Wedding reading: food and wine?

September 15, 2018 4:50 PM

Are there any passages from a piece of writing about food or wine which you would read at a wedding? Food- or wine-centred fiction also acceptable.

My sister and her fiancé are both lovers of food and wine. They've asked me to do a reading at their wedding; I asked "what"? and they were like, *shrug*. I know that great food and wine writing exists, and there are sure to be passages that draw wedding-appropriate parallels with love or relationships; but I am far from well-read in this field. Fellow MeFites, hit me up with your ideas?

posted by Pallas Athena to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

This was read at a friend’s wedding. I thought it was beautiful and apt.

Commitment has kind eyes. He wears sturdy shoes.
Everything is vivid when he is around. It is wonderful to sit
and have lunch in his gardens around harvest time. You
can taste in the vegetables that the soil has been cared for.
--J. Ruth Gendler
posted by annaramma at 5:17 PM on September 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

This Is Just To Say
William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
posted by lovemylabs at 7:17 PM on September 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

The Rubyait of Omar Khayyam, verse XII:

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
FitzGerald's first edition (1859)

A book, a woman, and a flask of wine:
The three make heaven for me; it may be thine
Is some sour place of singing cold and bare —
But then, I never said thy heaven was mine.
As translated by Richard Le Gallienne (1897)

Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf of bread, and a little idleness. If with such store I might sit by thy dear side in some lonely place, I should deem myself happier than a king in his kingdom.
As translated by Justin McCarthy (1888).
posted by emyd at 7:57 PM on September 15, 2018

My grandmother had an interesting theory. Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul.

-- Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
posted by Mchelly at 9:45 PM on September 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

A friend asked me to read this at her wedding, and it was a big hit (both she and spouse work in food).

Primitive

I have heard about the civilized,
the marriages run on talk, elegant and
honest, rational. But you and I are
savages. You come in with a bag,
hold it out to me in silence.
I know Moo Shu Pork when I smell it
and understand the message: I have
pleased you greatly last night. We sit
quietly, side by side, to eat,
the long pancakes dangling and spilling,
fragrant sauce dripping out,
and glance at each other askance, wordless,
the corners of our eyes clear as spear points
laid along the sill to show
a friend sits with a friend here.

Sharon Olds
posted by momus_window at 9:48 PM on September 15, 2018 [7 favorites]

Pablo Neruda is my go-to for both love poems and food poems--some are an intersection of both, including Sonnet XI.


I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.


I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.


I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,


and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
posted by assenav at 10:11 PM on September 15, 2018 [2 favorites]