all sorts of vegetal matter bubbling and foaming, slowly turning into a dense red bog.  In the beginning however, ah, in the beginning, there’s the fishmonger Melanders … Continue reading Cooking The Bog. Day One.

An American Cooks Gumbo In Nacka, Reveling In Migration And Public Transportation, While Surrounded By Cuisines And Travelers Of All Kinds And Sorts.

Out and about on a day of shopping for my first gumbo in Sweden, which affords a moment to celebrate living in such a cosmopolitan, community-friendly city as Stockholm.  For instance, I’ve found public transportation in the Greater Stockholm area affordable, clean, efficient, quick and yes, multicultural.  I pay two hundred and fifty dollars for … Continue reading An American Cooks Gumbo In Nacka, Reveling In Migration And Public Transportation, While Surrounded By Cuisines And Travelers Of All Kinds And Sorts.

Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.

Early 1960s America and Nietta Dunn defies Jim Crow laws by sitting at the H. Green lunch counter in downtown Lexington.  African-Americans may buy food, but they may not sit at the counter.  Here’s the thing, food doesn’t work well with fear and hate–not when planting, not when harvesting, not when cooking, and especially not … Continue reading Onion Pie With A Cold Eye Cast On Fear And Hate In America.

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.

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.

A Goulash For Angela Merkel While Dreaming About Solyanka, My Grandmother Dicing Onions, And The Hot Club Of Detroit.

Fifty years ago in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, tall pine trees face a perennial bed of bluebells, geraniums, Black-Eyed Susans, goldenrod and more all bordered by clusters of basil, sage, rosemary, and sweet marjoram.  St. Augustine grass covers an acre while a wide, asphalt drive slides down to a dirt road.  In the kitchen off the … Continue reading A Goulash For Angela Merkel While Dreaming About Solyanka, My Grandmother Dicing Onions, And The Hot Club Of Detroit.

“Yes Donald, Immigrants Do Change Cultures, So Do You Want To Send Back The Coney Island?”

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?”

Banquet World: “These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends.”

In the HBO series Westworld, androids also known as “hosts” struggle to achieve the most fundamentally unique experience of the human species, consciousness and all its attendant wakefulness and awareness, or so we’d like to think about ourselves, but hosts like Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay become alert to themselves and the world around them, distinctly … Continue reading Banquet World: “These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends.”

Reading And Eating Clarice Lispector’s Story “As Águas Do Mundo.”

There it is, the sea, the most unintelligible of non-human existences.  And here is the woman, standing on the beach, the most unintelligible of living beings.  As a human being she once posed a question about herself, becoming the most unintelligible of living beings. She and the sea.  (401) The moment of consciousness, of self-awareness … Continue reading Reading And Eating Clarice Lispector’s Story “As Águas Do Mundo.”