Alabama Tomatoes

When I came across the passage below in The Well and the Mine, a case of writer envy set in. Novelist Gin Phillips is just that talented at conveying imagery in the context of developing scenes and characters in Great Depression-era Carbon Hill, Ala. And so I bring you a tribute to Alabama tomaters in her words with photos from moi.

Albert, the father of the main character, narrates:

Heirloom Tomatoes, Pepper Place Farmer's Market

 My mouth watered at the look of them, insides about to burst through the skin. I plucked one and bit into it like an apple, juice running down my chin...

I pulled another one off and handed it to him, still tasting summer in my mouth, seeds stuck in my shadow of a beard...

Jones Valley Urban Farm Tomatoes in a Tomato Pie-In-Process

 I smiled at them all (his children), chattering and slurping, teeth and tongues and hands and arms covered in tomato innards.

"They're happy vegetables, aren't they, Papa?" asked Tess, chomping great chunks of hers. "Cheerful and excited. Like lemons are pouty and peaches are flirts."

Cherry Tomatoes Growing in Backyard Garden (Thanks to roommates who garden)

Virgie took tiny bites, bending over to hold the tomato away from her dress. But her's was the best, fuller and redder than the others. "Tess thinks they all have personality," she said.

"If she can eat it after she makes friends with it, ain't nothing wrong with it," I said.

We all picked beans until supper time, sticky and sweating, licking our fingers and hands and tasting tomatoes and dirt. When I swung Jack and Tess up the steps on the way in, our hands didn't want to come apart.

-Gin Phillips, The Well and the Mine, pages 52-53

Publix pizza crust with olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil

Bookends for a perfect summer Saturday

Start the day at a farmers market, or two if you are racking up a photo collection for community newspapers.

Homewood Farmers Market photos taken for The Homewood Star.

End it cooking up farmers market booty with friends.

Publix pizza dough with olive oil, garlic, green and yellow zucchini, fresh mozzarella, squash blossoms courtesy of my horticulturally talented roommate's garden, and turkey bacon.

Also, drink wine and eat cupcakes.

Welcome to my real life: Hospitality in all its delight, and messiness

For the past seven days I have eaten out every meal excluding two dinners and five breakfasts.  I was out of town for the weekend and had a meal-meeting-heavy week, but still. Ridiculous. 

And this is all while I was reading/processing Jen Hatmaker's book about fasting and purging her life of "junk" to better focus it on what matters, including many tangents on eating local, growing your own food, and eating out less. This passage below on beautiful, messy hospitality stood out to me. It's what I crave despite my love of of the ease and deliciousness of eating out at good places:

Practicing the hospitality thing: Homemade roasted veggie salad, chicken salad, cheese and more for a special friend's birthday picnic moved indoors to my house due a park turned unseasonably cold and rainy.

"So yes, eating is still a starting player, but being in each other's homes, cooking and sharing food together is delightful...

There is something so nourishing about sharing your living space with people where they see your junk mail pile and pee wee football schedule on the fridge and pile of shoes by the front door. Opening your home says, "You are welcome into my real life." This square footage is where we laugh and hold family meeting and make homemade corn dogs and work through meltdowns. Here is the railing our kids pulled out of the wall. This is the toilet paper we prefer. These are the pictures we frame, the books we're reading, the projects we're undertaking—the raw material of our family. It's unsanitized and truthful. We invite you into this intimate place saturated with our family character.

Maybe this is why hospitality was big to the early church. Living together in the sacred places of our homes is so unifying... They had dinner around the table. They had Sabbath together. They had soft places to fall when they traveled. Safe in the home of a fellow Christ follower, they could breathe, pray, rest. What a gift..."
-Jen Hatmaker, 7:An Experimental Mutiny against Excess, page 176

A new (old) kind of farm life

So lately summertime busyness happened. Cakes happened, cookies happened, party planning happened, trying new foods happened. Blogging did not happen. But now I am back, with the caveat that face-to-face relationship time can always gets prioritized above my self-imposed weekly blogging schedule (thanks to thinking on the role of technology inspired by this talk).

