food essays

1. Happy June! Are you ready for the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer? In her charming watercolors, Louisiana artist Amariah Rauscher captures the magic of childhood play. Remember those long summer days when you had the leisure to daydream, look for fairies in the forest, befriend dragons or catch a falling star?

I was first drawn to Amariah’s treehouse pictures, delighted by the prospect of visiting a bakery, candy store, greenhouse, or ice cream shop perched high atop the branches. Of course there are lots of adorable animal friends to keep you company and share in the fun.

Amariah is the illustrator of the Princess Truly book series written by Kelly Greenawalt and published by Scholastic. She has a Masters in Communication but prefers spending her time painting pictures. She also enjoys reading, watching cartoons, playing board and video games and spending time with her two daughters. A peanut butter and jelly fan, she can attest to the joys of wearing slippery socks in order to slide into every room of her house.

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#5 in an eclectic collection of notable noshes to whet your appetite and brighten your day.

The one absolutely essential requirement for the art of cooking is a love for its raw materials: the shape and feel of eggs, the sniff of flour, or mint, or garlic, the marvelous form and shimmer of a mackerel, the marbled red texture of a cut of beef, the pale green translucence of fresh lettuce, the concentric ellipses of a sliced onion, and the weight, warmth, and resilience of flour-dusted dough under your fingers. The spiritual attitude of the cook will be all the more enriched if there is a familiarity with barns and vineyards, fishing wharves and dairies, orchards and kitchen gardens.

~ from the food essay, “Murder in the Kitchen,” by Alan Watts, first published in Playboy Magazine (1969), included in DOES IT MATTER?: ESSAYS ON MAN’S RELATIONSHIP TO MATERIALITY (New World Library, 2007).

♥ Read Jaime O’Neill’s article, “For the Love of Food,” to learn more about “Murder in the Kitchen” and its relevance today.

♥ Longer excerpt from the essay here.

♥ Big thanks to Jinx Stapleton Watson for sharing the excerpt!

♥ More Tasty Tidbits here.

Watts was a British philosopher, editor, writer and lecturer most widely known for his teachings on Eastern philosophy. He was also a sensualist who enjoyed cooking for the likes of Timothy Leary on his houseboat in Sausalito.