Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, freshingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing - love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist - not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh,the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love.
That eating should be foremost about bodily health is a relatively new and, I think, destructive idea-destructive not just the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically of our health as well. Indeed, no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans-and no people suffer from as many diet-related problems. We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.
Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
I had a dream about you, I was cooking dinner and you came out of the bathroom with a troubled look on your face. When I asked what was wrong you said "I have never been with a woman over 120lbs" I was confused but said nothing, then you said "The scale says you weigh 122lbs, I don't think we can work" I was baffled by your strange and cruel attidude and said that you would have to take your food to go.
The proper way is lost to me; my compass spins. I therefore give my entire attention to those works that seem to me most incorruptible: the application of heat, the proportion of seasoning, the arrangement of a plate. When robbed of all pretensions and aspirations, with no proper home nor any knowledge of what discord tomorrow brings, I still may have a pocketful of dignity. The Roman pomp and raiment have fallen away, and I see at last the glory of washed feet and shared bread.
I remember an hypothesis argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether supposing that the flavour of a big who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremem) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting an animal to death?' I forget the decision.
We combine our three packs of pasta for dinner – pesto. We tip the dried stuff into a pan, add water and simmer. We try it, looking at each other with disbelief as it hits the tastebuds. ‘It’s pesto, Jim, but not as we know it,’ I say.‘Fascinating,’ says Lou, unsmiling humouring my Star Trek reference, while wincing at the foul food. (And what made me say that? Is there such a thing as a dad-joke vacuum that needs to be filled, even in the wild?)
The aloo gobi is perhaps to North India what apple pie is to America. It is cheap and easy to make. Like most Indian dishes, you can make aloo gobi in as complex or rudimentary a fashion as you wish. You can eat it with rice, rotis, parathas or even with sliced white bread. A little leftover aloo gobi between two slices of white bread, toasted in one of those clamp sandwich-makers, and served with ketchup and mint chutney, is one of the greatest breakfast achievements of our species.
Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world’s finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you’ve been mysteriously wafted to the French countryside, but no, this is the East End of Long Island, the most exciting new wine region in North America. You’ve reached your destination, but your journey of discovery has barely begun
We worked side by side building our sandwiches. Mine, just a few modest layers of meat and cheese, with a bit of lettuce for some added crunchiness; his, a Dagwood, piled high with turkey, ham, salami, lettuce, tomatoes, two kinds of cheese, and—were those jalapenos—with a teetering slice of bread carefully placed on top—there’s no way that’s going to fit into his mouth—he admired it for a moment then using his giant paw, smashed it into submission.
Marry, don't marry,' Auntie Aya says as we unfold layers of dough to make an apple strudel. Just don't have your babies unless it's absolutely necessary.'How do I know if it's necessary?'She stops and stares ahead, her hands gloved in flour. 'Ask yourself, Do I want a baby or do I want to make a cake? The answer will come to you like bells ringing.' She flickers her fingers in the air by her ear. 'For me, almost always, the answer was cake.
Psycholinguists argue about whether language reflects our perception of reality or helps create them. I am in the latter camp. Take the names we give the animals we eat. The Patagonian toothfish is a prehistoric-looking creature with teeth like needles and bulging yellowish eyes that lives in deep waters off the coast of South America. It did not catch on with sophisticated foodies until an enterprising Los Angeles importer renamed it the considerably more palatable "Chilean sea bass.
Until-as often happened during those first months travel, whenever I would feel such happiness-my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband's voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up everything for? This is why you gutted our entire life together? For a few stalks of asparagus and an Italian newspaper? I replied aloud to him: "First of all," I said, "I'm very sorry, but this isn't your business anymore. And secondly, to answer you question...yes.
The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour ofmeditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.
Черешата не се купува, глупак с глупак! Черешата е любов! Или я отглеждаш, или я крадеш!