As of late I have been hearing about farms and how they ain't around the state of Alabama like they used to be. Farmers' kids grew up and moved to the suburbs. Farming got more commercialized, and the the lifestyle and profession became less popular and less profitable. So said Nick Pihakis, founder of the Jim 'N Nick's empire (below on right), when I walked around a farm with him. And so said Andrew Grace in Eating Alabama, his new documentary about the year he and his wife exclusively ate food farmed in our fair state.

Photos taken for 280 Living. 

Nick doesn't dream small. He has a vision for family farm that can be sustained by selling produce to restaurants like his, and where the family who lives on that farm eats off the land. He's testing out this idea on a plot in Mt Laurel in the Birmingham suburbs, as pictured. With this model, he has hopes to rebuild the agricultural structure of the South. Learning all this on a farm tour with the equivalent of a movie star in the Southern food world (and sharing the story with the community around the farm) made every drop of sweat on that day so worth it.

As for Andrew, he get major points for lengths to which he traveled to keep his eat local goal, but he didn't end things as optimistic as he began. Times have changed. The farm system is really messed up.  We can't live in a seemingly more idyllic time when we ate off our land. His conclusion, or at least the version of it that stuck with me, is that we can do little things to reclaim that ideal though. 

Andrew maintained much of his new local eating lifestyle: keeping up gardens in his front and back yards, buying farm shares, hanging out with farmers. It's the image he captures of a long table of farmers and friends outside at sunset passing dinner dishes, presumably made from locally grown foods— a glossy magazine image that we can in fact practice on a smaller scale with friends and food and the land around us, whatever it might look like.

Photo from EatingAlabama.com

Evidence I am prideful: I got pretty excited when in Eating Alabama (trailer below) Andrew visits the Mt Laurel farm I wrote about. Only when he filmed it, it was just a teaching farm and Nick's experimental working farm had not been started, so in some ways I felt like I wrote an addendum to the film.

A theology of cooking creativity

Sometimes creativity, even culinary creativity, feels selfish. Sometimes it is selfish for me.

But Wayne Grudem, in his giant volume of Systematic Theology, helped reorient my thinking last year: we delight in creativity because it comes from God, and we should be worshipful in it.

I have amazing, culinary-creative friends who turn out potluck feasts like this beauty of a backyard barbecue, complete with homemade iced brownies and whiskey sours made with homemade sour mix.

"God has so made us to enjoy imitating, in a creaturely way, his creative activity. And one of the amazing aspects of humanity—in distinction from the rest of creation—is our ability to create new things. This also explains why we take delight in other kinds of 'creative' activity: many people enjoy cooking, or decorating their home, or working with wood or other materials, or producing scientific inventions, or devising new solutions to problems in industrial production. Even children enjoy coloring pictures or building houses out of blocks. In all these activities, we reflect in a small measure the creative activity of God, and we should delight in it and thank him for it." -Grudem, page 272

Like all things in life, I want each moment of my creation to be intentionally done out of gratitude and delight in the ultimate Creator, to glorify him and make him known.  That is why I cook, or why I want to want to cook.

Scraps of table fellowship

Exhibit A: My compost pile from the weekend.  

The asparagus stems from an impromptu salmon dinner with two lovely ladies. The "skin" of garlic used to make pesto and the lemon from a roasted chicken that went in a pasta salad shared in the botanical gardens with a dear friend who is moving away for a new season of life. Fruit rinds and stems from my Sunday morning porch breakfast and prayer time.

With spring sprung, there are more hours in my days, more light in my life, more playing in the sunshine, more sharing life in community around me. Life is in full bloom. Its fullness has me constantly reflecting on the good gifts that come from the father of heavenly lights. Especially table fellowship.

