Food in Art has been around since at least the Ancient Romans, who believed the images of fruits painted on tombs became real in the afterlife, thus sending snacks along with the dead. To the glistening tabletop catalogues of the 16th century Dutch, to Cezanne’s tumbling peaches which pointed the way to Cubist interpretations of bread and fruit, no culture has ever tired of painted interpretations of what we eat.
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Everyone cooked in my family, even my brothers. We subscribed to Gourmet Magazine and hungrily read the articles about what people in little French villages were having for supper, and then my mother and I tried to recreate them ourselves.
My academic background is in painting and writing, but I waitressed at Jasper’s and Hammersly’s Bistro in the 1980’s, when dining in Boston was just becoming exciting, and the people in it - waitstaff and kitchen staff - were like a small university of students and faculty. Everyone knew each other, ate in each other’s restaurants, and were aware that dining in Boston had just turned a corner, inspired by youth, global awareness - these were chefs who had traveled to Europe - and new respect for American ingredients. It was a wonderful community of people who cared about all sorts of good food and wines. Because they cared about these arts, they also cared about growing food, preserving space for it to grow, preserving the lifestyles of people who grow it. We were all beginning to understand that caring about what was served on a plate was to care about the bigger picture.
Married, the mother of two daughters, I now live in Rockport, Ma. My daughters cook. Everyone in our house welcomes a new cookbook for the dinner and dessert possibilities it might offer, which really means the possibility of changing our lives just a little, pretending we live in a little French village for a night. Isn’t that what food does, too - a little bit of theater every single day? “What are we having for dinner tonight?” is really the question of “What is the performance tonight? Where are we traveling? Who will we be?”
I write a column called “Food for Thought” for The Gloucester Daily Times. In it and on this blog, I’m always looking for the possibility food offers for transformation and I’m looking for those wonderful communities of all kinds who care about preparing a great dish, setting a beautiful table, drinking a good glass of wine, and then having a great conversation.
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