Saturday 20th June - "Food for Thought"

Or rather, read, come to think of it.

Robert Farrar Capon "Food for Thought"

One of my mother's books - she handed it over to me decades ago, and I have read it before. I remembered the tone of the book more than the content. A dense amalgam of food writing, recipes and Christian theology (Amongst other things he was an Episopalian priest, seminary lecturer, a food writer for "The New Yorker".). He is urging simplicity, and freshness, and seasonality, and due reverence for the way food in produced and treated.

Written at a time (1977) when "food" was in a really bad way in the States, and "modern" cooking involved tins and packets and prepared gloops, by the sound of it. We were married in the Autumn of 1977. as students, pot noodles, baked beans, and all kinds of stews in tins were a mainstay, but we tended to cook from fresh. Cheaper, (our food budget was £10 per week), and better tasting than tinned gloops.

[Pause for  memories of home-made scones (we never bought bread) scraggy lamb and broth-mix stew, boiled fruit cake, flake-meal shortbread, left-over chicken cooked with rice and veg. Tinned mushrooms, because fresh ones were had to find. Small tins of Plumrose ham.Fried eggy bread with marmite. Rice pudding.]

The book is heavy going in places, but some lovely, thought-provoking trains of thought on the nature of Grace and the importance of a sacrificial, mindful approach to the way you live.

I've down-loaded his book "The Supper of the Lamb" onto my Kindle to read in a few month's time.