Michel de Montaigne – Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones

January 30, 2019

“White Castles” As My Son And I Watch “Rick And Morty,” While Space And Time Bubbles And Wobbles Away

Always there waiting when I arrive, though not always visited, not always directly acknowledged and approached like an itinerant believer noticing the grail, but in the end deferring. Talked of often, gestured toward, but sometimes the car continues, the night passes. But not tonight. No, as I raise a glass of Michigan whiskey raised with … Continue reading “White Castles” As My Son And I Watch “Rick And Morty,” While Space And Time Bubbles And Wobbles Away

January 25, 2019

Traveling Through Winter Dark and Light With Samuel Beckett And Assorted Food Options.

Hours from now I’ll look at my aisle window and believe it’s Venice instead of Stockholm, eighteen-hundred and forty-six instead of two thousand and nineteen, and I’m navigating channels on a gondola in the “City of Water” on my way to a ball in ‘Going to the Ball (San Martino)’. Also, my name is Joseph … Continue reading Traveling Through Winter Dark and Light With Samuel Beckett And Assorted Food Options.

July 9, 2018

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.”

March 27, 2018

Prolegomena To Any Future Cocido Madrileño.

Vichyssoise made the list for Prolegomena Number 3, but Cocido interceded, so reading Kant and cooking with a pot continues today with garbanzo beans and odd bits. Let’s leap in with the beginning of the “Second Part of the Main Transcendental Question.” Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is determined according … Continue reading Prolegomena To Any Future Cocido Madrileño.

February 28, 2016

The Anatomical Theater: The Brain (part 2)

Ah, the brain. Fergus Henderson devotes an entire section of his Nose to Tail cookbook to Lamb’s Brains. Why lamb’s brains? When brains were available, lamb’s were cheap compared to the calf’s, but still delicious, creamy and rich, and no other ingredient offers you better possibilities of the gentle give and crunch combination. (58) Thank … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater: The Brain (part 2)

December 18, 2014

The Philosophy of Polenta as I Whisk with Napoléon, Rousseau, Sebald and Aurelius.

I’m pausing in my reconstruction of Thanksgiving in order to get all philosophical about cooking with corn meal. Here is part of what the Larousse Gastronomique has to say about polenta: Piedmont form of maize (corn) meal porridge. It is made simply of maize flour dried in the open and not in the oven. Polenta … Continue reading The Philosophy of Polenta as I Whisk with Napoléon, Rousseau, Sebald and Aurelius.