Slow Food – Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones

March 29, 2016March 29, 2016

The Anatomical Theater: The Stomach Our Cultural Engine.

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.

September 26, 2014

The Ark Of Corn, Uncle Tupelo, And Red Wattle Pigs.

Above our heads in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo offers us a calm, High Renaissance view of mass extinction; whereas, The Flood (1588) by Kaspar the Elder Memberger has a darker tone. Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, with all your household, for you alone have I found righteous before Me in … Continue reading The Ark Of Corn, Uncle Tupelo, And Red Wattle Pigs.

September 23, 2014

Cooking: A Faustian Wager.

It’s a scene out of Goethe’s Faust and a print by Jacob II de Gheyn (1600)–a witch’s kitchen. Lord knows what’s bubbling in the cauldron. It’s an old legend. A magician strives for all knowledge and power crafting a bargain with the Devil, and rules over the world for a few years, but then plummets … Continue reading Cooking: A Faustian Wager.

July 5, 2014

“Dad, It Tastes Like Blood!” Alchemy And Briny, Smokey Crustaceans And Suids. Oh My!

The Hermetic science par excellence is alchemy; the famous Emerald Table, the bible of the alchemists, is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and gives in a mysteriously compact form the philosophy of the All and the One. That which is above is like that which is below . . . . And as all things have … Continue reading “Dad, It Tastes Like Blood!” Alchemy And Briny, Smokey Crustaceans And Suids. Oh My!