We ate well and
cheaply and drank
well and cheaply
and slept well and
warm together and
loved each other
Dinner with Rex (BR, p. 156)
April 2, 2020 at 7:45 pm (Books, Food and Drink)
Tags: Brideshead Revisited, English writers, novel, Paris, reading lists
If I had to spend an evening with him, it should, at any rate, be in my own way. I remember the dinner well — soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in a white wine sauce, a caneton a la presse, a lemon soufflé. At the last minute, fearing that the whole thing was too simple for Rex, I added caviar aux blinis. And for wine I let him give me a bottle of 1906 Montrachet, then at its prime, and, with the duck, a Clos de Beze of 1904.
Living was easy in France then; with the exchange as it was, my allowance went a long way and I did not live frugally.
Cordelia, Sebastian’s Sister (Age: 10)
March 31, 2020 at 1:03 pm (Books, Conversations, Family, Food and Drink, Surprises)
Tags: Brideshead Revisited, England, English writers, humor, novel, reading lists, satire
“You are fond of wine?”
“Very.”
“I wish I were. It is such a bond with other men. At Magdalen I tried to get drunk more than once, but I did not enjoy it. Beer and whisky I find even less appetizing. Events like this afternoon’s are a torment to me in consequence.”
“I like wine,” said Cordelia.
Glass, Cups, Saucers: Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Part 2
March 7, 2020 at 11:14 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Publishers, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Just published, Saturday, short story, University of Hawaii
So fun, being able to participate in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge. Here’s self’s second post on Glass, Cups, Saucers!
She’s sipping tea from the mugs Pat Matsueda sent to all contributors to Ms.Aligned 3.
Self has a story in the forthcoming volume of Ms. Aligned, edited by Rebecca Thomas. Thanks to Lillian Howan for telling her about the opportunity. So proud to be a part of this collection!
Contributors will read at the Hawai’i Book and Music Festival in November 2020!
Stay tuned.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Glass, Cups, Saucers
March 6, 2020 at 6:26 pm (destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Niece, Places, Traveling)
Tags: breakfast, Cee Neuner, Doreen Fernandez, happiness, Makati, memories, Prague, restaurants, reunions, The Philippines
WHAT FUN! Self loves Glass, Cups, and Saucers. Just in general. Thank you, Cee Neuner!
Good morning, Silay! Hometown of Dear Departed Food Writer Doreen G. Fernandez: Self visited in September.
Gamboa House, Silay: September 2019
Hello, Ateneo Classmates! Reunion Dinner
Makati, September 2019
Hello, Prague! At the Globe Bookstore/Coffeeshop. Self was in Prague with her niece, Irene.
May 2019
What a year 2019 was!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
When a Writer Attends a Dinner Party
February 25, 2020 at 4:41 pm (Books, Eavesdropping, Food and Drink, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: English writers, novel, reading lists
I Capture the Castle, p. 115:
I had a queer sort of feeling, watching them all and listening; perhaps it was due to what father had been saying a few minutes before. It suddenly seemed astonishing that people should meet especially to eat together — because food goes into the mouth and talk comes out. And if you watch people eating and talking — really watch them — it is a very peculiar sight: hands so busy, forks going up and down, swallowings, words coming out between mouthfuls, jaws working like mad. The more you look at a dinner party, the odder it seems — all the candlelit faces, hands with dishes coming over shoulders, the owners of the hands moving round quietly taking no part in the laughter and conversation. I pulled my mind off the dinner table and stared into the dimness beyond, and then I gradually saw the servants as real people, watching us, whispering instructions to each other, exchanging glances.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday Photo Challenge: ACTION
February 12, 2020 at 11:39 pm (Food and Drink, fpj-photo-challenge, Links, Lists, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: California, elections, farmers markets, fast food, London, Manila, politics, restaurants
There’s always plenty of action around us, so your challenge is to share some of your best captures of that action with all your blogging friends.
Ever since self’s Nikon Coolpix stopped working, she hasn’t taken as many pictures. Taking pictures with her Android is such a bear! Nevertheless, she did manage to take some action pictures:
- Top Picture: San Mateo Farmers Market, the Yang Gang, January 2020
- Middle Picture: On the street in front of Ottolenghi in Spitalfields, East London, Nov 2019
- Bottom Picture: Jollibee Hamburger, a little past midnight, Manila, September 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Still Poetry Thursday: Talvikki Ansel
January 23, 2020 at 3:33 pm (Books, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: poetry
Eating, from the collection My Shining Archipelago (1996 Yale Series of Younger Poets)
They fed us soft-boiled eggs, six
in a basket covered in a dishcloth. Our mother
with one swift crunch could slice off the tops.
Ralston, grits, cornmeal mush; steel-cut
oats, cooked for a night on the back
of the stove; split-pea soup, heaving
and gumming in the iron pot; cole slaw:
cabbage shredded, peppered and tossed
in mayonnaise; and someone in the kitchen
gnawing on the cabbage stub (for years
I thought it was “costs low”); cod and potatoes,
the fishy-smelling box with the sliding lid
that we all wanted, and the cod soaking
in a bowl, a chunk of dirty snow; the pot
of minestrone our father dropped
coming into the dining room, spectacular,
noodles everywhere, the dog ecstatic, and us
staring down at our placemats not
daring to laugh. And kale, kale
that stayed green and bitter until November,
leaves frosty when we snapped them from
the woody stems. Our mother splitting pods
of cardamom on Sundays and baking
pulla; rowing with our father to an
island where we waded in the chill salt,
pried mussels and periwinkles
from dark rocks, and steamed them in weeds
on a smoking driftwood fire, but that
was long ago, when we crouched
on the beach, sharpening rose twigs
and digging out the meat.
Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory: Stories, p. 4
January 20, 2020 at 2:28 pm (Books, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections)
Tags: discoveries, humor, Mondays, reading lists
Perhaps every can of cashews has a fake snake lurking, but you keep opening them, stupidly, because in your heart of hearts you still believe in cashews. And every time you discover the cruel fiction of the cashew can, you swear to yourself you’ll trust a little less next time, you’ll be a little less open, a little more hard. It’s not worth it, you say. It just isn’t worth it. You’re smarter than all that. From now on, you’re going to be smarter. Well, I’m here to tell you that this time will be different, even though I have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Open this can and everything will be okay. The salted circus cashews are waiting. They are so savory and delicious.
Anthropology of Food: Doreen G. Fernandez
January 8, 2020 at 4:05 am (Books, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: essays, Filipino food, memories, New Mexico, teaching, The Philippines
Doreen G. Fernandez was self’s Freshman English professor at the Ateneo de Manila University. Her greatness was in her writing. She wrote beautifully about her subject: Philippine food, and its long history.
Recently, self began re-reading her book Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture (Anvil Publishing, Philippines, 1994)
Her Process:
My teachers are all those who give me information about food: market vendors, street sellers, cooks, chefs, waiters, restaurant and carinderia owners, farmers, tricycle drivers, gardeners, fishermen, aficionados, nutritionists, readers of my columns, friends, food critics and historians, fellow researchers, authors of books (and cookbooks), writers of columns, food anthropologists — everyone who eats and cares.
— Doreen G. Fernandez, 13 June 1994
For self, the biggest, most interesting stop in her very brief late December visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico was the Farmer’s Market. It was bitter cold, snow lined the tracks of the railyard just adjacent, and inside a vast warehouse were smells, the indescribable smells of chili, pine, roasted coffee. Oh, heaven.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
