Must-reads for people who eat

One of the most fascinating books I read last year: Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. One of the best so far this year: his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Three cheers for sensible eating--real food, locally grown whenever possible, in a wide variety of textures and colors, shared with family and friends.

I took the picture under "this blog" (upper left) last summer after an early morning trip to the farmers' market. The picture with this post (below) shows what we got one week from our CSA farm, Genesis Growers.

I'm fantasizing, of course. It's been snowing all afternoon, and I've been cooking a lot with dried beans and root vegetables.

Invitations

Invite your friend to a feast, but leave your enemy alone;
and especially invite the one who lives near you.

--Hesiod

The next time you put on a dinner, don't just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks.

--Jesus

Jesus' words here are from Eugene Petersen's translation, The Message. Some of the more traditional translations make it sound like Jesus is saying, Give up feasts and spend your time in the soup kitchen. This one is more faithful to the way Jesus actually lived: Bring on the food and the wine and the musicians, and invite the whole town!

Here comes everybody.

--James Joyce

Looking for an ancient godly gourmand[e]

In the Hebrew Bible, the material creation is good.
According to ancient Hebrew stories, God made a world, "saw all that he had made, and found it very good" (Genesis 1:31). He made plants that were beautiful as well as delicious (2:9) and gave them to the first humans as food. He created love and sex: "The Lord God said, "It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him" (2:18). He told the primal pair to enjoy each other: "Be fertile and increase" (1. 29). And Adam's lyrical response to Eve (2:23) leaves no doubt about his attitude: "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

In the earliest Christian tradition, God became part of the good material creation.
When the good world was broken, according to ancient Christian stories, the God who created the world came up with a way to re-create it. The creative Word "became flesh and lived among us." Jesus, said the creeds, was "true God," "one in Being with the Father." He also "became man," a man who turned water into wine--gallons of it--so a wedding feast could continue, a man whose enemies called him "a glutton and a drunkard" (Matthew 11:19).

The ancient Hebrews, like today's Jews, had a healthy attitude about bodily pleasures. The ancient Christians went one better--their God became a human being and earned a reputation as one who appreciated a good party. So here's my question--

Whatever happened?
Why did so many Christians quickly switch from enjoyment and thanksgiving to abstemiousness and guilt? Why did some early monastics think they were honoring the Creator when they shunned the company of others and gave up most food, all sex, and even clothing and shelter? Why did a great saint, Jerome, write, "I praise wedlock, I praise marriage; but it is because they produce virgins"? Why did a greater saint, Augustine, believe he had to be "continent," that is, to give up marriage and sex, in order to follow Christ? Why are there so few married people on the list of Catholic saints, even post-Vatican II saints?

I'm looking for an early Christian writer who praises creation, affirms marriage, revels in beauty, delights in good food, and gives thanks to God--without adding, even in small print, that forsaking all these things is even more admirable than enjoying them.

Books and wine

A room without books
is like a body without a soul.

--Cicero

A meal without wine
is like a day without sunshine.

--Brillat-Savarin

Torturing cows

According to a story by Rick Weiss in today's Washington Post, "Video footage being released today shows workers at a California slaughterhouse delivering repeated electric shocks to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own; drivers using forklifts to roll the 'downer' cows on the ground in efforts to get them to stand up for inspection; and even a veterinary version of waterboarding in which high-intensity water sprays are shot up animals' noses -- all violations of state and federal laws designed to prevent animal cruelty and to keep unhealthy animals, such as those with mad cow disease, out of the food supply. Moreover, the companies where these practices allegedly occurred are major suppliers of meat for the nation's school lunch programs."

Weiss points out that letting weak, sick cows into the food supply puts consumers at increased risk of mad cow disease and e coli infections. His article also points out the cruelty depicted in the video. Temple Grandin, author of the magnificent Animals in Translation, characterized it as "one of the worst animal-abuse videos I have ever viewed."

Click to read more. You may have to create an account to get to the article.

Child, Kamp, and Jones

On Borders' new-paperback book table are two of my favorites: Julia Child's posthumous memoir (amazing what good cooking can do), My Life in France, and David Kamp's social commentary, The United States of Arugula.

Child, especially, is not to be missed, and if you like her memoir, you will probably also enjoy Judith Jones's The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food. Here are a few lines from my review in Books and Culture:

The Tenth Muse would be a fascinating read if it were only about the bestsellers Jones has midwifed or the famous people she has known. Names such as Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, M.F.K. Fisher, and Marion Cunningham leap off the pages. But this memoir is much more than gossip and nostalgia: it is a story about passion and pleasure in the goodness of the earth. . .

[In Jones's own words,] "Other creatures receive food simply as fodder. But we take the raw materials of the earth and work with them—touch them, manipulate them, taste them, glory in their heady smells and colors, and then, through a bit of alchemy, transform them into delicious creations. Cooking demands attention, patience, and, above all, respect. It is a way of worship, a way of giving thanks."

Why is this painting shocking?

.
This painting, titled Glory Hole, is by Heidi Neff, a painter whose works have been in shows from San Francisco to New York and, yes, my daughter. She has a collection of nineteen large paintings (this one is 60" square) based on church ceilings, where instead of angels and saints, nude figures embrace and copulate in various states of ecstasy or despair. She has written:

My work most often depicts a mass of sexual frenzy, which can be read as an orgy, a last judgment scene, or the descent into Dante’s Inferno. . . . In traditional Christian thought, sex can equal lust­—one of the seven deadly sins. Paradoxically, sex can also equal marriage—one of the seven holy sacraments. This type of paradox is central to the way I think about my work. In my work there coexist attraction and repulsion, loneliness and the quest for solitude, sex that is anonymous and sex that is intimate.

Soil can be life-nourishing earth or just dirt. Spirit can be holy or evil. Anything truly human, however, must be a mixture of soil and spirit. This painting is shocking only to people who want to be all soil, or all spirit.