I came across this 2009 story by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, the late Steve Job's illegitimate daughter. There must be food in it somewhere, as it's set in Italy. :-)
A year later, in dance class, after a string of my wilting pirouettes, the dance teacher yelled, “You’re dancing like a vegetarian! Where’s the beef?” I wondered whether the beef eaters danced differently. Did they have more energy, more spirit to keep them straight? I would try to dance as if I had all the advantages. I would turn what I had, I hoped, into strength. My father did that.
He was a more extreme vegetarian than my mother and I, and sharp focused. We experimented, commented, dabbled; he honed and perfected. He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint. He knew the equations that most people didn’t know: things led to their opposites. Most people thought that things led to more of the same, so they took what came, and missed out on larger, more significant gratifications. They ate, drank and reveled. He didn’t, but he reveled later, on a larger, more permanent scale that would not deflate or sour, and that was his alchemy.
I didn’t live with him, but he would stop by our house some days, a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours. One day he spit out a mouthful of soup after hearing it contained butter. With him, one ate a variety of salads.
But once he took me with him on a business trip to Tokyo, where we went to a sushi bar in the basement of the Okura hotel with its high ceilings and low couches, like a Hitchcock set. He ordered great trays of unagi sushi, cooked eel on rice. On one tray the pieces were topped with salt as fine as powdered sugar, but wet, and on the other tray the pieces were coated with a thin, sweet sauce. Both were warm and dissolved in my mouth. He ordered too many pieces, knowing we wouldn’t be able to finish them, but that we didn’t want to feel they would run out. It was the first time I’d felt, with him, so relaxed and content, over those trays of meat; the excess, the permission and warmth after the cold salads, meant a once inaccessible space had opened. He was less rigid with himself, even human under the great ceilings with the little chairs, with the meat, and me.
Francis
www.lisabrennanjobs.net
This one is definitely about food and here's an excerpted interesting observation about Steve Jobs:
www.lisabrennanjobs.net
A year later, in dance class, after a string of my wilting pirouettes, the dance teacher yelled, “You’re dancing like a vegetarian! Where’s the beef?” I wondered whether the beef eaters danced differently. Did they have more energy, more spirit to keep them straight? I would try to dance as if I had all the advantages. I would turn what I had, I hoped, into strength. My father did that.
He was a more extreme vegetarian than my mother and I, and sharp focused. We experimented, commented, dabbled; he honed and perfected. He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint. He knew the equations that most people didn’t know: things led to their opposites. Most people thought that things led to more of the same, so they took what came, and missed out on larger, more significant gratifications. They ate, drank and reveled. He didn’t, but he reveled later, on a larger, more permanent scale that would not deflate or sour, and that was his alchemy.
I didn’t live with him, but he would stop by our house some days, a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours. One day he spit out a mouthful of soup after hearing it contained butter. With him, one ate a variety of salads.
But once he took me with him on a business trip to Tokyo, where we went to a sushi bar in the basement of the Okura hotel with its high ceilings and low couches, like a Hitchcock set. He ordered great trays of unagi sushi, cooked eel on rice. On one tray the pieces were topped with salt as fine as powdered sugar, but wet, and on the other tray the pieces were coated with a thin, sweet sauce. Both were warm and dissolved in my mouth. He ordered too many pieces, knowing we wouldn’t be able to finish them, but that we didn’t want to feel they would run out. It was the first time I’d felt, with him, so relaxed and content, over those trays of meat; the excess, the permission and warmth after the cold salads, meant a once inaccessible space had opened. He was less rigid with himself, even human under the great ceilings with the little chairs, with the meat, and me.