I like to be creative with food, and enjoy learning about spices, cuisines, and what I can do to manipulate them to please the palate. It is similar to what I do with words, and visual images, playing around with what I know, and what I don’t, to please the senses in some way, or to provoke a reaction.
Food tells a story too, about the people living in their culture. I think of authors who incorporate food into their writing, Laura Esquivel comes to mind, as does Kate Christensen. I wonder why we don’t see more food in the written word; why it seems so absent when it is so integral? Food appears in a lot of art, but why is so much of it missing in literature?
One of the things I realized in my creative life was, what was missing.
It was the combination of food with my writing, and having people over, feeding them, afterwards followed by conversation, writing, and being creative, that made me feel more grounded and happier. I think of other artists who have had salons, like Gertrude Stein, and there is nothing more filling than having people over for meals with libations, words running around the table from mouth to mouth, while satiation takes hold. Now, this is one of my many goals: to create a salon for creatives.
Cheers!