|
|
Recent books by Michael Moss and Mary Roach look, respectively, at the grossest parts of our alimentary processes: The terrible foods we put in our mouths, and what our wonderful, revolting bodies do with them after.
Midway through Catland Empire, the most recent book by Toronto cartoonist Keith Jones, two elemental beings called Mr. Space and Mr. Time create dozens of wieners from the aether for some talking felines: “You will receive further instructions in the form of telepathic communication in a couple minutes. In the meantime, enjoy the hot dogs.” Jones has found himself drawing street meat again lately—all over the walls of the Hot ‘n Dog, a tiny Parkdale takeaway he just bought.
We have become obsessed by food: where it comes from, where to buy it, how to cook it and—most absurdly of all—how to eat it. When did the basic human imperative to feed ourselves mutate into such a multitude of anxieties about provenance, ethics, health, lifestyle and class status?
If you read it closely enough, you might’ve noticed a conspicuous gap in Anthony Bourdain’s bestselling memoir, Kitchen Confidential. At the age of 10, Bourdain describes having his first, epiphanic oyster: “I’d learned something. Viscerally, instinctively, spiritually—even in some small, precursive way,...
In the dead-tree forest of bad cookbooks, Lauren Fortgang of Portland restaurant Le Pigeon picks the dessert books she goes to for inspiration.
|
|
