The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon

I have never understood the allure of food memoirs, but The Supper of the Lamb may have converted me. Capon, an Anglican priest, author and home chef, opens the book with self-deprecating honesty: I am an amateur. If that strikes you as disappointing, consider how much in error you are. Amateur and nonprofessional are not synonyms. The world may or may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the lovers – amateurs – it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes and smells to keep us intrigued for a lifetime. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: it is, far more often than not, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral – it is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness. In such a situation, the amateur – the lover, the man who thinks heedlessness a sin and boredom a heresy – is just the man you need.

He continues: The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presence or absence of the loving eye. 

Hence his emphasis on the importance of slowing down and paying attention to life’s myriad details, including the delights of cooking from scratch. At times he uses a wise grandfatherly tone; at other times he is more like a back-slapping older brother who loves a good joke and a good cigar. Some passages were hilariously funny. He waxes eloquent on the beauty of onions, the necessity of sharp knives and (most memorable of all) the glory that is baking soda.

Capon uses cooking as a metaphor for life. Don’t go for the processed pre-cooked garbage that passes as food because it’s more convenient. The best things in life take time and care, and may even give you heartburn. “Real life” will cost you.

We were given appetites not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great. That is the inconsolable heartburn, the lifelong disquietude of having been made in the image of God. All man’s love is vast and inconvenient. It is tempting, of course, to blunt its edge by caution. It is so much easier not to get involved – to thirst for nothing and no one, to deny that matter matters and, if you have the stomach for it, to make your bed with meanings which cannot break your heart. But that, it seems to me, is neither human nor Divine. If we are to put up with all other inconveniences out of love, then no doubt we must put up with the bother of love itself and not just cut and run for cover when it comes.  

The last 25% of book is recipes, which are a pleasant, but non-essential addition. The main "recipe" is in the first 250 pages and it is on how to live life to the fullest.

 May your eyes be open “to see the bounty of small things.” 

Blessings,

Eating Together as a Basis for Culture - quote from Sean Fitzpatrick

Breaking bread together is a deep sign of cultural togetherness, for it bestows both natural and supernatural nourishment. What’s more, a meal is a ritual. It’s a manifestation of living together in harmony and health—an enactment of human civility and civilization. Food provides a happy occasion for gathering and collective enjoyment, which is one of the pillars of friendship and a healthy culture. As an essentially life-giving activity, the meal is a sacrament of family and friends; it is a sign and a strengthening of the life that flows from those labors of love that bind people together....

Today the idea and ethics of dining are deteriorating into a hurried, harried, pre-packaged affair punctuated by interruptions. The very expression “fast food” is inimical to the most essential reason for meals, which arises not out of speed but out of care, consideration, and conversation. Just as Mass and prayer are not for hastening through, neither are meals. The current tendency, however, is not only to eat in a rush, which prevents the enjoyment of a meal and demeans the dignity of food, but also to eat alone, which diminishes the sense of community. When meals are sacred, the labor and leisure of communities will be sacred—and that sanctity is the basis of culture.

Food for Thought by Sean Fitzpatrick (from Crisis Magazine)

Blessings,

The Magic Apple Tree by Susan Hill

Some books can be devoured in a couple of sittings and others are meant to be savored slowly. The Magic Apple Tree by mystery writer Susan Hill falls into the latter category. In it she recounts a year of living in the English countryside. It was a perfect follow-up to the two Thrush Green books I had just read.

She begins with winter, introducing the tree (The trunk is knobbly and each branch and twig twists and turns back upon itself, like old, arthritic hands), Moon cottage, and her daily routines.

In winter, I often spend all day in the kitchen, it is in winter that I love it best, and it is then that I most enjoy my own particular sort of cooking best, too, for one of the richest pleasures of domestic life is, and has always been, filling the house with the smells of food, of baking breads and cakes, bubbling casseroles and simmering soups, of vegetables fresh from the garden and quickly steamed, of the roasting of meat, of new-ground coffee and pounded spices and chopped herbs, of hot marmalade and jam and jelly.

