Carrot Top

At this point in time, where ingredients as well as people travel far and wide and quickly, the boundaries of most national food collections (trying to avoid "cuisine" and while doing to rather stodgily I sound sort of Soviet-like ) oh okay "national cuisines" have become stretched to points well beyond what anyone could have imagined even several hundred years ago. No more seasonal produce, no more reliance on what grows directly in front of one, no more reliance on native fuels or in some places set formal rituals of "this is how we do this and no other way", neccesary. Cooking techniques from so many various cultures known and practiced (stir fry in Kentucky, clay-roast hens in Alaska or wherever), and cooking tools, pots and pans and ovens of all varieties, happily understood and used halfway around the world from where they initially were developed. . .naturally, being developed at the original place due to neccesity or ease of utility. We have a far-ranging global understanding of so many things that one would think boundaries would be erased. But then of course there's football. And we know what happens with that, and know that whether we like it or not, football in various guises will always be with us. In the food world, our football games are even televised now, and the genre is expanding at an amazing pace. "Who will WIN?" the announcers cry joyously, as the chef-contenders approach the tables and knives, slyly smiling with contempt across the table at the other. ....................................... I adore tipping sacred cows, myself. A fine activity for any afternoon.

I'm reading very small bits at a time. The Curious Nose. Great title. I laughed aloud at this part near the end, where she quotes Gervaise Markham (and it's not just that it was funny in itself, but had a lot to do with where she put this and the manner she did it with. . . ) 'Of the housewife herself, Markham decided thus: "First she must be cleanly in garment and body, she must have a quick eye, a curious nose, a perfect taste, and ready ear (she must not be butter-fingered, sweet-toothed, nor faint-hearted); for the first will let everything fall, the second will consume what it should increase; and the third will lose time with too much niceness." '

I can see this in our culture. . .and my own take would be that besides the Puritanism that sits so solidly at the core of many ways our culture has been formed there would be what I think of as the "Cowboy" influence. Not real cowboys, you understand, but the sense of movement, always movement, always something "over there" to do rather than to focus in on one place, one way of doing things (which of course is how one gets better at things, with intent focus and regard. . .) I can't speak for any other Anglo-Saxon culture's food as *not* being as fine as the French or any other culture's though, for I have not lived it in situ for any extended period of time. I do believe in potential, though, and the power of faith. Faith (I'm not talking religion here, you understand) is an important thing to have or to develop if one wants to develop an excellence of any sort. So if the cultural faith in the food of one's home is not there, if the faith is placed in another's hands (as it might be said has been done with French cuisine in some of our cultures) it could be a good seed to try to plant back home instead, in whatever ways, in whatever soil happens to be there, so that whatever existed before could be grown better and perhaps truer.

Yes, I think so. It put French food on wheels, so to speak.

Favorite line in 'Greek Honey and the Hon-Zo': "Great men grew concerned over their tables, and literary gourmets became didactic." Heh heh.

( ) I only read one of the biographies, the one that her sister had a hand in producing. Apparently the other biography (which though I've not read, I've heard a good deal about so feel as if I've read it in some way) presents yet another, different, side of her life. I am not sure that I will ever read it. On the other hand, I recently stumbled across MFK's name in a book by Michael Dirda (winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism himself). She is in excellent company in this book. (Book by Book, Notes on Reading and Life).

I like Ethiopian very much, regardless of what year it happens to be. Last time I was in DC I chatted up one of the Somali taxi drivers, and he recommended this place for Somali food. I didn't have time to go. You wouldn't want to grab your family and trot right over there and try it for me, would you? I'd appreciate that kindly. (Besides, you *might* start a trend for 2008! )

This phrase is memorable. It is not only exceptionally nicely turned, but also glows with a classic (not garden-variety) sort of truth.

The first sentence of 'To Begin' is: "There are two kinds of books about eating: those that try to imitate Brillat-Savarin's, and those that try not to." Midway through: "Now I am going to write a book. It will be about eating and about what to eat and about people who eat. And I shall do gymnastics by trying fall between these three fires, or by straddling them all." The final sentence of the essay is: "I serve it forth." She takes no prisoners. Oh, yes, self-indulgent. But those words would not have existed (nor would many others penned by authors laboriously placed moment after moment on page) if it were not for good old self-indulgence. ....................................... The next essay, 'When a Man Is Small', the one that jess quoted the first line from. I have a question here. Approached as 'open reading' with no preconceived expectations of content, just the title (as much as one possibly can), when you read this essay what is it that you would say you are reading *about*? It seems to me that there might be more than one answer to this question. . .

