Since its founding in 2009, The Rambling Epicure has been blessed with the presence of established writers in the field of food. Our focus has always been on good writing and we will continue to publish notable writers who have a reputation in the field.
The Rambling Epicure platform has become a meeting point for all types of food writing. If you are a professional writer in search of good company and have a spectacular piece of writing but no platform, or if you think The Rambling Epicure is the right place for you to publish, feel free to contact us to send it our way.
Student writers often lack serious platforms for publication of their work. The Rambling Epicure will be that platform, focusing on food writing. You can publish right alongside well-known food writers from around the world and grow accustomed to being in the company of writers of like mind.
Focus on a category and let us know where you think you fit when you send in your manuscript.
How to Get Published
The Rambling Epicure platform is a meeting point for all types of food writing. We will regularly publish outstanding writing from student writers. If you have a spectacular piece of writing, feel free to send it our way to info@theramblingepicure.com.
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: 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.
Food blogging is one of the best ways to start food writing, and you can hone your skills as you go. You don’t have to be an experienced writer to start a blog. Your blog can serve as your playground as your writing improves. Blogs get your name out in public. Food bloggers are motivated and they invest a lot of time in their blogs, but many have a goal of eventually publishing their work.
How to Get Published
The Rambling Epicure platform is a meeting point for all types of food writing. We will regularly publish outstanding writing from food bloggers. If you have a spectacular piece of writing, feel free to send it our way to info@theramblingepicure.com.
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 NetherlandsElatia 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 and Wine Tasting Masterclass in Chartres, France
18 – 21 SEPTEMBER 2014
Exploring the Food and Wine of the Beauce and the Loire Valley
with James Flewellen and Jonell Galloway
Through a series of tutored workshops, this 4-day weekend workshop will help unlock your tastebuds and introduce the richness of aromas, flavors and textures present in food and wine. Our exploration is enabled through local food from the Beauce and wine from the Loire Valley and coincides with the Chartres Festival of Lights and the Autumnal Equinox.
For course details click here and to make your reservation click here.
If you like TRE, you’ve seen the site is in transition. And you’ll like the changes being made there. Here’s what’s staying the same: fabulous articles about food, wine and travel, with visuals to match. Here’s what’s going to be different: a new kind of hub for food writers, unlike anything else on the Internet.
Welcome to the archives of the original The Rambling Epicure, edited by Jonell Galloway. You should find all the categories we’ve included in the past in the headings below. Enjoy your read!
Please note that these posts are still available using the Search tab at the top right.
From the Archives: Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, January 28, 2011
Food Writing Prompts
by Simon de Swaan
“A” is for dining Alone… and so am I, if a choice must be made between most I know and myself. This misanthropic attitude is one I am not proud of, but it is firmly there, based on my increasing conviction that sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.–M.F.K. Fisher, An Alphabet for Gourmets
M.F.K. Fisher, born in 1908, is perhaps America’s best-known food essayist. She redefined the way Americans write and talk about food, and is therefore a true reference in American food writing. Gourmet wrote a lovely homage to her in 2008, the 100th anniversary of her birth.
