Elatia Harris | The Rambling Epicure

The TRE Quiz: Were You Destined to Become a Food Writer?

Published by Elatia Harris + Friday, August 15, 2014 Permalink 3

by Elatia Harris

Below you will find a spectrum of behaviors that are food writer markers in early life, as well as some behaviors that do not strongly associate to food writing. Say yes to all that apply. Attach a zero to behaviors that do not resonate with you. Each entry below, a. through e., is is worth points in ascending order — a. is 1, b. is 2, c. is 3, d. is 4, and e. is 5. So, the most you could accumulate for each division — (1,), (2.) and (3.) — is 15 points, for a total score of 45. My research and experience tell me that scoring higher than 40 makes you, hopelessly, a food writer. See that you think!

(1.) In childhood under 10, you

(a.) Ate what you were given, mainly, but thought over the texture pretty hard.

(b.) Wondered about the food in foreign countries. Was it better? Could you cook it just fine without going there?

(c.) Read carefully, rather than skipped over, the bits about food in your usual reading matter.

(d.) Sniffed from spice jars.

(e.) Were asked not to complain about the food, ever, even though you weren’t complaining, exactly. You were trying to help.

(2.) In early adolescence, you

(a.) Read and wrote well ahead of your grade level, regardless of other academic aptitudes.

(b.) Cooked with adults, for lack of interested peers. Cooked to get adults out of the kitchen.

(c.) Started feeling passionate about certain writers: they were writing for YOU.

(d.) Put out at least two issues of a newsletter about the food at school and at hangouts.

(e.) Sniffed wine, tried to taste it, daydreamed a lot, wanted to be older — at least 16.

(3.) Mid-adolescence through age 21, you

(a.) Worked to expand your food vocabulary because there were food sensations you experienced but had no words for.

(b.) Considered “year abroad” programs based on the food that might be involved.

(c.) Used more of your available funds to eat well than other students did, cut back elsewhere to afford it.

(d.) Sniffed fragrances, liked satin, drank wine.

(e.) Made lists of destination restaurants, and other things to experience for the sake of writing about them.

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

Food Writing Prompts: Your Own Desk is a Prompt

Published by Elatia Harris + Wednesday, August 13, 2014 Permalink 2

by Elatia Harris

So many great writers need their writing rooms to meet precise specs. E.B. White preferred a rough-hewn, minimalist space, with nothing but a typewriter. Virginia Woolf needed lots of green around her, and took some serious kidding about it from her sister. I have noticed that a writing room is almost never gender-neutral, even when the writer is going for a low-key, orderly space that gives little away. There’s something I need, that I’ll give up things I like to get: a window. Looking at photos like the National Trust photo above, of Vita Sackville-West’s writing table at Sissinghurst, I always notice — does the writing table face a window, or a wall?

Which leads me to wonder — how much of a writing prompt is your desk itself? It has four corners, like the ancient Chinese idea of the Universe. Within that space, you can put anything you have that helps. When you look up from your work, are you still seeing with the mind’s eye? What could you arrange to see, physically, that would give you the most of what you needed to keep writing?

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

Food Writing Prompts: A Brighter Kitchen

Published by Elatia Harris + Saturday, August 2, 2014 Permalink 2

by Elatia Harris

We value a bright kitchen for many reasons — ventilation, ease of cleaning, the unimpeded visibility of the food we prepare, and not least, the maintenance of the mood of the cook. The cook is almost always the owner of the kitchen, now. In a centuries-old kitchen, however, like this one at Townend in the UK (National Trust Photo), that was not the case. There were paid workers who lacked for light and fresh air, in the kitchen all day and into the night. In these circumstances, even a tiny slice of light makes a big difference. One candle, reflected in a glass bowl full of water. It was called a light enhancer, and it could bring deep joy.

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

Food Writing Prompts: The Morality of Plenty

Published by Elatia Harris + Friday, July 25, 2014 Permalink 1

The Morality of Plenty

Splendid Food — Does it Have a Moral Dimension?

by Elatia Harris

In The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Simon Schama tells of the sickening tensions produced in 17th-century Amsterdam when far too much in the way of material goods sat badly with an ethic that twinned virtue and thrift. The Dutch were suddenly able to have anything they could name, from anywhere in the known world. Immediately, they began ascribing sinfulness to certain new foodstuffs, candied fruit being high on their long list of gruesome luxuries.

