essayist | The Rambling Epicure

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

— Wendell Berry

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, January 28, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, April 12, 2014 Permalink 0

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.

Alphabet for Gourmets was originally published in Gourmet magazine in 1948.

Read more about her classic T he Art of Eating.

Photo courtesy of Cliff 1066

Wendell Berry on Small-scale Farming in Good Times and Bad

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, October 25, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Quote from Wendell Berry‘s Bringing it to the Table, On Farming and Food, introduction by Michael Pollan

In the time when my memories begin –the late 1930s — people in the country did not go around empty-handed as much as they do now. As I remember them from that time, farm people on the way somewhere characteristically had buckets or kettles or baskets in their hands, sometimes sacks on their shoulders.

Those were hard times — not unusual in our agricultural history — and so a lot of the fetching and carrying had to do with foraging, searching the fields and woods for nature’s free provisions: greens in the spring-time, fruits and berries in the summer, nuts in the fall. There was fishing in warm weather and hunting in cold weather; people did these things for food and for pleasure, not for “sport.” The economies of many households were small and thorough, and people took these season opportunities seriously.