A brief meditation on food.

Our days were elemental, filled with nothing but eating and cooking. A food-oriented existence, asking questions only about taste. Scratch that: asking questions about the experience, wondering about what it’s like to make yogurt, curry, bagels, ginger ale. Fruit cobblers. Tomato soup. Chutney. Whole wheat rolls.

Our days were like menus, unrolling special after special. Variety was the spice of the kitchen, a way to log the passing seasons. Inundated by eggplant. Mangoes a-go-go. The knives were sharpened and the cast-iron in constant use.

The way to our stomachs was through our mouths, past tongues that professed nutrition but chose always taste. We slurped and sampled, becoming ingredient snobs. We accept only the freshest, the shapeliest, the most local. We felt cheated when foods were not in our market, when tastes available to others were denied us.

We had never felt more body, working directly for caloric intake. No salary-middleman. Hours of our lives, sacrificed on the altar of continued existence. How much effort it takes, how much work, to produce one loaf of bread, one pot of soup.

(Check it out: a grad student in England is working her way through one of the classic Mennonite cookbooks. Even though Extending the Table is not exclusively vegetarian, there are enough good recipes to make it enjoyable and recommendable.)