I came across this article on the NY Times website (you'll start to wonder if I read anything else these days) and it's really brilliant. I love this author - he's so critical (analytically speaking, although sometimes just critical too), and sharp and witty, and also soundly researched. His book - In Defense of Food (yes that is the correct spelling - Americans and their funny English!) - is wonderful and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
This article is fabulous - inspired, it seems, by the release of Julie/Julia and the reminiscing about Julia Child that seems to have prompted - and there are just so many quote-worthy passages I don't know where to start! Have a read yourself if you have time (it is lengthy...) but in the meantime:
"The BBC supposedly took “The French Chef” off the air because viewers wrote in complaining that Julia Child seemed either drunk or demented."
"But here’s what I don’t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence — along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star — has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking"
"Food shows are the campfires in the deep cable forest, drawing us like hungry wanderers to their flames."
(click the title to this post and it'll take you to the article...)
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