Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
Ah, ginger beef tripe from Yum Yum Cha Cafe. Though no longer a fixture of Rice Village, many a Sunday morning the Harvey/Maya family traveled to its storefront window and entered in search of dim sum. Beef tripe comes to us from the muscle wall of the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. The … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Stomach Our Cultural Engine.
Most of the artwork through this post is by Joe Jones (1909-1963) who painted midwestern wheat fields, segregation in the south, and the effects of The Great Depression on American farmers. The above painting The American Farm (1936) captures the stark ruin of soil and crops and the precarious struggle for life in rural America. … Continue reading Body and Soul: “our demands upon the earth are determined by our ways of living with one another.”
“Ah wanna tell ya ’bout a girl,” Nick Cave sings. “Ah wanna tell ya ’bout a sausage,” I sing. Cotechino. It’s 1511 and you’re living in Mirandola, a city in northern Italy in the province of Modena. The famous Pico della Mirandola’s family runs the city, but that’s little help to you now as Pope … Continue reading The Past And Future Of Food: Nick Cave, Cotechino Sausage, The Holy League, The Beatles, Soylent, And Nick Cave Again.
In Chapter Three of The Unsettling of America, “The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture,” Wendell Berry pointedly defends the primacy of “wilderness” within the conservation movement in America. What has to be acknowledged at the outset is that wilderness conservation is important and that it has a place in any conservation program, just … Continue reading Wilderness, Good Oak, And Moby Dick
