IT’S ALMOST ST. PATRICK’S DAY, SO IT IS TIME FOR ME, AGAIN, TO OFFER YOU THIS GUINNESS STOUT CHOCOLATE LAYER CAKE. IF YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR AN IRISH-ISH DESSERT THAT IS A KNOCK-YOUR-SOCKS-OFF WOW, THIS MAY IS IT. IT IS (SHE SAID MODESTLY), ONE OF THE THREE BEST CHOCOLATE DESSERTS I EVER CAME UP WITH, IN A LIFETIME OF DEVELOPING… Read More
How we feed our hungers and what we feed them with, is rooted in every part of human life.
History, agriculture, environment; ethnicity, class; community and family, celebration and famine, health and disease, religion and ritual, ethics and economics, migration and science: look to food and you’ll find these and countless other connections between what we eat and who we are.
Look to Deep Feast, and you’ll find provocative discussion about this. Almost anything could be on the table we’ll share here.
Does Deep Feast contain recipes? Sure, you’ll find some here. What about ooh-and-ahh photographs of, say, pear-cherry upside-down cake, or illustrated pictorials of step-by-step how-tos, like, say, how to make, and put up, green tomato mincemeat? Sure, you’ll find some of that here, too.
But there are good recipes and gorgeous photographs on many, many other food and cooking blogs (indeed, we explore, and link to, some of them here).
Deep Feast, though, is “writing the world through food.”
Deep Feast’s food writing includes, but transcends, the recipe.
In every bite we eat — whether it’s a wedge of skillet-sizzled buttermilk cornbread with beans and a green onion on the side, a Big Mac, or local artisanal sheep’s milk cheese on a homemade oatmeal cracker with a crisp Northern Spy apple from your own orchard — we take in not just (hopefully) nourishment and pleasure, but connection with our world.
In every bite we eat, we sign, over and over, a usually unrecognized contract. That contract inheres in inhabiting a body on earth: you eat, and are, eventually, eaten. Ashes or flesh and bones return to that same earth, to become sustenance for other creatures who will also, in their turn, eat and be eaten.
In every bite we eat, we confirm the story of life: both an individual life and life itself. This story is told over and over again. Meal by meal, bite by bite, plate by plate. This story is always particular and universal. This story is many stories — some of which we explore in Deep Feast.
For this is where the narrative of humanity begins: food, shelter, and story. Our forbears killed the mammoths (food), dragged them back to the cave (shelter), and then painted what they had done on the ceiling (story).
It’s this last act that makes us human. All other animals, after all, also seek food and shelter. But we Homo sapiens also feel that third component, and with deep urgency: to narrate, whether through art, oral storytelling, or writing, what happened to us. To explore why; to discover who we are. In this exploration, though we may serve food, food serves us, and serves us generously.
We need the arc of beginning, middle, and end, because, as human beings, we are aware that we had a beginning, live (and eat) somewhere in the middle, and will meet an end. Because we are aware of our mortality, we are, as anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport wrote, “meaning-making animals.”
Let’s make meaning together.
Let’s make dinner. Let's talk, as we gather around a table as big as the world.
Let’s celebrate, together, the Deep Feast: life itself, the whole world, bite by bite.
It’s your lucky day
To jump straight to the featured recipes, use these links: Spicy-Smoky East-West Black-Eyed Peas Brazilian-Style Collard Green Salad Extra-Moist Cheese-Black Pepper Cornbread Ronni’s Southern-Style Gluten-Free Cornbread Four-Citrus Pico de Gallo Golden Orange-Pecan Cake with a Citrus Glaze Otherwise, stay put on this page and join me for an exploration of easygoing New Years entertaining and how and why certain foods… Read More
AN ABUNDANCE OF RECIPES FOR FALL
This, harvest-time, is my favorite time of year to go to the farmer’s market and garden-stands. It’s a cornucopia! Now, harvesting technically begins in spring, when the first asparagus tips poke up boldly through the still-cold soil. And harvesting goes wild in the summer, when cukes and zukes overwhelm us with their fecundity, when the okra, its pods pointing happily… Read More
COOL HAND CUKE: CD’S CUCUMBER & GREEN GRAPE SOUP WITH FRESH MINT
THE ONLY SUMMER SOUP RECIPE YOU WILL EVER NEED. FORGET GAZPACHO. SAVE YOUR GORGEOUS SUMMER-RIPE TOMATOES FOR SOMETHING ELSE. BECAUSE, FRANKLY, THIS LEAVES GAZPACHO IN THE DUST. To jump directly to recipe, click here. Deniers gonna deny, which the rest of us are pretty clear on (extreme weather events, such as record-smashing heat caused by human-made climate change). But regardless… Read More
YOU’RE INVITED: A NEW YEARS DAY PARTY PLAN B (AS IN BLACK-EYED PEAS)
In the years since I have been an adult, I have hosted a New Year’s Day open house, in the late afternoon on the first day of the new year, probably once every three or four years. What I served at the first one, back when I was nineteen and had just moved to the small Ozarks boho Victorian arts… Read More
MY FABULOUS GREEN TOMATO (MEATLESS) MINCEMEAT
MAKE IT NOW, WHILE THE FARMER’S MARKET (OR YOUR OWN GARDEN) IS PROBABLY OVERFLOWING WITH GREEN TOMATOES. ENJOY IT ALL YEAR LONG — STARTING BUT BY NO MEANS ENDING WITH THANKSGIVING. A sweet-savory-spicy combination of fresh and dried fruits and vegetables into a dark, mysterious, delectable conserve. Perfect for pies, but you won't stop there! What should you do… Read More
COMFORT ME WITH APPLES… BUT MAKE THEM *BAKED* APPLES, PLEASE.
