Food of love
Some live to eat while others eat to live. Had I infinite time and money I would run millions of experiments and projects, one of which would investigate those in the latter camp.
To eat well is to feel with your whole self. To be alive to what goes in your body and the sensational variety it provides.
To cook well is to pay attention to detail, to mix and manufacture, to create.
Does someone who professes to be unfussed by food not care about other similarly nuanced daily rituals and cultural tropes or is this an exception?
For instance, is their home minimalist and utilitarian (and not in that cheerful mid-century Scandinavian way)?
Do they wear makeup or hair products? Do they exercise?
Do they like music? Books of any kind? Sex?
Are they deeply religious in some way that carnal pleasures like the juice of the first ripe strawberry or snap of May asparagus is forbidden or uninteresting?
For food looks and feels like many things. It can be almost anything, and the variety and bounty fills your house and your memories as well as your stomach.
Few things so naturally touch all our senses, few memories have the tangible vivacity of smells and stories like a first loaf of sourdough or grandma’s holiday jello.
Hazily and with trepidation, I can imagine a life without the pleasures of the plate, but it is vague and defined by absence.
As if I had lost a language or a limb. As if I had lost a passionate lover.
In my mind food, literature and music are the great triumvirate of life.
In each there is nuance and variety to fill a lifetime. In any single one there is space for the social and solitary, times of feast and fast, a spectrum of moods and cultural influences which can transport me back in time, across the globe, and to the stars.
The sheer variety of the human experience is an infinite wonder. Reveling in the tangible moments, savoring the depth of flavor, is to get at the heart it all. One rich morsel at a time.
Que Sera Sara? 