It's over the table that strangers become friends, friends become family, and family become friends: Breakfast with a roommate on a busy morning.  Dinners with friends where you don't get up to clear your plates until hours later. Mid-workday delight life-catchup lunch sessions. Communion around the table and sharing Jesus in "backyard church" following an amazingly fresh salad buffet. Breakfast or dinner dates laced with intentional conversation about how God is at work in our lives. Meeting new people over dessert porch sitting. Relishing life lived together as we entertain our taste buds and fill our stomachs.

As I have been reading through Lenten devotions on Matthew written by people from my church, I have been struck by how Jesus valued our fellowship over a meal and ultimately the meal of bread and wine, body and blood. It's funny how truths from childhood songs seep back in my life as an adult with new meaning: He sets me at his banqueting table, His banner over me is love.

Cheers to life in this season of spring and sunshine, of table fellowship, and of learning to root all these things in that banqueting table.

What I Learned at FoodBlogSouth

I spent last Saturday at FoodBlogSouth mingling with people who also love to talk food and blogging. What a delight! Here's what I learned (and ate)...

1. Drinking vinegar (like this pomegranate variety from Pok Pok Som) is a food trend as is:
-the return of niche bakers- proof: the cupcake trend won't go away
-a return to animal fats-amen, bacon
-packaging wild foods- look out for dried wild mushrooms
-sprouted grains- ancient wisdom meets raw foods
-yogurt- Greek, Kefir, love, love
-wholesome beverages- heard of coconut water but not yet Honest Cocoa Nova
(Source: Kara Nielson from the Center for Culinary Development)

2. Vegan meatballs can taste better than meat. Never thought I'd say that. (Source: Shindigs Catering's Food Truck's LA Meatballs (smoked mushrooms, beats and nuts, only really) over spaghetti squash.)

3. Ales should be drunken at a mid-50s temperature to bring out its flavors and notes. Also, I still don't like beer all that much, even though I really want to. No offense, Good People, because I so want to appreciate my local brewery. (Source: Ale Sharpton)

4. You get good loot from food blogging conferences. But if I blog about it, I need to disclose that I did in fact get it for free. So for the record, I got this stuff (plus Jim N Nick's cheese biscuit mix) for free. (Source: Dianne Jacob's ethics discussion)

Fancy ice cream from High Road Craft

5. I too can apply for a James Beard Award, because they have been democratized to consider us lowly food bloggers. Or so says the very cool Kat Kinsman, who edits CNN's Eatocracy and makes my heart pitter patter when she talks about compelling, fact-checked reporting and telling the the story only you can tell, ahhhh.

6. I want to volunteer with the Desert Island Supply Company so I can talk writing with generation next.

 

7. Food blogging conferences make a good excuse to finally make blog business cards. I created mine by using pasta boxes and cereal boxes. 

The Southern Culinary Bible: A History of Southern Living

Once upon a time I devoted hours to reading and writing about Southern food culture and Southern Living magazine. Exactly four professors read my giant final report and let me have a master’s degree (woohoo) and put it in at a nice j-library in Missouri. I am resurrecting the best parts of said giant report in a more digestible blog version.

Southern women love them some Southern Living recipes. Millions of then read the magazine. They cook from it. They write love letters to it. They trust it, they revere it, it is part of who they are as Southerners, as women, as cooks.

My mom's SL-filled kitchen bookshelf.

In the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Dianne Young calls Southern Living “one of the South’s self-proclaimed culinary bibles,” and Patricia Gantt refers to the magazine as “that great dame of southern cookery.” Food is essential to the Southern Living but is only part of the larger history of the iconic Southern lifestyle magazine.

In 1966 Southern Living was born as vehicle for emphasizing Southern identity for publisher Progressive Farmer’s non-farm circulation. Beginning in the 1930s, the region had become increasingly urban and nonagrarian with a diversification of manufacturing and of agriculture. As the region progressed toward mainstream America and a global economy, Southerners faced an identity crisis and looked for reaffirmations of Southerness. However, after the Jim Crow era, the South no longer could use the North as a strong contrast upon which to draw their identity, so they exaggerated their small differences in distinctiveness.