Dutch painting of the 17th century illuminates a question familiar to us now: Has splendor beyond dreaming no moral dimension? Paintings such as this — Still Life, by Adriaen van Utrecht, painted in 1644 and now in the Rijksmuseum — both celebrate and condemn the expanding sensual world, full of the transient beauty that distracts without sustaining, but that so delights us. We too know that struggle, that makes it hard to think of the rarest and most wondrous foods without ambivalence.

For a writer, is it a matter of tone? Or one of content?

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

Food Writing Prompt: Foujita, Wine & Blotting Paper

Published by Elatia Harris + Wednesday, July 23, 2014 Permalink 1

Food Writing Prompt: When Blotting Paper Gets Most of Your Ink

by Elatia Harris

This young woman, painted by Foujita in 1948, puts a pensive face on a harrowing dilemma — failing to make a good enough start on writing to have the courage to finish. Her blotting paper is the record of her distress, our deletions the record of our own. Looks like she’s hoping a second glass of wine will get her over the hump — the little saucers under the glass tell us, and her waiter, how many she’s had. My guess is that her heart is too full. What should she do? What would you do?

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

Adriaen Coorte, Baroque Dutch Master of Asparagus

Published by Elatia Harris + Saturday, July 5, 2014 Permalink 1

oil paint on paper mounted on a panel, h. 25cm × w. 20.5cm.. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Of the Dutch painter Adriaen Coorte, very little is known, not even the year of his birth or death. He was active for about three decades, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Only one contemporary matter of record truly stands out: in the provincial city of Middelburg, where he lived and worked, he was taxed for selling a painting without being a member of the local painters’ guild, after which he joined up. His simple compositions, their dark backdrops, their few and plain props, put him out of fashion, for he painted during the Dutch Golden Age, when nimiety ruled the still-life genre. He was forgotten until the 1950s. Since then, however, his 55 known works, a significant number of them depictions of asparagus, have gained a luster not bestowed on them during the artist’s life. In 2011, a newly discovered painting by Coorte went at auction for more than $4,000,000.

When an artist sticks with a subject over time, it’s natural to wonder why. In the 1600s, asparagus was a luxury food, as it is now. One might make the case that, in any era, an expensive food is a love food on those grounds alone, but asparagus was in the 17th century considered a love food for its special properties. The English physician and botanist Nicholas Culpeper, in his Complete Herbal (1652), wrote of asparagus that “being taken fasting several mornings together, [it] stirreth up bodily lust in man or woman (whate’er some have written to the contrary.)”

Did the reach of the Complete Herbal, a runaway bestseller for its time, extend to Middelburg, then a slave-trading hub whose first university came as late as 2004? How I wish I knew. But Coorte’s images — fruit, butterflies, shells, asparagus — are rich in the symbolic language used by painters of his time, and lit with a radiant specificity that suggests the deeper meaning will be revealed with contemplation.

Still Life with Asparagus, Adriaen Coorte, 1697. Oil paint on paper mounted on a panel, h. 25cm × w. 20.5cm. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.

The Story of Edouard Manet and the Bunch of Asparagus

Published by Elatia Harris + Sunday, June 1, 2014 Permalink 3

The art patron Charles Ephrussi (1849 –1905), one of the Parisians on whom Proust based the character Swann, was deeply appreciative of contemporary painting, and agreed to buy from Edouard Manet the delightful still-life, topmost above, for 800 francs. So great was his pleasure in ownership, however, that he paid the artist 1000 francs for it.

Not one to miss the chance for a witty flourish, Manet swiftly sent Ephrussi a smaller painting, of a single asparagus, with a note to say that one had slipped from the bunch.

Both paintings may be viewed by the public, but not together. The mother painting is in the Walraff Museum in Cologne, the solitary asparagus in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris.

Top: Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883). Bunch of Asparagus, 1880. Oil on canvas. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, Germany

Bottom: Edouard Manet (French, 1832-1905) One Asparagus, 1880. Oil on canvas, the Musee D’Orsay, Paris, France

Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.