Carrot Top

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.

Since appreciation of food is such a personal thing though. . .I wonder, if you had a choice (not among the "many" foods but among just a few that hit close to home) between Ferran Adria's food (I won't merely say Spanish or any other less specific term here); French food; or the food of your parent's generation Italian-American table, I wonder what the choice would be, if push came to shove (in an imaginary world, obviously), and the decision had to be made. If for some reason, you would have to spend the rest of your life dining upon *only one* , I wonder where your heart would lead you. And then, would you call that food that your heart led you to, "the best"?

Now, now. We can't have that. I'm guessing that the "problem" is that when a child has a summertime birthday, they miss out on the in-school cupcake bringing for their birthday party that would be held during classroom time. Goodness knows how this might scar one for life. No, no, nothing Puritan about this one.

There are some people that travel well. They travel more easily than some others might be able to, are capable of fitting with some facility into different circumstances, places, cultures, environments. Could there be "food cultures" that travel more easily than others?

I wish I were a cattle dog so that I could give you the answer to that. Ruff ruff. Personally, I'm against sanctification of cookery, wherever it comes from. (Wait a minute. Isn't the word "chauvinist" French? ) Heh.

But. . .wait a minute there! In the WASP family I come from, that's considered just *lovely* food! Is there something wrong with that?! Mmm. On the other hand, when one thinks of the ways that Elizabeth David wrote of the cooking of the British, and Jane Grigson too. . .it has to be said that certainly the knowledge of "good food" was known, and not just in translation from somewhere else. But attitude does seem to have a lot to do with anything, and how one thinks of oneself (as a culture or as an individual). If the reputation is that it is something (either good or bad) for the most part I think the performance in that category will follow through with most who know of it, for it would take being "different" from the majority to change anything. . .and being "different" is not something that always brings immediate happy rewards to its practicioner. The French have a culture of caring about their food, a cultural attitude that it is *not* just fodder. . .while it is true that some cultures have an attitude that it *is* just fodder and *should be* just fodder as focus of it as more than that would be unseemly in a philosophic way that somehow (though not directly and not specifically) ties into the way the majority of the culture sees the world shaped through the major religion. Our Puritan base here in the US certainly has shaped our attitudes toward enjoyment of food and other earthly pleasures though we seem to be racing to catch up in latter years. I think that if there were more of an attitude in general that Tim showed in this piece about his countries cookery (notice, please that I did *not* use the word "cuisine" ), an attitude of "there's no need for us to follow others who have always said they are better" that then, that is when a place can and will be found among whatever other top dogs have pranced their way to the "top". After all, it's thinking that makes it so, and thinking is is malleable thing based on so many factors. The proof of the pudding that's in the eating can be changed with recipes that grow and become something new. Kowtowing to the ways that "others do it" brings only weak tea and sad derivation. Excuse me. I'm off to find some crumpets.

So what is the explanation for the better quality* of (the food of) one place over the other? Temperament? Soil and sun? Geography? History? Natural ability or talent? Education? Personal or cultural myth maintained and made real? Economic factors? Class factors? Pure luck? One wonders. *quality being a word that is a bit subjective, of course, when speaking of these things. Though probably we might be able to determine a closer definition upon trying.

Sickening, really, that I am sitting here responding to myself, but if I don't I'll forget what I wanted to say. Cultural stereotypes. We have the Latin lover, the artiste, the passionate genius on one side of the coin. On the other we have the British banker, the Queen, and a nation of fine gardeners. Toss the coin in the air and we have our own Puritans with their funny hats and the Almighty Dollar that moves our souls. Which of these would one *think* cooks *best*? And which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do we become what it is that is expected that we are?

I wonder, though, if British country cooking *might* just be as wonderful as French country cooking. Seriously. I wonder. As have been, and as are often, many of our own. . and that extends out into the world of haute entertaining for business too, though that is changing at a rapid pace now in both areas from what I've noticed, which is pleasant to see. P.S. That "mutton bandwagon" thing you describe sounds like quite a rollicking good time, Anne.

Mmm hmm. But we're always talking about two different things when we talk about the food that the "usual" people eat and the food that the aristocrats eat, even in the US, no, Doc? Oh, plus I thought that the British aristocracy used to eat French food in public. . . and nursery food, large joints, and puddings in private when they "let their hair down" so to speak. But that could be another one of my fantasies.

Our food traditions in the US are such a new culinary patchwork (as opposed to other countries with more years of "being" nations or the geographic equivalent of nations with a steady heritage of sorts) that one wonders really what our "actual" heritage would be if we had to "just pick one". I also wonder if the reputation British food owns (in some ways, to some people, in some parts) in today's lingua franca is due in some large part to the really terrible deprivations in terms of basic foodstuffs and the substitutions that occured by neccesity during WW2 (?). Did it have such a "bad name" previous to that time?

Bravo. Here in the US, of course, our adoration of French food was moved along at a rapid trot by the marvellous Julia Child. James Beard championed "American" food in many of his writings, with a round-the-world bit of this and that always thrown in, but Beard did not become celebrity as Julia did. One wonders what shape our foodways would be in today, if he had held within him the same charisma for large crowds that she held. France was the first (that I know of) to intently codify their recipes for foreign consumption. Reached the finish line first in that way, in that the food was not quiet in the native kitchens. Careme holds the nickname of "the first celebrity chef", no? Add a moustache, a beret, a dangling cigarette, and a twist of a pretty black fishnet stocking from the Folies Bergere, and, as you say et voila! Many are helpless in face of such an assault. Gobble gobble.

Before me sits The Art of Eating. It's my third copy, the first fallen apart at the seams after much travel and life in some possibly strange places. . .the second given away as gift to a cook I once knew who could cook but who somehow could not taste, in some basic and important way within her mind. "Five gastronomical works" in one volume. Serve It Forth; Consider the Oyster; How to Cook a Wolf; The Gastronomical Me; An Alphabet for Gourmets. These individual works seem to hold different flavors for me, though each one is spun through with MFK's essence. Which book of these would be your favorite, if you *had* to choose? Why?

Ah. For a minute there I thought you were talking about some unknown tribe thing. Just this year, as a matter of fact, I learned (from a cookbook of all things!) there is a tribe in Burma called the Karen, which of course is my name - so now I am always on the lookout for interesting tribes that might pop up. The other two places I know I'll try next time are (sigh) Snappers which of course though it does not look frou frou from the outside, it does have cute little lettuces and raspberries plunked everywhere with reductions of this and that palletted onto food mimicking architecture as much as possible given the availability of trained kitchen staff. . . It was too crowded the night I stopped there - people were mooing around outside the front door looking much like the cows that wait at the gate to go to back to the barn for feeding in some pastures round here. An hour's wait on a weeknight. Ouch. The other place I want to try is Ted Peter's Smoked Fish. That looked like a really cool and funky place. It smelled good, too, driving by.