One day I nearly dropped a bowl of oyster stuffing when I read with disbelief and disappointment that the average American family spent only $2.59 a person on Thanksgiving dinner in 1991, down from $.289 the year before, an undeniable sign of the decay of family and national values under two successive Republican administrations.

jeffrey steingarten, the man who ate everything, p.34

The Greeks are really good at both pre-Socratic philosophy and white statues. They have not been good cooks since the fifth century B.C., when Siracusa on Sicily was the gastronomic capital of the world.... The British go to Greece just for the food, which says volumes to me. You would probably think twice before buying an Algerian or Russian television set. I thought for ten years before buying my last Greek meal.

jeffrey steingarten, the man who ate everything, p.6

But the unique position of man in the universe is that he alone is to bless God for the food and the life he receives from Him. He alone is to respond to God's blessing with his blessing.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.2, p.15

Man must eat in order to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table for man. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life. It is the image of life at its creation and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: 'that you eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom.'

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1.1, p.11

'Man is what he eats.' With this statement the German materialistic philosopher Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all 'idealistic' speculations about human nature. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of man. For long before Feuerbach the same definition of man was given by the Bible. In the biblical story of creation man is presented, first of all, as a hungry being, and the whole world as his food.

alexander schmemann, for the life of the world, ch.1, p.11

via stillbeating

via vicerag

Raymond's in his Sunday best,
He's usually up to his chest in oil an' grease.
There's the Martin's walkin' in,
With that mean little freckle-faced kid,
Who broke a window last week.
Sweet Miss Betty likes to sing off key in the pew behind me.

That's what I love about Sunday:
Sing along as the choir sways;
Every verse of Amazin' Grace,
An' then we shake the Preacher's hand.
Go home, into your blue jeans;
Have some chicken an' some baked beans.
Pick a back yard football team,
Not do much of anything:
That's what I love about Sunday.

I stroll to the end of the drive,
Pick up the Sunday Times, grab my coffee cup.
It looks like Sally an' Ron, finally tied the knot,
Well, it's about time.
It's 35 cents off a ground round,
Baby. cut that coupon out!

That's what I love about Sunday:
Cat-napping on the porch swing;
You curled up next to me,
The smell of jasmine wakes us up.
Take a walk down a back road,
Tackle box and a cane pole;
Carve our names in that white oak,
An' steal a kiss as the sun fades,
That's what I love about Sunday,
Oh, yeah.

Ooh, new believers gettin' baptized,
Momma's hands raised up high,
Havin' a Hallelujah good time
A smile on everybody's face.
That's what I love about Sunday,
Oh, yeah.

That's what I love about Sunday,
Oh, yeah.

by Craig Morgan

the first chorus and second verse. that's what's making me homesick right now.

some notes regarding the cooking of pork

1. Father Capon deals not with the humble pork cutlet nor with its preparation in his otherwise magnificent book, Supper of the Lamb. This was revealed to me today, making me feel like I did the first time I realized that I could actually drink the entire Dr. Pepper can. There was, finally, a bottom to my pleasure. 

b.  Pork is wonderful barbecued. Or bbq'd. Or thrown onto a fire, smothered in a deep red sauce that smells like burnt wood and Jack Daniels. Perhaps the Lord didn't want Israel sacrificing pork because He knew it would be too much of a temptation for them not to actually let the pieces burn up on the alter. I doubt that was the actual reason, but I like it anyways. 

iii. If you ever barbecue pork, I recommend the following: Having well basted the meat in sauce, pepper, and salt, lay an apple (make sure it's a tart one - Pink Ladies work well) sideways on the cutting board, so that the stem is sideways. Cut through it, making circular rounds. You want them maybe 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. That way you give moisture to the pork without demanding too much of the poor apple. Cut these rounds in half, and nick out the harder core-esque bits. Drop those bad boys right on top of the pork whilst it chars. When you flip the pork the one time that will be necessary (any more and you're throwing away not only any possibility of being called a grill-master but also the juices the pork and apples try to hard to hoard against the flames) make sure that you put the apples back on top on the cooked side. 2 apples will top about 6 decently sized pieces of pork, or enough for 3 hungry bachelors. 

ad infinitum from berry

from jayber crow, again. 

The sermons, mostly, were preached on the same theme I had heard over and over at The Good Shepherd and Pigeonville: We must lay up treasures in Heaven and not be lured and seduced by this world’s pretty and tasty things that do not last but are like the flower that is cut down. The preachers were always young students from the seminary who wore, you might say, the mantle of power but not the mantle of knowledge. They wouldn’t stay long enough to know where they were, for one thing. Some were wise and some were foolish, but none, so far as Port William knew, was ever old. They seemed to have come from some Never-Never Land where the professionally devout were forever young. They were not going to school to learn where they were, let alone the pleasures and the pains of being there, or what ought to be said there. You couldn’t learn those things in a school. They went to school, apparently to learn to say over and over again, regardless of where they were, what had already been said too often. They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works – although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. 

What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. They had imagined the church, which is an organization, but not the world, which is an order and a mystery. To them, the church did not exist in the world where people earn their living and have their being, but rather in the world where they fear death and Hell, which is not much of a world. To them, the soul was something dark and musty, stuck away for later. In their brief passage through or over it, most of the young preachers knew Port William only as it theoretically was (“lost”) and as it theoretically might be (“saved”). And they wanted us all to do our part to spread the bad news to others who had not heard it – the Catholics, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, and the others – or else they (and maybe we) would go to Hell. I did not believe it. They made me see how cut off I was. Even when I was sitting in the church, I was a man outside. 

In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I didn’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of tress, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.