I am not a gardener, but I enjoyed her anthropomorphic descriptions of plants: I always grow a lot of leeks, those entirely easy-going creatures, pleasing to behold as soldiers in the ground, resistant to all diseases and pests, tolerant of any soil, long-lasting, reliable.

Most French beans are low-growing. But I find them horribly neurotic; they hate the cold, in the air or in the soil, refuse to germinate for the slightest of reasons, then refuse to flower, or crop sparsely, or wilt suddenly, when six inches high, for no discernible reason, or collapse on to the ground after heavy rain.

In the spring section she writes more about her gardening techniques, eschewing all the gardening books by “experts” because of her non-typical garden (high winds, clay soil, etc.) I enjoyed reading how she adapted her expectations to fit her reality. Plenty of good life lessons there.

The cadence of the writing and of the seasons is gentle and soothing. As Hill finds sanctuary, so do we.

Spring so often promises what in the end it never pays, spring can cheat and lie and disappoint. You can sit in the window and wait for spring many a weary day. But I have never been let down by autumn. To me it is always beautiful, always rich, it always gives in heaping measure, and sometimes it can stretch on into November, fading, but so gently, so slowly, like a very old person whose dying is protracted but peacefully, in calmness.

At the end of this day [of berry picking and canning], I am stung, scratched, sore and stained, and the kitchen smells marvelous. There are rows of glowing jars on the dresser shelves, like so many jewels, deep red, orange, burgundy, pale pink, pale green, purple-black. I label them, before carrying them upstairs to the store cupboard.... When I have lined them up, I gaze in deep satisfaction. I feel as if we shall indeed be ‘preserved’ against the ravages of the coming winter, and go off to a long, hot, soothing bath.

A delightful book!

Blessings,

Worthwhile Movie #12 - The Hundred-Foot Journey

Where has this movie been hiding? I had not heard of it before it came up on my suggestion list at Amazon. Still, I wasn't interested at first because Hundred-Foot Journey was made in 2014 and I have trouble with all the gratuitous junk in modern movies. Then I saw that Helen Mirren was in the lead and that it was about food and decided to give it a chance.

The Kadam family left India after violence broke out in their hometown of Mumbai. As they travel through Europe, looking for a new place to live, their car breaks down in a small French town. Papa Kadam decides to buy an abandoned restaurant and settle there. Unfortunately the restaurant is directly in front of a chic French eatery and the owner, Madame Mallory, is not a bit pleased with their invasion.

What follows is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes painful story of the war between the two eating establishments. But it's more than that. It's the story of how a young man realizes his dreams. It's the story of the clash of cultures and how people learn to live together in harmony in spite of them. And it's the story of the poetry of good food.

Helen Mirren is amazing.

If you are used to modern-day action films, this two hour flick may seem to plod at times, but I highly recommend it. Because it has no sex and just a smattering of violence and profanity, you can actually relax and enjoy yourself while watching. It's a great story, well-acted and beautifully filmed.

Eat with Joy by Rachel Marie Stone

A few years ago, when I first saw the word "foodie," I was amazed that anyone would admit to loving to eat. It seemed vaguely sinful. But as I've read other books about how communal eating meets deep human needs, I've been forced to rethink that. (After all, the word "companion" means a person with whom you share bread.)

Food writer Michael Pollan states that even though our nation is the most health-obsessed in the world, we are the least healthy. Eat with Joy: Redeeming God's Gift of Food grabbed my attention because it attempts to find the middle ground between gluttony and compulsive calorie counting.

Stone contends that our obsession with health keeps us from appreciating God's grace expressed to us through food:

Why did God make eating so pleasurable? The biological explanation - food is pleasurable so that we'll eat - is legitimate in its place, but it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't explain Le Cordon Bleu and fine wine, or chocolate for that matter... I suspect and prefer to believe that God made eating sustaining, delicious and pleasurable because God is all those things and more. (p. 24)

But how do we get back to eating as a means of grace? Stone suggests three ways. The first is to eat in community. She points out the most eating disorders are practiced in private. The second way to eat more wisely comes when we eat with gratitude. Thirdly, when we slow down, food takes its proper place. She goes as far as to say that if we grow our own food and cook it from scratch, we'll become just as satisfied with the process as with the eating. (I don't garden, but I do know the satisfaction of home-cooked meals. The more I eat them, the less I enjoy all the "fake" foods that are available in stores and restaurants.)

