food = love?

May 15, 2012 7:51 AM

Humorous stories about food, family, & love? Preferably articles that are available on the Internet.

Here's a good example of what I'm looking for, except for the ending, which is a bit darker than I would prefer. I'm reading these to a resident in a nursing home, so am hoping they will be mostly cheerful and humorous.

posted by leedly to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

Kind of hard to read in this format, but here is an excerpt from Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter about her family's lamb roasts.
posted by mattbucher at 8:13 AM on May 15, 2012

I wouldn't call Hamilton cheerful and humorous.

You might want to try Calvin Trillin or Ruth Reichl.
posted by mlle valentine at 8:39 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

They don't appear to be available online, but Christopher Kimball's introductions to each issue of Cook's Illustrated tend to be very sweet and sentimental remembrances about cooking and growing up. Library, perhaps?
posted by jbickers at 8:49 AM on May 15, 2012

The New Yorker's annual Food Issue often has stories like this. This is a good example. The 2007 Issue had a lot of these.

Food and Wine had a good one that I distinctly remember from a while back.

He or she also might like Christopher Kimball's editor's letter at the front of each issue of Cook's Illustrated. I second Ruth Reichl as well.
posted by theuninvitedguest at 8:51 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed this article about an overabundance of pies at Thanksgiving.
posted by hought20 at 8:52 AM on May 15, 2012

MKF Fisher wrote some amazing stories about food. I still remember her story of green peas eaten fresh, cooked over a fire with her new husband at their new house at the top of a mountain in Austria. Her magazine articles used to be available online. I think they were called the A-Z of Eating? Something with the alphabet anyway.

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
posted by hydrobatidae at 9:44 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here they are. Of course the entry for "A" is about eating alone but "F" is about eating with family.
posted by hydrobatidae at 9:50 AM on May 15, 2012

DFW's Consider The Lobster?
posted by mannequito at 11:29 AM on May 15, 2012

You could look at Molly Wizenberg's blog, Orangette. She talks a great deal, and very warmly, about food and family. She's been blogging for a while, so there's a lot to go through, but I'm sure you can fine something. I really loved her book, A Homemade Life.
posted by Aquifer at 5:57 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]