National Book Award | The Rambling Epicure

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, July 19, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, July 19, 2013 Permalink 0

Food doesn’t exist, but can only be invented. And reinvented. –– Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author, born on June 16, 1938, in Lockport, New York. She developed a love for writing as a child, going on to become an acclaimed, bestselling scribe known for her novels, stories, poetry and essays, and winning the National Book Award for 1969’s them. Oates has had a prolific, award-winning career, with books such as A Garden of Earthly Delights, We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, The Gravedigger’s Daughter and The Accursed.

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Simon de Swaan is Food and Beverage Director at the Four Seasons hotel in New York City. He studied at the Culinary Institute of America and has an incredible collection of antique cookbooks and books about food and eating, from which he often posts interesting and unusual quotes. In his column Simon Says, he gives us daily food quotes from his tomes.

Writing Tips from Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates Is A Glass of Water
Joyce Carol Oates opens up: “I feel very transparent to myself.”
Joyce Carol Oates on Developing Realistic Characters
The Writing Life of Joyce Carol Oates

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, March 1, 2012

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, March 1, 2012 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

… there is nothing more delicious than an orange. The very sound of the word, the dazzling exotic color that shimmers inside the word, is a poem of surpassing beauty, complete in this line:

Orange

–Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novel Them (1969) won the National Book Award, and her novels Black Water (1992), What I Lived For (1994), and Blonde (2000) were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, August 18, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, August 18, 2011 Permalink 0

by Simón de Swaan

We didn’t starve, but we didn’t eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was.–Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)

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Bernard Malamud is considered one of the most prominent figures in Jewish-American literature, a movement that originated in the 1930s and is known for its tragicomic elements. Malamud’s stories and novels, in which reality and fantasy are frequently interlaced, have been compared to parables, myths, and allegories, and often illustrate the importance of moral obligation. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, August 4, 2011
Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, August 1, 2011
Life is a Tragedy Filled With Joy
Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, August 9, 2011
Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, August 11, 2011

Food Poetry: Bread, by Linda Pastan

Published by Christina-Daub + Friday, June 10, 2011 Permalink 0

after Levchev

“It seems to be the five stages
of yeast, not grief,
you like to write about,”
my son says,
meaning that bread
is always rising
and falling, being broken
and eaten, in my poems.

And though he is only half serious,
I want to say to him
“bread rising in the bowl
is like breath rising in the body;”
or “if you knead the dough
with perfect tenderness,
it is like gently kneading flesh
when you make love.”
Baguette . . . pita . . . pane . . .
Challah . . . naan: bread is
the universal language, translatable
on the famished tongue.

Now it is time to open
the package of yeast
and moisten it with water,
watching for its fizz,
its blind energy–proofing
it’s called, the animate proof
of life. Everything
is ready: salt, flour, oil.
Breadcrumbs are what lead
the children home.

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