The magazine was launched to serve a new reader divorced from rural roots and to celebrate the white Southern lifestyle at a time when Southerners faced negative perceptions in the media and the stress of change during the Civil Rights Movement. According to Southern historian James Cobb, Southern Living became “the most convenient fig leaf” to cover Southerners’ “cultural nakedness” after being stripped of their Jim Crow identity.

Food Thoughts: Southern Food Documentaries

Because we are food nerds, Hannah and I spent last Thursday watching documentaries made by the Southern Foodways Alliance and eating (free!) Jim 'N Nick's tacos, including their new mayonnaise-vinegar white sauce for chicken. Birmingham keeps winning cool points for events like this as part of Eat Drink Read Write Festival, because combining celebration of food and books is just delightful.

Here are some interesting things I learned:

Ribs ala family Fourth of July.

1. Scott of Scott's BBQ in Hemingway, SC is really serious about smoking pigs. As in he spends all week splitting word for the pit and then slow cooking whole pigs overnight, finishing it off by mopping (literally) the pig with vinegar-pepper sauce. He also sells crispy pig skins, which does not sound appetizing to me.

2. How cows digest grass is gross (regurgitate "cud" and rechew it multiple times) but the natural way to go; how cows live in mass-meat-production facilities is even grosser. Part of me just wants to stay ignorant to our messed-up food system so I will like meat more.

3. A ridiculous number of people have a beach party each year in Florabama to toss mullets (fish) across the Florida-Alabama state line in the sand. Really. And they get really into it, which is entertaining to watch.

I left the films with my eyes opened to just how much our food is tied to our land, its vegetation and animals, something that's easy to not fully comprehend when our food comes from big-box stores.

As if Southern Foodways Alliance wasn't cool enough for celebrating and preserving Southern food traditions, they also have all their documentaries available to watch on their website.

Food Thoughts: Feeding People in Tragedy

Amidst the glossy-perfect food and homes in the August Southern Living,  I discovered some extraordinary storytelling about the aftermath of April's tornadoes. I loved how it so eloquently captured the comfort of food, especially in the South, in times of tragedy:

"In the South, food and tragedy are sisters. And while the instinct to feed others in a crisis may not be strictly Southern, what we prepare, and how we do it—in lovingly generous, belt-busting portions—may be our region’s finest recipe.

Chocolate Sheet Cake

It is true that some ills in this world cannot be cured by Rita Trull’s chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. But that cake, and the love and compassion baked into it, may be more beautiful than any cake that ever appeared on a magazine cover. By the look of the spread in front of her, Rita is not alone in her ability to cope, and help, through baking. When she put out a call for help after the storm, the answer came strong, and sweet.

'I said, "I need some cakes for these people!”' she said. 'And I had 21 cakes come to my house.'”
-Southern Living, August 2011, page 97

How have food and coping with tragedy intersected in your life?

Southern Food: A Brief History

Once upon a time I devoted hours to reading and writing about Southern food culture and Southern Living magazine. Exactly four professors read my giant final report and let me have a degree (woohoo). Now the report lives at a nice j-library in Missouri. Other important things in life, like cooking and friends and family, distracted me from getting it published for the past year, but now I am resurrecting the best parts of said giant report in a more digestible blog version. I promise Southerners and their food are interesting.


It was an agrarian way of life in the Old South. There were fields and plantations and slaves. So people ate what came from the fields (revolutionary, right?)—after frying it up or boiling it with good ole fat-cured pork. They ate lots ‘o corn, but it didn’t make the “great triumvirate” of veggies: turnips, cowpeas (today’s blackeyed or crowder peas), and sweet potatoes.

Pork was long the staple from swine herds, but eventually, farmers in the region began to raise poultry, which gave rise to the delicacy of fried chicken.

