The Frugal Gourmet [antikvár]

iriTRODUCTIOnmkivii./t is the journey that seems to provoke the question, and the question is always the same: "How did you get from the university chaplaincy to the television kitchen?" The answer is not complicated because I think each location is consistent with the other.I am primarily a people lover, then a food lover. The events of the meal, the friends gathered, the family excited over the coming dishes are much more important to me than what is on the plate. While teaching religion at a Methodist school, the University of Puget Sound, I became very interested in the meaning of the event of the table and the concept of food as history. Out of this study came a class that investigated the meaning of food as celebration and, of course, that studied cooking techniques. And we ate. We ate the cuisines of many cultures, and we finally realized that a cuisine is a way of thinking as much as it is a way of cooking. I was already very comfortable with such thinking, and with cooking, for I had been brought as a child to the stove by my Norwegian mother. She instilled in me the love of cooking and of food that I now more than enjoy. I was further trained in the kitchen by my Lebanese uncle. It was he who first taught me that cooking is neither a feminine nor a masculine category but is always a joyful and noisy event. He removed from me, even as a child, all fear of the kitchen. And he talked. He talked about how a dish had been prepared in the old country and how food had functioned in the land of his ancestors. His parents had given him a great gift: They had taught him how to cook with his memories.X ? INTRODUCTION