Tag: foodies

The Antithesis for Foodies

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Another attempt to blame it on the French Revolution (but which trencherman would not, with Woody Allen, prefer the Napoleon to Beef Wellington?):

“A retrospective examination that goes from today back to the Middle ages immediately reveals that our notion of cooking, the system of flavors that seem to us ‘naturally’ desirable, is significantly different from the one that for ages—not only during the Middle ages, but even a few centuries ago as well—people considered good and looked for in foods. Contemporary cooking (in Italy and other european countries) has a primarily analytic character that tends to separate sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy, reserving for each one an autonomous place, both in individual foods and in the order of the meal. This kind of practice is allied with the idea that cooking must respect, insofar as possible, the natural flavor of each food, different and particular from one time to the next, and for that reason keep each one separate from others. But these simple rules do not constitute a universal archetype of cooking that always existed and was always the same. They are the result of a minor revolution that took place in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. . . . Renaissance cooking, medieval cooking, and, going back even further, ancient Roman cooking had evolved a model based principally on the idea of artificiality and the mingling of flavors. The preparation of a single foodstuff, as well as its position within the meal, corresponded to a synthetic rather than an analytic logic: to keep together rather than separate.”

This was not merely a philosophy of cooking. Medieval cooking was “a cuisine of contrast that is in search of balance, the ground zero where distances between flavors are abridged.” Cooking aimed for that balance of contrasts not only for culinary reasons, but for moral and ethical reasons: Diet was embedded in a notion of the soul as well as of the body.

I’m not sure these guys have been watching Chopped.

Does Meatloaf Inflame more than Oatmeal?

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

The shoot-the-fish-in-the-barrel reaction to this story about an Episcopal priest encouraging Bible reading is to make some sort of crack about Episcopalians actually reading the Bible. In point of fact, the story actually demonstrates the relative hunger that many church-goers have for Scripture. It also shows how woeful the shepherding of believers is by too many clergy (mainline and evangelical) who can think of any number of authorities to substitute for Scripture in the care and feeding of God’s flock.

Whatever this priest’s effort may say about Episcopalians, he does confirm the point about the ordinary character of God’s extraordinary (read special) revelation. Consider the food analogy he uses:

. . . each reading program varies in the amount of New Testament, Old Testament and psalms that it includes.

Zabriskie explained that he consistently encourages this triad, because it is essential to remaining interested and focused in the reading.

“If you had to eat meatloaf for 15 days in a row, it would not be a fun event,” Zabriskie said, comparing the balanced program to a well-balanced meal. “But if you had a side salad that varied everyday – that’s the psalm – and a desert that was really good everyday – that’s the New Testament – you could probably stomach having to eat meatloaf 15 days in a row.”

I’m not sure if that is the way I’d think of the New Testament. Given how Peter writes about the difficulty of Paul’s epistles, the better analogy might be the bitter herbs of the Passover Meal. And considering the reason for this season, I’m not sure if bittersweet chocolate cake has sufficient bitterness to do justice to the cross or the sweetness to live up to an empty tomb. But the program teaches that some of the most wholesome and enjoyable things in life — like comfort food — are the dullest.