Photo by SouthernLiving.com

Cornbread served as the primary bread when Southern mills could not handle glutinous wheat and the wheat crop was small. In the second half of the nineteenth century, increased wheat production and new milling methods made wheat available to all classes, and hence wheat flour biscuits joined the ranks of cornbread in the Southern diet.

But then days of plantations came to an end. Northerners infiltrated the region. People moved to cities. What was to become of Southerners? What of the traditional culture would remain? Food! Sunday dinner. Biscuits and collards. Peach pie and pimiento cheese. Gravy and hushpuppies. Food provided definition, security, and stability to family and community life and to regional culture.

“The spiritual meaning of food in the South is perhaps best seen on Sundays. Dinner on the grounds brings together a church community in a symbol of wholeness. Sunday dinner at home has been a shared ritual of different Southerners for generations, reinforcing family ties over chicken and gravy. Breaking cornbread together and drinking sweet tea have been Southern sacraments, outward signs of deeper communion. Food in the South, and the shared importance of it to family and community among many kinds of Southerners, represents a peculiar resource for fellowship among the people of the South.”
-Charles Reagan Wilson, Foodways: The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Vol. 7, XVI-XVII

Of Holly, Pizza, and Passion

This is Holly. She quiet if you don’t know her. But get her talking about how she makes pizza, and she’ll smile and speak with humble passion.

Photo by 280 Living

She’s part of a team of two who opened aptly named Holly’s Pizzeria in Birmingham several months ago. She does all the cooking, and her partner waits on the tables. Both beam with reserved pride about owning their own place and serving Holly’s perfected pies. I got to tell their story this month in 280 Living. It was for my new daytime gig writing and editing for suburban community newspapers on 280, in Homewood, and in Mountain Brook. (I also get to write about things like recycling, charity parties in a special person's memory, and PGA tournaments (I really wrote about sports?).)

Truth be told, I kind of judge new suburbs against the greater character of architecture and non-chain restaurants and stores in more urban areas. Isn’t every suburb virtually the same? No, I’ve learned. Amongst the big box stores and neighborhoods with variations on like five floor plans are people with stories, just like the rest of the world and just like more cool urban neighborhoods. And hidden in a generic strip mall are two people bustin’ their butts seven days a week to pursue their passion: serving the most hearty thin crust pizza I’ve ever tasted. What a reminder me the gift of writing for the service of others!

Why I Cook

Food 52's cooking manifesto inspired me to write one of my own. I resorted to my go-to framework for talking of food: overusing the word "love." This is the order I prioritize things in actuality, but if I lived how I want to live, my orientation would be flip-flopped.

Because I love good food.
Because crafting food shares love.
Because food (and creativity) comes from love (from God!).

 Cooking Love with Friends: Megan prepping some salmon and asparagus to grill.

Food 52's manifesto hits things I value spot-on too:

Because:
If you cook, your family will eat dinner together.
If you cook, you will naturally have a more sustainable household.
If you cook, you'll set a lifelong example for your children.
If you cook, you'll understand what goes into food and will eat more healthily.
If you cook, you'll make your home an important place in your life.
If you cook, you'll make others happy.
If you cook, people will remember you.

Why do you cook?

Lenten Diet?

Has Lent has become a type of diet? You give up something that’s bad for you for 40 days and then switch from famine to feast on Easter Sunday (and the Sundays in between if you cheat). You might even lose a few pounds or become a little less addicted to caffeine or Facebook in the process.
 
One year I gave up what seemed a great sacrifice, chocolate. Even being the chocoholic I am, self-discipline and yogurt-covered pretzels carried me through with little need to look beyond myself. I even thought I was becoming a better, less food-obsessed person because I began to crave the wondrous cocoa less. Retrospectively, I realize I missed the whole point of a fast.

I now see I have to be careful to monitor my intentions. Am I doing this just to see if I can make it through or to wean myself off a bad habit? Or is this a God-honoring sacrifice?