I read a bit today of MFK. To begin with, "To Begin". With all this talk of her personality and life in my mind, the first sentence appears. And what strikes me is the enormous self-assurance of the author. She comes in with a huge whoosh! strike! wham! with that very first sentence. No pansying around here. No making nice. No enticing little smiles or entreaties. It sounds to me as if she is speaking French, though it is English. There is that sort of arrogance, if that is the right word. A wonderful arrogance.

And actually, jess, your thought on a "book club" is interesting. I've never participated in such a thing before, but had decided to re-read The Art of Eating anyway. As I go through it, perhaps I'll post some notes about the experience. It would be lovely if you would like to do that, too.

It's the words that last or do not, so I'm with you on that idea, jess.

I don't know. How one reacts to her could be any number of things, including just plain personal taste. I'm curious what your mother said of her writings, though. . .

If I think as a "woman", intellectually, SB, I can find more than a grudging respect for the manner in which she lived her life. Much more. If I think as a child, feelingly, of being a child of a woman who lived like this, I react. Those are my own demons. * Aiming for the "objective". Who knows if one can ever really reach it. (And as I said before, who am I to project what I think. Her children may have had the most wonderful experience in growing up in the ways they did! )

Well. . .the small sampling we have so far is mostly female overall. I guess the male respondants are out hunting bears for breakfast or checking out the new colognes being advertised in the shiny-covered magazines on their coffeetables. . . Yes. . ."poet" is romantic and therefore at any distance at all, a distracting word and thought.

I was going to ask if any of you think there's a difference in the way men and women react to MFKF's writing, but I guess that at least partially answers my question? Doesn't this make her writing all the more powerful though? SB (Shakespeare may very well have been a real jerk?) ← I don't think that my own reaction to her writing based on what I said could answer your first question all that well, SB. My own thoughts count for only one female person. We vary a great deal in how and who we are. As to your second question, personally I *try* to do a disconnect from what I know of a writer or artist and how they lived their lives - and their work. That's a philosophic decision. So I can't add more points on "for her writing" based on this.

Fair enough, Heather. I'm curious whose prose does captivate you in that way, (if anyone's), within the genre of "foodwriting"?

After having read her biographies, I felt the same way. I was disappointed, in *her*. Her life did not fit what I wanted it to. She personally reacted to things in ways that I would not have, and chose ways to do things that bothered me, no frightened me, deeply, and particularly in the area that hits home most most intently with me: How to Raise a Child. But then of course, I am not her children's mother. . .she was. And who, really, knows how all these things finally manage to work themselves out "right" in the long run or not. I haven't looked at her writing since then. But phrases continue to linger in my mind. Stories. Stories and phrases. And then recently, in thinking of "what is it that *I* want to write of - is it *really* food, or not?" I decided to take a look again at the genre in an overall sense - to review who was writing what. . .what forms were being used. . .what was it that the "foodwriters" who were successful and popular were actually doing. I reviewed a lot of writing from all the sub-genres of foodwriting from various sources. Then went back and plunged through the Best American Foodwriting series which sits on my shelves next to the Best American Essays series and the Best American Short Stories series. Finally, reluctantly, I picked up the big book of MFK. She is memory to me. Or rather, her stories and essays are. A lot of my own life was lifted into mind as I lifted that book (the one, Maggie, that you sent as prize for one of those contests several years ago, and it made me so happy and proud to open that package when it came in the mail!) The old copies of the book flashed into mind - the first one that startled me with her voice and stories, that came along with me on the path to being a chef, then executive chef in one of the most unusual venues that I'd ever thought of or lived within. . .that book stayed on my bookshelf in my office at Goldman Sachs till the woman cook whom I'd hired eight years earlier (who then was obsessed with making rather dreadful "cupcakes", of all things) decided that she was going to leave, was going to *not* be a cook anymore, for it did not fill her heart in ways that she thought it would. I always gave staff that left a book (a book is a living part of a person, if it is indeed read, used, loved) as gift and there was no other that would fit P. I didn't *want* to part with the book, really. I stared at it and felt selfish inside. This, was the most important book out of maybe 250 or so books on those shelves, next to my old Larousse. But I held it out to her, and I hope (I hopefully imagine) that some part of MFK, the way she felt and saw food, would move into P.'s heart and life. The second copy went with me to live in Paris, where I read of MFK living in Paris. It stayed with me through other odd adventures that won't be forgotten, either. But I am dreamweaving about MFK here. To set aside the weaving of dreams - MFK's books, by themselves, carry a weight that goes beyond the woman. As any great literature does. How many great authors do we know of (or artists, or great creators in any other field) that in their lives have been utter as*holes? Lots. It hurt me closely, that MFK would have these (perceived, to me) failings. Did it hurt me more, attack my sense of righteousness in a more vital way, in that she was a woman - not a man - not a man where perhaps the world has learned to shake its head ruefully at various sorts of life actions that do *not* lead the ones around them that care for them to the usually accepted forms of daily happiness? (Gentle words for harsh thoughts, here.) I looked through her words and stories. And found that, compared to the writings that I'd been reviewing elsewhere, they *still* glowed with something that was above and beyond. I'd like to know what recipe made her able to write like that. I don't have a clue. But I do know that her writing *and* her stories are very different, very individual, to any of the other writers I'd been reviewing. Her writing also would be quite at home in the other series collections on my shelves - either the essays *or* the short stories, depending on the piece. I can't say that I found that transcendance or flexibility in any but perhaps a very rare few other writers/pieces in the foodwriting series. If we were to discard the art of the world (or even the fine meals) based on what we knew of the person that created it, I wonder what would be left, in a world where these rather glorious moments of dining upon things that ardently move one in shocking and unexpected ways are so very few. She is not what I thought she was, when I first read her. She is certainly not who she was. But I'll still bite, and will still glow deeply with many sorts of pleasures at her words.

