A Literary Culinary Journal
This is another low-fat, high-fiber meal that fits perfectly in to any weight loss plan. All these ingredients are available as of late April in Switzerland.
|
|
I love this article from Cracked about nine foreign words we really need to incorporate into English. Here is an excerpt of one of my favorites:
Means:
To eat past the point of being full just because the food tastes good.
Here is a word that describes such a quintessentially American phenomenon it’s shocking that another culture came up with it first. After all, there are entire civilizations that have never heard of “never-ending pasta bowls” or “dessert pizzas.” Fortunately, the Georgians (the European Georgians, that is) devised a word to describe it exactly. “Shemomedjamo” is the act of eating to the point where your body says, “OK, we did it! We’re all done now,” and then muscling through another three steaks.
The literal translation for shemomedjamo is “I accidentally ate the whole thing,” which is a charming way of saying “Oh my God, why isn’t somebody stopping me?!”
|
|
by Renu Chhabra
“When you’re green inside, you’re clean inside.” – Dr. Bernard Jensen
Today it’s all about green goodness in our diet. Yes, I mean green vegetables. We all know they are good for us, but why do some of us ignore them? Maybe, we just don’t like their taste, or they sound like diet food. In that case, we should try making them different ways than we usually do — something out of the box. Give them a new twist and explore a little. Who knows, they may surprise us.
Speaking of green vegetables, broccoli comes to my mind instantly. Its health benefits are several. But I know, it’s not an exciting vegetable for many of us. We have memories of eating bland steamed broccoli that we wished we could throw under the table. At times, it was topped with some plastic-like yellow cheese to make it more enticing. Even then it wasn’t very appealing. Since Mom insisted it was good for us, there wasn’t anyway to escape it except to wolf it down as fast as possible and forget about it until next time it showed up at the dinner table, staring at us.
|
|
One of the advantages of cooking for others is that no matter how those you are cooking for might attempt to intervene in the process, offer advice, snoop on your activities & etc., in most cases they lack the expertise, aptitude, patience and experience to take your place in front of the stove. However much those individuals might seek to run mind games on you because you are, in a sense, doing some work that they might have helped finance, in the very short term their relation to you is one of dependence.
The people you’re feeding, typically family members, will almost always be hungrier than you. And they will lack your access to sharp knives and convenient missiles (fruits and vegetables, for example) needed to drive them off.
This power relationship can be reversed in the case of your relationship to kitchen appliances. Remember: those things were designed by engineers and programmers who themselves were oppressed by doltish marketing managers and senior executives. The engineers’ goals and values might have led them to seek the most efficient and graceful designs.
To you, a lovely kitchen stove; to the engineers who designed it,
a purgatory they’re enduring until they can design rocket ships and race cars.
|
|
by Jonell Galloway
Alessandro Guerani‘s food photography approaches true art.
Photo courtesy of Alessandro Guerani.
Food is not, after all, only a story of taste. It is about texture and how it feels in your mouth. It is about whether it looks appetizing, how it is presented on the plate. It is about the smells coming from the kitchen, gently seducing you to the table, and the taste you have while it’s in your mouth and the aftertaste that lingers. It can even be about sound, for example, when the alcohol goes up in flames as they flambé your crêpes Suzette.
Guerani manages to bring all the senses together in a single photograph, even though the smells, texture and other senses are not concretely present. It remains, after all, a photograph, but a photograph like none other, because though visually beautiful, it takes you beyond the confines of visual.
Take a look and let us know what you think.
You can see more of Alessandro’s photos on his website, Fotografia.
|
|
by Jonell Galloway
This article was published earlier. We’re reprinting it to complement Guerani’s food photography exhibit, to be published today
I spend a lot of my life looking at food.
I look at the fruit and vegetables so beautifully and carefully stacked in the market stalls, forming masses of color and myriads of shapes. I look at the “masterpieces” of the great chefs who take so much care to artfully arrange the food on the plates so that it is as visually tempting as it is appetizing.
Without much success, I try my hand at photographing these beauties for my MarketDay and restaurant posts, but I never get it right. And when I develop recipes, I make the most embarrassingly amateur photos of what actually does taste good in the mouth, despite the lifeless-looking photo with its hit-or-miss compositions.
My point is that food photography is not as easy as it might seem. Like any photography or art form, you need the right lighting, composition and contrasts of colors. And above all, you need talent and a good, trained eye.
In my case, I often make everyone at the table wait to start eating while I try and get it just right, because I simply lack the true artistic talent and technical skills that it requires. That might partially be explained by the fact that I ran away from the classroom at the Cordon Bleu every time we had to arrange flowers, set tables, and do presentations, so what should I expect?
