Book-fed and Sated

In between our daily tasks I take my time to look to the sky; to memorize the September day-moon in dance with the August-steeped sun.

We harvested a patch of gone-to-seed cilantro today and winnowed the coriander seeds. It was a delightful process that felt childlike and wholesome. The feeling of sinking your fingers into tiny oceans of grain. Watching the wind sweep the chaff away while the seeds chime into the bowl below. Having seeds for next year's cilantro and also the coriander to use as a spice. I love how the earthy aroma lingers on my fingers...

I've been reading a lot this summer as I am known to do. The last two books I devoured were Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Both of these books re-affirmed my love for life (and food) and my conviction that individuals can do what they are meant to do and affect the world in small and wonderful ways.

Reading Timequake is like sitting down to dinner with a good friend (or attending a clambake with a few). Having read so many of his books and being so deeply affected by his humanism, Vonnegut has been a good friend to me as I'm sure he was to many. This particular book was written towards the end of his career and life (he's up in heaven now) and is a semi-autobiographical romp through ten years "re-lived". Heavily doused with Trout-isms and Vonnegut's special brand of humour, at the end of this book I felt happy to be alive.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma you are invited to sit down with Pollan for three meals that he details from corn-field through slaughter-house all the way to the table. I've wanted to read this book ever since I read another of his books, In Defense of Food, back in December. Pollan is a great lover of food and his journalistic research is peppered with personal reflection and musings that make his books both intensely informative and hilarious.

Reading these two books back to back and being so immersed in the cultivation and culture of food has led me to answer the question: If you could have dinner with three people living or dead, who would they be?

Definitely Micheal Pollan and Kurt Vonnegut. For the third, obviously I must choose a woman. Frida Kahlo perhaps?