Lastly, she points out that our emphasis on nutrients and calories robs food of its true purpose, which is to remind us of God's goodness. So a cherry is not a shiny orb of tangy sweetness grown from a beautiful tree blossom, but a five-calorie delivery system for antioxidants, vitamin C, potassium, iron, fiber and magnesium. (p. 138)

My favorite quote from the book: Food is the daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness, ordained for a continual remembrance that the world will always be more delicious than useful. (p. 152)

While I appreciated Stone's insights, I was a little put off by some of the side issues in the book such as food justice. If you want a less technical book on the joys of eating in community, I highly recommend Shauna Niequist's Bread and Wine. (reviewed here)

P.S. I just happened to be reading a food-themed novel and enjoyed this quote that coincides with the ideas in Eat with Joy. The protagonist loved old recipes because they were "less concerned with fat or antioxidants. They were unselfconscious and more concerned with being tasty than being hip. They were food without an identity crisis." (from A Table by the Window, p. 238)

Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist

Although it contains recipes, Bread and Wine is not a recipe book. It is a book about loving people lavishly around your dining room table. At a time when people are becoming increasingly overweight because they are looking to food to fill their need for comfort, you may wonder how anyone can celebrate tables that are groaning under the weight of sumptious food. But there is a fine distinction between overeating and eating well.

Frankly, when we eat to feel comforted, we are bound to get fat because no amount of food can ever satisfy that need. BUT when we sit around a table with loved ones and the meal is incredible, we feel loved and satisfied in two ways: primarily by the people around us and secondarily by the delicious meal.

Niequist explains her book title: Like every Christian, I recognize the two as food and drink, and also, at the very same time, I recognize them as something much greater - mystery and tradition and symbol. Bread is bread, and wine is wine, but bread-and-wine is another thing entirely. The two together are the sacred and the material at once, the heaven and earth, the divine and the daily. This is a collection of essays about family, friendships and the meals that bring us together. It´s about the ways God teaches and nourishes us as we nourish the people around us, and about hunger, both physical and otherwise, and the connections between the two. (p.11)

Modern life has pushed us into faux food and fast food and highly engineered food products cased in sterile packages that we eat in the car or on the subway - as though we were astronauts, as though we can´t be bothered with a meal... But many of us, men and women alike, at a certain point, are wandering back to the kitchen and fumbling and learning and trying to feed ourselves and the people we love, because we sense it´s important and that we may have missed something fundamental along the way. Especially for those of us who make our livings largely in front of computer screens, there´s something extraordinary about getting up from the keyboard and using our hands for something besides typing - for chopping and dicing and coaxing scents and flavors from the raw materials in front of us. There´s something entirely satisfying in a modern, increasingly virtual world about something so elemental - heat, knife, sizzle. (p. 14, 16)

I´m coming to see that the table is about food, and it´s also about time. It´s about showing up in person, a whole and present person, instead of a fragmented person, phone in hand and a to-do list in the other. Put them down, both of them, twin symbols of the modern age, and pick up a knife and fork. The table is where time stops. It´s where we look people in the eye, where we tell the truth about how hard it is, where we make space to listen to the whole story, not the textable sound bite. (p. 257)

Not all the essays are about food. Some are about her struggles with infertility. Others are just about the craziness of life. As a non-drinker I found the free-flowing alcohol at her gatherings to be a bit bewildering, but I withheld my judgement because the primary theme of the book really resonated with me. Sharing our lives around the table is one of the easiest ways to reflect the lavish love of Christ.

Footnote: Babette´s Feast is a Danish film that excellently portrays this "grace upon grace" at the meal table.