rbarenblat

Thank you for this link! Somehow I hadn't seen this before. I think you may have excerpted the best paragraphs of the piece in your post, but the whole thing is pretty funny. I'll definitely be sharing this link with a bunch of friends now...

Yes -- absolutely! A good food writer grounds her/his work in sensory detail, so I can imagine experiencing the food myself... ...and it's always more fun to read someone who's excited by their subject than to read someone who's excited by their own genius. *g*

I'm going to respectfully disagree with that notion. :-) True, creativity itself can't be taught -- but I think good writing can be. I think it's possible to teach people not only the craft of writing clearly and cogently, but also techniques for inspiring creativity, ways of looking at a subject, etc. The writers' nonprofit where I volunteer my time is about to offer a food writing workshop (http://www.inkberry.org/onlineworkshops.html#food), and I'm looking very forward to seeing what kind of people sign up and how/whether their work improves over the course of the month. It's my experience that people can and do improve, even in hard-to-quantify areas like creativity and originality and voice -- I hope that turns out to be as true of food writing as it is of other genres!

I'm with you! We cook as many meals as we can in our smoker during the summer, and it's pretty much always worth brining for a few hours before getting the fire going. We smoked lamb chops once which had marinated for several hours in onion juice. Making the onion juice was a huge pain (peel five pounds of onions; quarter them; shred them; squeeze the shreds until juice trickles out; then squeeze them again) but it was worth it -- the meat came out not only smoky, but delightfully imbued with essence of onion. Mmm. The bones from those chops made some of the best stock in the world, too...

I'm not a mayo fan, so my ideal tomato sandwich is thick-cut sourdough bread, slices of fresh tomato sprinkled with sea salt and fresh-ground pepper, a schmear of neufchatel cheese, and a bunch of basil leaves. Alas, we won't have ripe ones here until August...but I can look forward to late summer, and dream. :-)

I liked his point that everyone enjoys a little extravagance, and that fine food is an art which people should be lauded for supporting (just as we praise those who support symphonies or museums). At the same time, I thought he was a little disengenuous in places. He had a toss-off line which was something like, "income disparity may be immoral, but that's not my issue to discuss," which I took issue with -- if you're going to address the fact that some people can barely afford McDonald's, and other people spend $200 on dinner, you need to actually tackle the underlying issue. I also found the piece frustrating because I couldn't identify with it. I will never eat a meal that expensive; as a result, it made me feel envious and alienated. I'd rather read about foods I could imagine eating someday... The piece was certainly well-written and witty, though. *** Online Food Writing Workshop: http://www.inkberry.org/onlineworkshops.html#food