I look at food blogs and food photography, and no matter how much I look, my favorite photographer never seems to change. I think the secret of Alessandro Guerani’s success as a food photographer is that he is also a cook. He develops recipes and thinks with his taste buds, just like me, but he has the added gift of being capable of capturing visual beauty and essence, in the manner of the Flemish and Italian masters.
Food is not, after all, only a story of taste. It is about texture and how it feels in your mouth. It is about whether it looks appetizing, how it is presented on the plate. It is about the smells coming from the kitchen, gently seducing you to the table, and the taste you have while it’s in your mouth and the aftertaste that lingers. It can even be about sound, for example, when the alcohol goes up in flames as they flambé your crêpes Suzette.
The enjoyment of food is a coming together of all the senses, and when all the senses are happy and content, you come away from the table satisfied.
Alessandro Guerani was born in Bologna, Italy, in 1969, where he still lives. He started using cameras at the age of twenty while studying Medieval and Renaissance art history.
After college, Alessandro worked as an intern in a professional photography studio, and that’s where it all seems to have come together. Afterward, it was clear to him that food and still life photography were his calling.
But the underlying secret of Alessandro’s success is not as simple as that. He obviously has an exceptional visual sense and the technical skills required to turn this into art, but he also loves good food, especially traditional Italian cuisine, with its multitude of flavors and combinations. As a result, he knows how to make all the senses come alive in a seemingly simple photograph.
Guerani is a master of lighting, and is meticulous about every visual detail. His photos are full of color and contrast, making them rich and full of depth. They sometimes verge on the Medieval, and at other times, on the Renaissance or the Baroque. At still other times, they are spartan and ultra-contemporary, but they are always beautiful. And they always make my mouth water and my eye twinkle.
But above all, they are more than food photography. They are art. Slide-showing through his photos on my large-screen iMac truly makes feel like I’m walking through an art gallery. In the photos above, the vegetables, carrots and artichokes are worthy of a Chardin; the silver filigree platter with apricots is as rich in tone, texture and contrast as the great Italian Renaissance painters; the intermingling of the blue and white tones in the third photograph, so beautifully composed, bring back memories of blue Delft, French faience, and luxurious Italian country linen tablecloths. The knife handle is pointed toward the viewer, inviting the viewer to pick it up and take a taste.
True art is when all the criteria come together in a perfect balance. Guerani not only captures the image of the object he is photographing. He understands the very essence of its beauty and calls on every sense, thus making it much more than a simple picture on your run-of-the-mill food blog.
You can see more of Alessandro’s photos, as well as his recipes, on FotoGrafia, and a Baroque-like photo of pomegranates in What is Mindful Eating?
|
|
by Dominic Cheung
Translated into English by Karl Zhang
张错: 茶的情诗 Love Lyrics of Tea
1
如果我是开水 If I were boiling water
你是茶叶 And you were tea leaves,
那么你的香郁 Then all your fragrance would depend
必须倚赖我的无味 Upon my lack of taste.
2
让你的干枯柔柔的 As your shriveling
在我里面展开，舒散；Loosened within me and unfolded;
让我的浸润 My moisture and lubrication
舒展你的容颜。Would smooth the wrinkles from your face.
3
我们必须热，甚至沸 We would need to be hot, even boiling
彼此才能相溶。To dissolve inside each other.
4
我们必须隐藏 We would need to hide
在水里相觑，相缠 Face to face under water, twisting and twining,
盏茶功夫 In a moment of tea
我俩才决定成一种颜色。Before we decided, which color to become.
5
无论你怎样浮沉 No matter how long you might float and swirl
把持不定 Unstable
你终将缓缓的 Eventually you would
(噢，轻轻的) (Oh, gently)
落下，攒聚 Sink down
在我最深处。To assemble in my depths.
6
那时候 In that moment
你最苦的一滴泪 Your bitterest teardrop
将是我最甘美的 Would become my sweetest
口茶。 Mouthful of tea.
|
|
Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, April 3, 2012
by Simón de Swaan
I grow my own tomatoes every summer for the same reason I diet: it makes me feel righteous!–Bert Greene
Bert Greene was a cookbook author and food columnist. His food column for the New York Daily News ran from 1979 until his death in 1988, and was eventually syndicated.
|
|
by Jonell Galloway
Reprint of our most popular article
The 1965 Slumber Party Barbie came with her very own How to Lose Weight book. The main message was “don’t eat.” Along with this book came a bathroom scale always set at 110 pounds/49.9 kilograms, says Teen Beauty Tips. According to Malisa Morsman, “Barbie is the plastic equivalent of a 5-foot, 9-inch (1.75 m) woman with a 36-inch (91.5 cm) bust, 33-inch (83.8 cm) hips, and an impossibly small 18-inch waist (45.7 cm).”
|
|
Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
