With the release earlier this week of the CIA's Family Jewels, their own history of infamy , it seems only right to write a little about the CIA. No not the CIA that was involved, with the United Fruit Company, in setting off the civil war in Guatamala (Codename: PBSUCCESS), which killed over 200,000 people.

There's another CIA, one that influences what we eat everyday, that shapes our tastes and palates. They're the Culinary Institute of America. Beginning in 1946 as a cooking school for returning war veterans, the CIA now has the largest concentration of American Culinary Association master chefs in the country. They’re the food service industry’s think tank. ... read more »

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Posted on 29 June, 2007 - 19:43

For a number of reasons, usually related to copyright owners not responding, or denying permission to quote, a few of my favourite snippets haven't made it into the final version of the book. One of these quotes is far too interesting to toss on the scrapheap - it's James Baldwin in his brilliant essay, The Fire Next Time, talking about the importance of enjoying food. Here's the man himself:

"To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And I am not being frivolous now, either. Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become." ... read more »

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Posted on 29 June, 2007 - 19:26