“Really Paetus, I implore you to spend time in honest, pleasant and friendly company. … I am not thinking of the physical pleasure, but of community life and habit, and of mental recreation, of which familiar conversation is the most effective agent; and conversation is at its most agreeable at dinner parties. In this respect…
Category: Food & Culture
Visser on food and civilisation
“Food is ‘everyday’ — it has to be, or we would not survive for long. But food is never just something to eat. It is something to find or hunt or cultivate first of all; for most of human history we have spent a much longer portion of our lives worrying about food, and plotting,…
McDonald’s and religious ritual?
I’m no fan of Macca’s. Frankly, I would rather go without than line up for a Big Mac. But with close to a thousand outlets around Australia, I’m sure management is not overly concerned with my indifference. What’s more, my son has worked at a local franchise for the past couple of years. Likely he’s…
Poole’s ‘You Aren’t What You Eat’
Not long ago I read Stephen Poole’s biting little book You Aren’t What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture. In the final chapter I scrawled in the margins ‘I am drenched with sarcasm’. Truly, it drips from every page. Still, despite the lasting damp, Poole’s critique should be heard. Poole takes aim at the current cultural obsessions with…
Southern Fare III
With my beloved far away in rural Texas, I’ve been re-reading Michael Lee West’s Consuming Passions, a delightfully written memoir of food and family in the South. It makes me wish even more I was there with her. West’s personal observations about gender in the kitchens of her Tennessee childhood illustrate how much has changed in…
Barbecue: Heaven in the South
I’ve confessed already, I’m a lover of meat. Given my natural preference for the finer things, it’s a crass confession. But there it is. One of my enduring memories of Texas, the home state of my beloved, is of the great Southern tradition of barbecue. Not the backyard variety of charred sausages, sauce and bad coleslaw…
In Praise of Meat
Last night we had lamb for dinner. It was a small, rolled cut stuffed with a combination of breadcrumbs, walnuts and dried fruits, fresh herbs and generous handfuls of onion and garlic. It was delicious. I love the smell of lamb roasting in the oven. It comes with powerful associations … not so much memories as feelings….
EATING HEAVEN 