I'm having dinner now, a sticky-rice dish with carrots and seasoning bolstered by a pair of mild sausages, a dish I'd describe as a "half and halfer."
Half good for you and half deadly.
Man, when you come as close to dying as I did the other day (see below) you really begin to reflect on things--on mortality, I guess.
Well, you do up to a point. I am after all eating the mild Italian sausage for the second time this week.
Wow, is it tasty! I must be savoring its fattening juices.
Mentioning food reminds me of a wish I have for the coming months. Tacoma writer, chef and teacher Mike Huffman has written a wonderful slim volume of essays about food and drink (and its other-worldly effects on the soul) that I'd give my right arm to publish.
(Not really of course; who wants to lose a limb? Not even an amputee, I say. Had that train hit me I'd have lost more than one I venture.)
Think of the best food essayists you've ever read. What they do is write about food as a complement to the important stuff in life. Good travel writers do something similar, and Huffman includes a bit of interesting travel in his work as well.
Huffman's essays are only peripherally concerned with food in the telling of stories. They're really about his pursuit of food and the instances wherein that pursuit creates complexity, revelation, and a well-reasoned perspective on life's inevitable chaos.
Life becomes the focus of a tale as he scarfs down an excellent meal of his own making and binges on drink.
Hungry late, he craves Taco Bell. Some of his friends scorn his fast food habit. He is up late for a reason, and that is the story in itself. Beyond that, he loves Taco Bell, and this is his story.
Hungry in South America, his eyes roam to the table of a beautiful woman. Hunger has a complexity of meaning here, becoming a metaphor for something else.
He celebrates a birthday with friends in a day-long, mad-dash, cross-town pursuit of the best cured meats in his community. The pursuit begins, pauses, and ends in a string of bars where good whiskey flows.
Eating and drinking are celebrated with counterpoints of pathos and longing, of mistakes revealed and out-and-out personal disasters averted, remembered and lamented.
Food is merely the conduit in such stylish writing, the jumping-off point.
From the platter-setting in front of the hungry reader, life happens and Huffman's stories unfold with a sure-handed telling.
I'd give both arms to publish Huffman.
TS
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