Sunday 16 March 2008

there's a line?


I haven't always been roomates with Spanky. I once had this roomie, who will will call the Bellybutton Worshiper, or BbW for short. I used to cook for BbW, who used to make little noises when she ate my food. These noises were not unlike the noises that one makes during sex. One day, a friend of ours said "BbW blurs the line between food and sex." to which BbW replied "There's a line?". And the more years I have of cooking and eating (and having sex), the more I think that BbW is right. Food is about senses. Not just taste, but smell and touch. And feeding people is associated so strongly with caring for them, and wanting to give them pleasure, and wanting to watch them enjoy using their senses. Sometimes food is beautiful, refined, and careful. Sometimes it's messy and wanton. Sometimes it's rich, like my truffle oil chocolate truffles. Sometimes it's fresh like collard rolls with chili sauce. And then there are the household pervertables. But I digress. The point is, I love food. I love making it and eating it and feeding it to others. I love using all my senses to cook and eat. I love making a mess. I love the way people's faces light up when you present them with good food made just for them, and I love it when my dinner guests take a bite of something, sigh, roll their eyes and look oh-so-pleased with the world. And I think that has a lot with me being vegan. Not with why I went vegan, but rather, with why I find it easy and just generally wonderful to actually be vegan on a dinner-to-dinner basis. I love food and pleasure far too much to associate them with death or torture or exploitation or guilt... Though sometimes, like tonight, masochism is fun. Very very spicy soup (ginger, garlic and onions grated up together, quite a few chilies, lime zest, lime juice, soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, aniseed, black pepper, mushroom broth, teeming hoards of mushrooms, spinach, coriander and tomatoes, and my first attempt at homemade soba noodles...which need some work) in my new exciting bowls, which feel wonderful in my hands.

music: the girl from ipanema came walking. but i danced.

1 comment:

medici said...

god yes! i mean god no!! i mean yes there's no line!!! at least not for me. not even the girl from ipanema could have put into words the sensual glories of eating and cooking beautiful vegan food with and for friends better than you just did in your post.