An interesting thing happened to me today. I ran into a person who knows me, a person who is also a writer. And they said the darnedest thing. Something about me just writing about food. As if it were something lesser than writing a novel or whatever. Actually, I have written a novel. In the … More Writing about Food IS Writing
Corn. Beans. Squash. The Three Sisters. Many Native American groups tell very different creation stories about these New World crops, which – as “sustainers of life” – meant deep sacredness. According to Shelia Wilson of the Sappony Tribe in North Carolina: The legend of “Three Sisters” originated when a woman of medicine who could no … More The Three Sisters: A Celebration
It was Julia Child‘s favorite outdoor market in Paris. La Mouffe. Or rue Mouffetard, in the 5th arrondisement. Ancient street, cobblestone-strewn. Romans trod there, and marched, too. In the third century, Legionnaires laid the first rock in the town they called Lutetia Parisiorum. And that thoroughfare stretched all the way to Rome via the modern … More La Mouffe
Uniformed men on horseback, lassos at the ready, chase brown and black people stumbling in the surging water of the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas. The photographs shock. They call up long-buried images. Of the Ku Klux Klan night riding. Of patrollers chasing runaway slaves. Of Native Americans and the U.S. Cavalry at Wounded … More On the Borderlands
My latest book is out, a story of culinary discoveries and life’s big-and-little adventures.
Witnessing doesn’t always mean expressing words out loud. Or even in written form. You act as a witness, every day, in one way or another, merely by living. Witnessing can be as simple as waking before the sun rises, shuffling to the kitchen, waiting while the coffee gurgles through the filter, peeling a bruised banana, … More Literature as Witness
Thankfully, the Millennium Bridge across the River Thames didn’t sway under my feet that day, giving lie to its other name, the Wobbly Bridge. But the chilling wind whipped at everything not tied down, painting a disagreeable redness on my nose and a deep-seated hunger in my belly. The aroma of roasting sugary peanuts floated … More A Dearth of Pleasure: The Curse of Modern Food Writing
