Food Playlist #20: Trick or Treat!
Happy Halloween! In honor of a celebration that, even more than Christmas or Valentine’s Day, is defined by an excess of sugar, this week’s playlist is inevitably all about candy. Commentary […]
Category Archives: Rituals and Customs
Food Music Playlist #17: Birthday Cake
My fifth blogiversary isn’t the only milestone this month–this is also the year I finally become old enough to run for president. To celebrate, this month’s playlist features songs about […]
Manners and modernity in I Capture the Castle
I recently finished I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, a 1949 novel that is littered with scenes of eating. The narrator Cassandra is the middle child of the eccentric Mortmain family: […]
Link Buffet: Trend Alert
If you’ve been watching Master of None–I took a glimpse at one episode but I’m waiting for my television buddy to return–you might like this rundown of all the real-life eating places […]
Kant’s Dinner Party
My familiarity with the work of Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) is mostly centered on Critique of Judgment, in which he explores the roles beauty and aesthetic pleasure play in the life […]
Link Buffet: Globavore Dilemmas
I’ve been teaching a friend how to make a few dishes (which is not at all the same as teaching a date how to cook — I’ve retired from that field). The prep time for […]
The Dinners of Wolf Hall
I’ve been watching Wolf Hall (again!) with a friend who recently picked up the novels. Both the books and the television adaptation are very dense with detail, so there’s always […]
Sound Bites: C.S. Lewis
“Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.”–C.S. Lewis This quote is from Surprised by Joy, an autobiographical account of how Lewis came to embrace theism in general and Christianity […]
Link Buffet: Classics for a reason
In Guernica, Helen Rosner rhapsodizes about the blank beauty of chicken tenders. Nothing is more nothing than a chicken tender. A roast chicken has a certain dinner-party elegance to it, […]
Why Pennsylvania Has State Stores
When I first moved from New Orleans to Philadelphia, I was more than a little stymied by the liquor laws. Coming from the South, I thought I understood bizarre alcohol […]