It holds a sadness for me, too. Even though I've never eaten at a Little Chef, nor even seen one in real life. Richard Jury's Sargeant Wiggins has a habit of being quite taken by the Beans on Toast at Little Chef, and always tries to get Jury to stop there when they travel. Poor Wiggins.

Well. . .the dictionary gives a definition of religion as: belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator of the universe. Seems to me I've seen something close to this in action with the admirers of celebrity chefs sometimes. . . Another definition of religion is: a cause, principle or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion. The act of eating, dining, preparing food for those we love of care for can in its way be a conscientious devotion, as well as being a ritual, a codified act that reaches to find sustenance for the spirit.

He did this one so well that I'm rather hoping to see the next one be on the US and how the food culture *here* has not grown as well as it could due to the massive group of incipient yet silently entrenched Anglophiles, always madly poking the Old Ways of Merrie England into our own (so youthful! so innocent!) foodculture here and there (but we never see it! never question it! gah!). . .and how we might just throw off those shackles left behind by memories of those darling British accents and self-deprecating ways in order to embrace our own. . .whatever it is that we are. Maybe a round-the-world series is in order, actually. A to Z?

Wow. There's even a Magnolia Bakery and Cafe cookbook (two of them, actually) but they are not sold on Amazon US but rather, is . Heh heh. Guess it's not only soley the unmarried nor solely the female that enjoy thinking about over-frosted cupcakes.

I doubt if we *can* define French food, in a general sense, for everyone that reads this, Heather. Probably each person draws their own picture in their minds, based on their own specific experiences with (or not with) it. Same with Brit food or the food of the US or anywhere else. . . I mean we *could*, and could try to do so uh. . .objectively? but in this moment, that is not what interests me, or what my question to docsconz was focused on. My curiosity was not about the external actual thing of the food (and whether it could be categorized as "better" or "worse" than other foods) in that post but rather the softer fluffier things of how one reacts to food and why they do. That, is always what piques my curiosity. ............................................. Heh. Goodness knows I've abandoned the food of my parent's generation. Phew.

Sadly, many school districts now prohibit cupcake or other homemade treat distribution lest a peanut adverse, diabetic, gluten or lactose intolerant student feel "left out". No, no. All properly PC. SB ← Well. . .it's all part of the proper sort of training, you know. One can not just expect cupcakes to be there when one *wants* one, in a simple form, with lots of icing (because ICING is what children LOVE!), when one is a child. You really have got to wait till you *grow up*, move to Manhattan, get a fabulous hairdresser and learn how to wear four inch heels (just like the heroines on Sex in the City! pant pant) without being a cranky royal bitch all day long from the pain in your feet, then walk with some little style and attitude into the Right Sort of Cupcake Place (naturally you will be skinny so there will be *no* thoughts to banish of pinching waistbands as you pull open the shiny glass door that reflects you) and just pull out that shiny credit card to order your four-dollar cupcake. By the way, does anyone know the price tag on the Magnolia cupcakes? I just *guessed* four dollars.

From Boobys to Bobos, as we wing across the continents.