THEY COULDN’T LOOK MORE UNPREPOSSESSING. AND THEY COULDN’T BE EASIER. AND THEY COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE MORE DELICIOUS, OR MORE PERFECT FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR. MEET MY MOTHER’S BAKED APPLES. AND, IF YOU HAVE SOMEONE AT YOUR THANKSGIVING TABLE WHO IS GLUTEN- OR GRAIN-FREE, OR AVOIDING ADDED SUGAR, OR VEGAN, BUT YOU STILL WANT THEM TO BE ABLE TO… Read More
COOL IT: BEST-EVER CUCUMBER & GREEN GRAPE SOUP
WHAT? A WEEK OF 90 DEGREE DAYS BEFORE WE EVEN HIT SUMMER SOLSTICE? ARRRRGGGH! OKAY, THAT DOES IT: IT’S EARLY IN THE SEASON FOR ME DO MY ANNUAL POST OF MY BLISSFULLY CHILL CUCUMBER-GREEN GRAPE SOUP RECIPE, BUT, HAVING JUST MADE THE FIRST GALLON OF WHAT WILL BE MANY GALLONS BETWEEN NOW AND FALL… I MUST. IT’S EASY TO MAKE,… Read More
IMPEACH UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE
Given the day (February 10, 2021), and all we were in the middle of, it was always going to be something. Cobbler? Crisp? Pie? No! It was an IMPEACH UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE! To dessert-lovers, a good cake has no down side. Unless, of course, it happens to be an upside-down cake. (Go directly to recipe here.) To those of us who love making… Read More
PERFECT HEIGHT-OF-SUMMER VEGETABLE RECIPES THE-TIME-IS-JUST-RIGHT-FOR: PANDEMIC PANTRY PLEASURES
— a pandemic pantry post — 8 WAYS TO DELIGHT IN SUMMER & FALL’S FRUITS AND VEGETABLES; YES, EVEN (ESPECIALLY) NOW I have been thinking a lot this year about something Annie Dillard wrote: “How we live our days is how we live our lives.” For reasons you know as well as I do, these, the days of 2020, have… Read More
12 PERFECT BEAN RECIPES THE-TIME-IS-JUST-RIGHT-FOR: PANDEMIC PANTRY PLEASURES
— a pandemic pantry post — “BEANS,” SAID A NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER, IN A RECENT TWEET, “ARE HAVING A MOMENT. “ SHE THEN ADDED, “… FOR HORRIBLE REASONS.” THOSE REASONS, OF COURSE, ARE THE CORONAVIRUS, WHICH HAS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF US THINKING ABOUT HOW TO STOCK PANDEMIC-PROOF PANTRIES…AND WHAT TO DO WITH THE INGREDIENTS WE’VE STOCKED. I BRING… Read More
NIX THE GREEN BOTTLE: IRISH CUISINE & HISTORY DESERVE MORE THAN FOOD COLORING
THIS ST PATRICK’S DAY, DITCH ANYTHING INVOLVING GREEN FOOD COLORING. INSTEAD, CONSIDER THE POTATO, AND ITS BITTER AND SUSTAINING ROLE IN IRISH LIFE, ESPECIALLY IRISH-AMERICAN LIFE. THEN, HAVE SOME REALLY SUPERB IRISH POTATO-CHEESE SOUP. I HAVE TWO DELICIOUS VERSIONS FOR YOU, TRADITIONAL AND VEGAN. Jump here to go directly to the recipe for Traditional Potato-Cheese Soup with Red Ale. Jump… Read More