A Religion

I have long dropped out of the church, as the only thing that attracted me there was that short moment when I could enjoy Jesus body in a form of a flat piece of bread – sometimes, especially during Easter, there was a bonus of that flatty being plunged into holy wine, which used to be an ecstasy for a 13yo boy – so I had to find something else to replace my religion, and gastronomy fitted in this gap astonishingly well. I don’t remember exactly when I started worshiping beans, potatoes and cutlets, but my proud Mom says that since I was a baby she would blend all sorts of things (I’ve never dared to ask about what these things were) and put in my baby bottle, so according to her that’s why I like to eat EVERYTHING, and I think that that was a the germ which developed my keenness on food and drink.

I think about food every day, every time, every moment of my life, from the time I am dragged off the bed until the time my brain turns off at night. Obviously I think about other things, but it seems to me that everything is in a certain manner attached to the context of food, one way or the other. For example, sometimes I am studying, reading an article, and my brain goes like this: “…an enouncement is not a unit of semiotic signs, but an abstract construct that allows the signs to assign and communicate specific, repeatable relations to, between, and among objects, subjects, and statements. Hence, a discourse is composed of a stew prepared with beef braised in red wine and beef broth, flavoured with garlic, onions and a bouquet garni, with pearl onions and mushrooms… Hey, wait a minute, what am I thinking about?! This is beef bourguignon!”

As a result, the act of eating has a huge importance in my daily life. Eating is never something simple, trivial, ordinary, normal, regular, typical, common or whatever other blasphemic word you might use to describe this sacred process. And it’s important to stress that I don’t mean that all my meals have to be very elaborated and expensive. What I mean is that the meaning inherent to the meal is also very important. And so it is the context. Regardless of what I am going to shove down my esophagus, without meaning and context no food would delight me. Maybe I should call out Gunther Kress at this point, but since I want to make this simple, I’d better say that over the next weeks I am going to try to present some simple ideas and situations in my life related to my passion for food, and I hope I get to express at least a little bit of this overwhelming feeling that fills my heart and overflows my soul.