What we eat is what we sow
Bits on food, gardens, nature & human nature
What we eat is what we sow
Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin • The Physiology of Taste
For the Benedictines, gardening was an equaliser and nobody within the monastery was too grand or too learned to work in the garden for part of the day. This was a culture of care and reverence in which the gardener’s tools were to be treated with the same level of respect as the vessels of the altar. It was a way of life in which the body, mind an
... See moreSue Stuart-Smith • The Well Gardened Mind
The physician and writer, Oliver Sacks, explains the value of gardens:
“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and f... See more
“As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and f... See more
James Clear • 3-2-1: Creative Ideas, Wealth, and Making Life a Celebration | James Clear
Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a gardener's existence, but only a phase of it. As any gardener knows, the vitality of a garden does not end with a harvest. It simply takes another form. Gardens do not "die" in the winter but quietly prepare for another season
James Carse • Finite and Infinite Games Quotes by James P. Carse
The internet certainly played its part. As we spend increasing hours buried in our computers the very fact that food can't be consumed virtually gives it a special resonance. You can, of course, post pictures of what you’re eating - people do that by the millions - but that’s no substitute for the scent of onions caramelizing in butter, the sound o... See more
Food Writing Grows Up
This is true of everything in the garden. Each flower, tree, and vine is seen in relation to the whole by the gardener so that the visitors can have unique yet coherent experiences as they find their own paths through the garden. We create the garden as a sort of experience generator, capable of infinite expression and meaning.
Mike Caufield • The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice—and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.
Robin Sloan • Sourdough: A Novel
My grandma was teaching me the most important lesson of cooking, but also of living: anything you really get into relationship with will reveal its secrets to you. All you have to do is stand in the kitchen with an open mind and heart, recognizing the honor of cooking food for your family. The recipe will come.
Nicole Daedone • Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm
Gardens are a mechanism by which we make life bearable. They protect us from the frenzy and tumult unleashed by history. They counter annihilating and anarchic forces. Gardens have been with us – or we have been with gardens – forever. Some say they emerged after agriculture. But if gardens are to agriculture what poetry is to prose, who knows, gar
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