I love a good crime novel. Whether it be the detailed recounting of the evidence that leads Sherlock Holmes to his identification of the villain; the list of suspects in an Agatha Christie novel who all have a motive for committing the crime or the dark criminal underbelly of John Rebus’s Edinburgh in Ian Rankin’s contemporary fiction, crime novels have been a staple of my reading since my teenage years. Continue reading “Food and the crime novel”
Category: 20th century literature
Food and Identity
In my last post I wrote about the fried food eaten at the Jewish festival of Hannukah; the food laws and various culinary traditions of Judaism provide a key way in which Jews signal their identity to the wider world.
But you don’t have to follow strict food rules and practices to tell people who you are via the food you eat. Like the clothes we wear and the music we listen to, the food we eat sends out clear signals about our identity. Continue reading “Food and Identity”
Force feeding
‘Gordon,’ she said, ‘a cake.’
He shook his head and said softly, as if soothing her, ‘Oh, no, no.’
‘Yes, Gordon. It is full of goodness.’ And she made him eat a Chester cake…
(Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
If you’re anything like me, then the idea of being ‘forced’ to eat cake – with the justification that ‘it is full of goodness’- is a very appealing one! In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that is exactly what happens. Continue reading “Force feeding”
Picnic food
For mother’s picnics were planned on a tribal scale, with huge preparations beforehand… There were sliced cucumbers and pots of paste, radishes, pepper and salt, cakes and buns and macaroons, soup-plates of bread and butter, jam, treacle, jugs of milk, and several fresh-made jellies.
(Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie)
I do love a picnic. Whilst the vagaries of the English weather can make picnics a hit and miss affair, I still enjoy them. Continue reading “Picnic food”