One thing I did have on target in my chocolate fast was that the most significant thing for me to sacrifice is food. TV, facebook, caffeine, music, whatever I can live without just fine (and it’s hard to give up the internet or reading when you have a job), but lunch, dinner, snack time, dessert, baking, cooking, food shopping, it’s all what I most look forward to everyday. And so when I go 24 hours (as long as I’ve ventured thus far) without eating, as I did once a week last Lent, every hunger pain reminds me that I am incessantly dependant on something, someone, beyond myself. It’s not comfortable, there are no yogurt-covered pretzels to substitute, and I certainly can’t do it on my own.

Another good Lenten discipline can be to take something on instead of giving it up. This year I’m thinking about setting aside extra time for prayer or daily writing notes to encourage people in my life. The Church Health Center in Memphis suggests taking on healthy eating and is blogging different healthy recipes.

Ash Wednesday, the official start of the Lenten season, is in two days. What are you considering taking on or giving up?

UPDATE: I just found a campaign called Wine to Water that encourages people to donate to water projects in Zimbabwe the money they would have spent on whatever they give up for Lent. Another great idea! This give site is in the UK, but you could easily easily calcuate the amount you are not spending and give it to whatever nonprofits you like to support. 

Quinoa & More Super Foods

So many magazine stories I flip through and think, "That's cool," and then move on with life. Yes, part of reading a mag is for pleasure and escape, but I decided I wanted to really act on the service nuggets that stick out to me. Step one is tearing out the ones that speak to me, and step two is doing it.

For February I did something! I tore out Real Simple's cover story on 30 superfoods to eat, made a list, and cooked quinoa ("Keen-wah"), the only grain that is a complete protein. I found its grainy grains, somewhere in between the size of couscous and rice, a light texture perfect for a side dish or salad.

I threw it together veggies in my fridge (red onion, bell pepper, broccoli, and parsley) and some red wine vinegar and olive oil for a fresh and hearty lunch salad. Along with a bit of chicken salad, it kept my taste buds and stomach content til dinner.

Here's the rest of Real Simple's list. I broke my superfood report card down by the foods I already eat, with some notes about how I like to eat them, and the ones on my to-try list. I started to write about how they are all good in salads, but it got redundant.

• almonds- sugared as a snack, nutty crunch for salads and rice
• avocados- guacamole! guacamole! sandwich topper.
• black beans- best-ever Black Bean Hummus
• blueberries- with granola & yogurt for breakfast
• broccoli- roasted as a side dish, in pasta (or quinoa) salads
• chicken breasts- the base of dinner more often than not
• edamame- salted as snack, Roasted Garlic-Edamame Spread
• eggs- a superfood we can put in baked goods, horray!
• extra-virgin olive oil- salad dressings, cooking meat & veggies, everywhere
• kidney beans- chili!
• kiwi- snacking
• lentils- Lemony Lentil Stew
• mushrooms- sauteed to top chicken or steak or anything really
• oatmeal- nuked, baked with berries
• oranges- sliced for breakfast
• peanut and almond butters- toast topper
• pumpkin- smoothies, dips, pancakes, bread, French toast, you name it
• skim milk- drink of choice
• spinach- salad base, Garlicky Spinach Dip, Spinach Brownies
• sweet potatoes- oven-fried, baked as side dish
• walnuts- pesto, muffins
• whole-grain pasta- under spaghetti sauce
• wild salmon-mmm grilled, with mango salsa in summertime
• yogurt- smoothie base, mayo substitute, snack

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

• barley- as a rice replacement
• bulgur- another rice replacment
• chard- sauteed with some garlic and vinegar
• kale- the cool way to eat this leafy green seems to be as chips
• sardines- I've been meaning to try Jamie Oliver's yogurt-based Caesar dressing 

How do you like to eat these superfoods? Any your are thinking about trying?

