“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”, begins L.P Hartley’s famous novel The Go Between. Since I first read that line in a grad school seminar, I have been unable to forget it, for I was captured by the notion that it suggested to me; that the past is separated from us more by distance and national borders than time. That it is another land, unfamiliar to us, but as present and open to communication as any far off continent is to us today.
What if we continued that thought and, like classic explorers, we could journey to this new (or rather old) land and learn its customs, its politics, and its aesthetics? What if we could view history with more than just nostalgia, and instead forge a connection between its people and our own? Perhaps then the past would emerge phoenix-like from its own static ashes and transform into something rich and living that would still have relevance for the people of today….perhaps we just need to learn its language in order to speak with it.
And what better way to begin than with food? The act of dining together has cemented relations between many nations and has often helped to lay the foundations for understanding. Even in our everyday lives we solidify friendships and family connections by sharing food, for food has always been one of the great equalizers. Whatever our differences, we all must eat in order to live, and many of us (myself included) live to eat!
In this blog I intend to explore the old fashioned, the endangered, and the extinct of the culinary world, as well as offer a few words in praise of slow food and mindful eating. So join me in breaking bread with this foreign country of the Past and see what it may have to teach us, we might just be surprised …..or at the least, it will whet our appetites!
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