The Literature of Food

We had an early dinner at the Nob Hill Flying Star on New Year's Eve, fabulous bowls of matzo ball soup and a shared slice of falling up cake. The food was, as always, delicious, the soup just what a cold evening needed, the cake a perfect celebration for a year's beginning. But as much as I love Flying Star's food, I may love their magazine rack more. I have always been a magazine addict, and this rack turns me into a slavering junkie. I could spend hours browsing, many more dollars than the budget allows, if I were given my head in this situation. I rarely buy the expensive magazines that are my favorites, literary journals, environmental and political philosophizing, cooking magazines. But, while warming my tummy with bread and soup, I picked up the current issue of a journal (well, bookazine, I see it's called on the website) I've glanced at, longingly, on previous visits: Alimentum; The Literature of Food. This issue, Number 9, had as its centerpiece an interview with Deborah Madison. It cost an astounding ten bucks. I began to read the interview, but it's hard to read while eating soup, and I gave up. But I couldn't leave that unfinished interview, and really wanted to see what the rest of the issue had to offer. I bought the magazine.

After finishing A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book yesterday, I was too entirely exhausted (both intellectually and physically), depleted, devastated and shell-shocked to start reading another book, so I took Alimentum to bed with me. I'm sort of saving the Madison interview for desert, but I read several poems and short stories as appetizers and first course. So far I'm not really impressed by the literary level of the work, but I have a ways to go before a final decision. The website gives only short excerpts of the pieces, which I find irritating. I'd find an entire piece or two a lot more indicative of the work as a whole than these little bits and pieces. The artwork, however, is wonderful. I might subscribe to it for that alone.