Food Thoughts: Saying Grace

Saying "grace" was a mealtime ritual growing up. At home we said, "God is good, God is great. Let us thank him for this food..." Youth group pre-meal practice included superman motions to, "Thank you God for giving us food." Every kid's favorite seems to be, "Rubadubdub, thanks for the grub." My Catholic family members repeated, "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord."

I've never doubted that we should thank God for food but lately have been thinking about how routine it is to say "grace," especially when all that you want to do is eat the meal in front of you. And then I came across these thoughts:

Photo: Southern Living 

"If I say thank you to God for every morsel of food, that transforms the food. It is no longer merely fuel for my body; it becomes a gift from God to be enjoyed and relished. Its taste and texture take on new significance."-Tim Chester and Steve Timmis, Total Church, page 145

What is saying grace to you? A family ritual? Something for little kids? A personal prayer?

Food Thoughts: Food from Home

The ending of a story on melons in the June/July Saveur left me thinking about the how we treasure foods that we associate with a place or experience, especially that of home.

A young man told the writer that he had bought one of his kharbouza melons, a 10-12 melon native to Afghanistan that is rare in the U.S., and told him about giving it to his grandfather:

"I took it home to Fremont for my grandfather. Every summer he gets together with a bunch of other old Afghani men and they recite the Koran, the whole thing. It takes three days. It was the third day, and they had just reached the last words when I walked in and said, 'Grandfather, I've brought you a kharbouza melon.' All the old men jumped up and shouted, 'It's a miracle! God has heard us!' And then they cut the melon and shared it among themselves, and they sat on the floor reminiscing about home."

What food reminds you of home?

Food Thoughts: Are women who love to eat more attractive?

My latest beach read, Lunch in Paris: A Love Story with Recipes, engaged me with the author's narrative of falling in love with a Parisian and French food, but it was this gem of a paragraph stood out most to me: 

"The French have always known what I have long suspected; there is nothing sexier than watching a woman eat. Men love this. I'm positive I owe many a second date in New York to a chocolate cannoli or a late-night coupe of rice pudding with whipped cream." 

As a female who more than enjoys the art of eating, of course this line makes me smile, especially because most media seems to say that being attractive is all about being skinny and fit. 

Women seem to think that men think the opposite and that they must eat fewer calories in front of them to signal that they take care of their bodies, or so research in Canada and the UK found. But what do men really think? Google wouldn't give me a legit answer (yahoo answers don't count).

So, blog readers, where do you weigh in? (Don't be comment shy!) Are women who love food more attractive than those that think only about calories and eat mostly salad? Do you women eat differently around guys in general and/or on a first few dates?

Food Thoughts: Taste: A Benefit of Aging

"The only thing that really improves with age is your appreciation of food."

I clipped this quote from an from an African elder via an article on Catalonia A.F. Robertson wrote for Gastronomica  [ultimate food/culture/academia nerd journal] and contemplated it on the eve of my birthday this week. Half my life ago, I didn't like most vegetables, and my favorite meal involved boiled chicken and cream of chicken soup—how my appreciation of food has evolved!

Life might bring storms and wear down on the body as you age, but there will always be endless possibilities of food adventure. Although I would argue that wisdom and other things also improve with aging, the prospect of coupling food with all the seasons of life that lie ahead make our culture's detestation of aging seem quite silly.

How has your appreciation of food improved with aging?

Food Thoughts: Cooking as Gift-Giving

The Last Chinese Barbecue from Gourmet (before it died, RIP) tells many stories in one — passionate man prepares food with care, cook maintains artisanal ethnic food craft, immigrant makes better life for his children, to name a few. But what stood out most to me was the universal story of using food skills and talents as a service, a gift, to those you love.

He says, “When I retire, I can just relax and cook for myself and my friends. Cooking for them is the most satisfying thing I can think of to do.” Then, I understood why he cut me good pieces from the pig all day long, why he hands out the tofu. His work is hard, but he also gets to give.