Archive for December, 2008

A Little on the Side

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

 No matter how good the entree is, the entire dinner falls apart if the side dishes don’t add up.”
- Anne Braly, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Buenos Aires - Just the roundup on this week’s classes - our Color Palate of Italy session 5 came off without a hitch and with a quartet of i contorni, or [...]

Jesus Never Ate a Latke

Monday, December 29th, 2008

 The reason for serving latkes on Hanukkah is to commemorate the miracle of the oil, in which a tiny bit of pure olive oil needed to kindle the Eternal Light in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem lasted for eight days. No potatoes were involved in the extraordinary event, of course, because potatoes come from the [...]

The Chronicles of Shawarma: Book III

Friday, December 26th, 2008

 He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight - and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food.”
- C.S. Lewis, author, from The Lion, The Witch, and [...]

Fish ‘n Grains

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

 Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows, precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled on diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a (flood) of tiny seed-pearls. It [...]

Earth Mom, Roman Style

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

 OPA’LIA, a Roman festival in honour of Opis,a which was celebrated on the 14th day before the Calends of January (Dec. 19th), being the third day of the Saturnalia, which was also originally celebrated on the same day, when only one day was devoted to the latter festival. It was believed that Opis was the [...]

The Chronicles of Shawarma: Book II

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

 A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey.”
- Deuteronomy 8:8
Buenos Aires - Notice, no mention of shawarma. I’m pretty certain it doesn’t come up in either the old or new testament, nor in the koran. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain. [...]

Fort Apache

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

 Fort Apache is not actually the real name of the isolated ghetto that lies four miles to the north of the centre of Buenos Aires. A journalist first coined the phrase after a shoot-out in front of the local police station in the early 1980s and it has stuck ever since. Most of the 30,000 [...]

When the Moon Hits the Sky…

Friday, December 19th, 2008

 …a man that can’t quickly throw together a meal is always going to be dependent on someone else to feed him, be that his wife, girlfriend, or McDonald’s. Dependency is not an admirable trait in a man. You don’t want to be the guy that has to turn to frozen pizzas just because your finer [...]