Thoughts, ideas and reflections on food. A text with some good opinions and meditations on food, the art of eating well and useful links to various resources on the topic.
An anonymous man from the 16th century always used to say: “There are many important things in life, the first is eating, I don’t know the others.” Evidently the food and sexual isotopy seems clearly obvious to me, but perhaps not even that much.
Carl William Brown
A special memory is then obligatory for the great Pellegrino Artusi (1820-1911) who was the author of the famous Italian cookbook “The science of cooking and the art of eating well”. Artusi was born in Forlimpopoli, a town near Forlì, and made his fortune as a silk trader, but after retiring he dedicated himself to fine cuisine. Artusi was the first to include recipes from all the different regions of Italy in a single recipe book. He is often credited with having established a truly national Italian cuisine for the first time. Even today his main literary work has a large number of editions and widespread diffusion. The text collects 790 recipes, from broths to liqueurs, through soups, appetizers (or starters), second courses and desserts. The approach is didactic, the receipts are followed by reflections and anecdotes from the author, who writes with a witty style. The science of cooking and the art of eating well constituted a real borderline in the gastronomic culture of the time.
Carl William Brown
School is made to get a diploma. And the diploma? The diploma is made to get the job. And the place? The place is made to make money. And earn? It is made for eating. Eating cannot be an end in itself, that is, an ideal. Except in those whose aim is drinking.
Giuseppe Prezzolini
If you don’t have the ambition to become a canopy chef, I don’t think it’s necessary to succeed, to be born with a saucepan in your head, all you need is passion, a lot of attention and precise training: then always choose the finest stuff for raw materials, that this will make you look.
Pellegrino Artusi
Roast Beef, medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. Seated at Life’s Dining Table, with the menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d’oeuvres, and the things a la though you know that Roast Beef, medium, is safe and sane, and sure.
Edna Ferber
In a system, as the level of organization of the structure increases, the elements that compose it lose the capacity for individual projects, precisely because they find themselves inserted in an integrated system that moves with other logics. This means that the structure becomes something different than the sum of its individual components. And so all of us poor men are nothing but food for worms.
Carl William Brown
That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbism does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Food is “everyday”- it has to be, or we would not survive for long. But food is never just something to eat. It is something to find or hunt or cultivate first of all; for most of human history we have spent a much longer portion of our lives worrying about food, and plotting, working, and fighting to obtain it, than we have in any other pursuit. As soon as we can count on a food supply (and so take food for granted), and not a moment sooner, we start to civilize ourselves.
Margaret Visser
Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other’s food.
Jean Baudrillard
In a world where even life is worth nothing, it is pathetic to see that there are people who, for profit, still believe and hope in the increasingly cleansing power of a soap or in the shine that a shampoo can give. It so happens that in the face of the benefits promised by anti-cellulite creams or the non-existent taste of disgusting frozen food, even the worst crime becomes an act of healthy and genuine vindictive justice.
Carl William Brown
Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.
Walter Benjamin
We need a quarter of the food we eat to live, the rest is used to fatten industrialists, advertisers, doctors and undertakers. (obviously for those dying of hunger the situation changes.)
Carl William Brown
Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.
Bill Bryson
I love simple food. I like to serve the entire animal, not only because it somehow provokes a customer to think about it, but also because to honor of the animal that has been killed for us to eat, you have to eat the whole thing. It would be silly to just eat the chops and throw everything else away.
Mario Batali
It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it. There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.
Alistair Cooke
In his modest proposal, in order to eliminate the problems of the poor Irish, Swift suggested cooking their children, which in this way, in addition to relieving them of expensive maintenance, would at the same time provide delicious food for the rich. It is obvious that over time and in the event of severe famines, the recipe could also be extended to adolescents and not just Irish ones.
Carl William Brown
Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese…get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Between the desire for food and the lust for power there is a strange isotopy; it’s true that appetite comes with eating, but then at least you get satisfied, whereas those who start chewing on power never get satisfied and in the end inevitably suffer from indigestion, thus spewing out a lot of rubbish and cruelty.
Carl William Brown
Once you become an elaborate and well-developed culture, anything from Rome or the Etruscans, for that matter, the food starts to become a representation of what the culture is. When the food can transcend being just fuel, that’s when you start to see these different permutations.
Mario Batali
Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?
Georg C. Lichtenberg
Hors d’oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one’s childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like – and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d’oeuvres.
Hector Hugh Munro
Television, or rather the “stupid box” as some have defined it, knows very well that whoever endures wins and that is why it persists in its proselytizing work; he practically wants to convert everyone to his verb, to the verb of imbecility. Television knows very well that it has enormous power, to which ordinary man must succumb. For these reasons, the spectator is continually bombarded and therefore conditioned by (Pavlov teaches) a flood of alluring advice, by fantastic or atrocious news, by enormous political and theatrical deceptions, as well as by splendid and bewitching images. Television fulfills his mission perfectly, which is to prepare food for power.
Carl William Brown
Avoid fresh meats, which angry up the blood. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go very light in the vices such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful. Don’t look back. Someone might be gaining on you.
Leroy Satchel Paige
It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions.
St. Francis De Sales
Find out more visiting these links:
Good food for your diet (With Videos)
Vegetarian food diets (With Videos)
Quotes and aphorisms on food
Aforismi e citazioni sul cibo
International and Italian recipes
Enogastronomia e turismo
Italian recipes, fashion and travels
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/easy
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes
http://allrecipes.com/recipes/1947/everyday-cooking/quick-and-easy/
http://www.sjana.com/blogs/lifestyle/food-for-the-soul
Cooking traditions in Lombardy, Italy
