i seem to be behind these days

but i finally finished our latest book club book.

albeit, two weeks late.....

but the conversation of the book was not really about the book.

it was about food.

which the book is about.

thanks to mary...... for an amazing meal.

fresh pasta..... and that is just where my palate memory begins.

heat - an amateur's adventure as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a dante-quoting butcher in tuscany. bill buford.

how can you not want to read this.

well..... mario batali makes more than just a few cameo appearances.

buford works in his kitchen.

learns what it looks like on that side of the order.

fascinating.

daunting.

intimidating.

then he travels to italy to learn pasta and butchering.

mario takes a back seat and the book loses its flare.

could mario's robust, obnoxious, foul-mouthed presence have made the book more interesting? possibly. i work my way to the end and then in the last section..... nuggets:

"it's not in the breed but the breeding"

"less is more"

"small food - good. big food - bad."

"the metaphor is usually one of speed: fast food has ruined our culture; slow food will save it. . . . you see the metaphor's appeal. but it obscures a fundamental problem, which has little to do with speed and everything to do with size. fast food did not ruin our culture. the problem was already in place, systemic in fact, and began the moment food was treated like an inanimate object -- like any other commodity -- that could be manufactured in increasing numbers to satisfy a market."

"the world changed when the food business agreed that the customer was right, when, as we all know, the customer is actually -- well, not always right."

"italians have a word, casalinga, homemade, although its primary sense is 'made by hand.' my theory is just variant of casalinga. (small food: by hand and therefore precious, hard to find. big food: from a factory and therefore cheap and abundant.) just about every preparation i learned in italy was handmade and involved my learning to use my own hands differently. . . . the hands are everything. with them, cooks express themselves, like artists. with them, they make food that people use their hands to eat."