Don't ask me what this blog is about because I'll change the subject abruptly and hope you forget: “If More of us Valued Food and Cheer and Song above Hoarded Gold, it Would be a Merrier World” (J.R.R. Tolkien).

         Food sustains the body, but people need to realize that it also sustains the mind and soul. Good food is important and should be considered art. Chefs ought to be exalted as the highest order of artists using the ultimate medium and an accomplished chef should be able to achieve the same kind of recognition as a renowned painter.
       A meal should be a pleasure to eat, to smell, to see, and later to remember. Drinks, too. Those people that drink to get drunk are simply overindulging themselves and in doing so, miss the entire cultural experience. In the US, the legal drinking age is 21, but I have tasted beer here, and wine in China. Even someone as inexperienced as I can taste the brightness of rice wine sweetened with dried flowers, and the tartness of a peach brandy. How rustic, how fragrant and how reminiscent of Hangzhou, a little province in China.
        The self-proclaimed intellects always expend so much effort to rave and rant about the ballet, or the opera, or a gallery of paintings-rightly so, of course-but why do food critics get so much less attention?
        Food and drink are also a splendid way to experience other cultures. When I eat at Ashoka the Great I fancy I can see beautiful women draped in colorful silks, languishing over mirrored panniers or astride great, roaring elephants. At Villa Capri, the crisp white tablecloths seem to flutter beneath a breeze carrying the scent of mimosa and vineyards. When my mother cooks me a dish of dumplings it reminds me of the China of my ancestors, of old men playing checkers amidst dust and screaming children waving Hawthorne berry sweets in the air.
        It isn't very long until I go off the college, where the budget of a student surely means that such grand foods will not be within my meager means. But does that mean that I must succumb to the pressures of a greasy burger joint? Is the freshmen 15 simply an unavoidable ritual of adulthood?

      My father took me out to lunch today. We went to a nice Italian place, and took our meal outside. Regrettably, I don't remember the names of our orders exactly, but we started with something like the insalate pera anjou and then penne villa capri for him and fusilli di something-or-other for myself. Then, I cajoled him into splitting a platter of cannoli with me because I've been quoting Peter Clemenza for years and I felt like a fraud for never having tried any.