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

Why A Food Blog? Roux And A Symposium . . . Or How I Dance, Talk, And Brown Butter At The Same Time.

Greenling has delivered okra!  Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking tells us that “Okra comes from the annual plant Hibiscus (Abelmoschus) esculentus, a member of the hibiscus family and a relative of roselle and cotton.  It originated in either southwest Asia or eastern Africa, and came to the southern United States with the slave … Continue reading Why A Food Blog? Roux And A Symposium . . . Or How I Dance, Talk, And Brown Butter At The Same Time.

Body and Soul: “our demands upon the earth are determined by our ways of living with one another.”

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.”

We Don’t Like To Take Advice About Food–And That’s Part Of The Problem.

In Tracie McMillan’s National Geographic article, “The New Face of Hunger,” the nature of agribusiness, food production and government subsidies becomes a part of the puzzle of hunger in America. It’s a cruel irony that people in rural Iowa can be malnourished amid forests of cornstalks running to the horizon. Iowa dirt is some of … Continue reading We Don’t Like To Take Advice About Food–And That’s Part Of The Problem.