The things I cook and the things I want to eat are very dependent on what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling, and what I’m reading and doing at the time. Because of this, I’m starting a new weekly series of links and brief discussions of the stuff on my more metaphorical plate each week.
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- A few weeks ago, philosopher Tom Regan passed away. Regan was part of an old-school movement for animal rights, and many of us philosophers have read and taught his stuff. In recent classes, I used his work not so much as an intro to animal rights as an intro to thinking about moral communities. How, exactly, do we decide who fits in our community, morally speaking, and who does not? How should we treat folks in our communities? This is a tremendously fun and intense thing to teach first-year university students, probably because most philosophers (a) take pretty ridiculous stances sometimes, and (b) don’t have a clean and easy answer to the question. And it’s hard to wrap our heads around the idea that the messy answers are sometimes the best ones. Anyway, Regan has been, in my view, a gentle and helpful voice in what can sometimes be a kind of shrill discussion. He was the first person to get me to take seriously the potential strangeness of what he calls our practice of “keeping body parts in the freezer”. For a fun, if a bit dated, interview with Professor Regan on an Irish TV show, see here. (note: the entire interview takes place over about 4 short clips)
- And with regard to the above, have you read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road? Or seen the film? Many of our imaginations are engaged with post-apocalyptic or dystopian fiction. We all want to see what lies at the end of many and various dark roads and tunnels. The Road is dark and horrifying and beautiful, like good dystopian fiction should be. And there is a wonderful scene in which the main character travels through a community where the folks literally do keep body parts in the freezer. Our interest in the dark and ghoulish is not just for morbid thrills – stories like this are how we draw (and re-draw) our moral boundaries. Imagination is a necessary moral (and culinary) capacity.
- On a lighter and less cannibalistic note: this matcha strawberry battenberg cake is what Mad Hatter tea party dreams are made of. Can I have a Mad Hatter tea party for my birthday please? (No, my birthday is not soon. Yes, I plan my birthday cake ridiculous months in advance.)
- I’m really excited about the possibility of learning to code, or at least learning some stuff that might make blogging easier. This article made me think about some complexities emerging from the notion of empowering women through coding. But still: we should push on!
- I’m leaving soon to do some really exciting traveling, and I’ve been thinking about food and travel and writing. David Lebovitz often makes me want to visit the places he travels to. This piece is one of my recent favorites, both because of the vibrant paletas (strawberry filled with condensed milk!!!) and the equally vibrant depiction of chef Fany Gerson, and because Lebovitz touches so deftly on the deeper issues of food culture in a (hopefully?) pluralist society.
Have a good week, my dears!